The very last meeting of this Campbelltown Council brought out the best in the councillors we elected back in September 2012.
With some of them retiring either for reasons of age, shafted by their political parties or because they just won’t get re-elected on September 10, their farewell speeches were some of the best they made over the past four years.
Let’s start with the Labor party, which is losing three councillors: Rudi Kolkman, who’s been there since 1991 and octogenarian Wal Glynn, who first got elected eight years ago.
The third Labor man bowing out is Anoulack Chanthivong, who was elected to the NSW Parliament as the State Member for Macquarie Fields in March 2015.
All three made speeches last night which were excellent for different reasons.
Across the chamber, on the Liberal side, there was a vacant chair where retiring one term Councillor Alana Matheson usually sits, but she was unfortunately absent for this meeting.
The putative leader of the Libs, George Greiss, also made a wonderful speech that was free of the partisan politics we have heard so often in the past four years.
He added the proverbial icing on the cake when he introduced some of the candidates who were in the public gallery, including Ben Moroney of the Greens and Nea Makowski, whose group of three local women are standing on a pro-environment platform.
Community First’s Paul Lake, who served one term as mayor, also spoke very well, paying tribute to those who were not returning to the chamber after September 10.
All speeches, without exception, praised the Mayor, Paul Hawker, for his performance in the big chair during the past 11 months or so.
“An exceptional job,’’ said Cr Greiss, reflecting most of the others.
Indeed Cr Hawker’s own speech, the very last one for the night, was imbued with the same tone of statesmanship that was reflected in the earlier ones.
He was very proud of a poster placed on the wall behind him for the occasion.
“I got that from the Chinese community,’’ Cr Hawker said.
“The bit written in Mandarin translates to: Mayor of the People and I am really proud of that,’’ he said.
Predicting that Campbelltown was in for exciting times ahead, Cr Hawker offered a two word bit of advice for the next term of council.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]“Be bold,’’ he said.[/social_quote]
This is the week’s Top 5 and it will be tough to mark the best five speeches from last night, but as always we will have a go:
Number 1. Mayor Paul Hawker delivered a classic speech, one that left the audience not only wanting more but wishing he wasn’t retiring from council.
Number 2. Anoulack Chanthivong. We have fearlessly predicted before that the Macquarie Fields MP may get as high as Premier of NSW and his speech last night showed we may be right. Insightful and clear, it reflected an elected representative with a clear vision for the future but also empathy for the past.
Number 3. George Greiss. The Liberal chief on council resisted the temptation to be partisan and ended up with a noteworthy speech full of generosity.
Number 4. Paul Lake. His speech reflected his no nonsense approach but nonetheless paid tribute to his departing colleagues.
Number 5. Rudi Kolkman. The Labor veteran’s speech was actually quite brilliant, but as he said himself, he was reading it, so he lost points for that.
It was a good night last night – it was good to hear their speeches