An area where I find myself at variance with a lot of elected officials is in my personal view of my role as representative of the people. I’m not from government. I’m from the regular community. I would make a lousy bureaucrat. When the public sector ‘must be more corporate’ mantra caught on, it simply made government even more self serving, whilst doing little to emulate the efficiencies of the private sector.

I’m not into party politics for the same reason, as always, the party’s interests come ahead of the peoples interests, in the party’s questionable pursuit of electoral pay-dirt.

I make no apologies for taking a stance that says any elected rep is duty bound to put the interests of the people ahead of the interests of the government institution. Government to me is about governance by the people for the people. By 2007, to my way of seeing things, there has been a bad deterioration of government, where the self serving interests of government are more about government for the government, by the government. This does not mean I subscribe to the views on the loony left or the materialistic right. The middle path for humanity is between these polarized bookends. As humanity walks into the new realm of climate change danger, its only hope of comfortable long term survival is through unity. Unity is about the middle path, tolerance and simple human to human values. It’s about a day to day, loving respect for the person you have never met in the checkout queue ahead of you.
However, the machine that is Australian Government has over the years fire-walled and legislated itself into a degree of immunity from us, the people and it is only the vigilant and compassionate elected representative that has been able to provide some degree of buffer between the hard edge of government and the people themselves.
So often, government decisions are all about protecting government interests at the expense of the people’s interest. To me, the role of any elected rep is more about serving people than ruling them.
I have to confess to not winning as many friends inside of government as out, as given the choice of voting for an issue that may harm or shame government, but at the same time, benefit the people….sorry government, but I will generally vote for the people’s interest first. Before being elected in 2004, I jokingly published a comment to the effect that you can elect me, ‘but they (the DSC) won’t like it’. How true it was at times.
So yes, I am not the government’s man. It’s the people I believe I serve, not the institution of government.
The decision has cost me a fair bit of skin, with a line up of bureaucrats admonishing me through all manner of attempted false and childish libel litigation’s, baseless code of conduct accusations and endless and again baseless CMC witch hunts.
I’ve BEEN ADMONISHED FOR USING CAPITALS in emails, for which may God have mercy on my soul. I have been temporally excommunicated from all DSC communications for having been so outrageous as to suggest ‘shit happened’ at a dud loo with a queue. I was thrown out of a meeting for being so outrageous, as to suggest a proposed idea over the Daintree Gateway would ‘lose votes’ for the proponent, shame on me, how insensitive. I have been admonished as the lone DSC councillor protesting a proposition by the then CEO that saw a series of Beach Club court cases lost at a cost of $200,000, with unprecedented planning damage done to our community and which eventuated in all new commercial and accommodation buildings in Douglas Shire winning a 2 year, floor space free kick, to the tune of 15-25%, where only recently, developers on the old Havana site required (and where entitled to) $1.3 million in compensation, unless the were given added floor space based on the stupidity of the DSC’s Beach Club decision. Rather than digest my opposition, I was simply thrown out of the meeting. So yes, I have lost some skin because of my people first, government second attitude. But I stand by my principle. People’s interests come before government interests. You can vote for ex bureaucrats if you please. I’m different.

CONTACT ROD DAVIS: vote@@roddavis.org

MOBILE: 0418 235561 or HOME: 0740 994434

MAIL: PO BOX 714, Port Douglas, 4877.