Central Western Daily, 14 Dec 2007
In CWD 14 December 2007 "Rossiter calls for council meetings to be recorded" by Greg McFarland, it is good to see one councillor sticking up for decency. The Federal Parliament has highlights of question time on ABC TV at midnight so the public can see what the elected representatives are holding forth on. If the other councillors are too slack or arrogant to think we want to know how they are behaving, may be they will go the way of the dodo like happened with the Coalition in November. If they won't publish the videos, they should publish the transcripts or audio tracks of their meetings on their Website. I still can't believe Rex Airlines were blocked from receiving a discount on landing fees despite many protests in the paper, making Orange Airport the dearest place to fly to in the Central West. The councillors seem to be deaf to community concerns. This will bring them down a peg. Bullying behind closed doors will stop I hope using video evidence to shame them. It would be easy and very cheap to record an MPEG video and upload it to the council Website so people can view it using Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Even Wesley Mission has its sermons online now as MPEG audio tracks - www.wesleymission.org.au - which widens their influence and they have the limited budget of a church! The Internet is a great way of increasing democracy in the world. Many regimes that don't like being observed on the Web censure it, e.g. China, because they know how powerful it is and that it can bring them down by people power.