Ben Smith @ Ballina

Hi Everyone,

This will be up on the Ballina Shire Website shortly, but I thought I’d post it up on here too as I’m sure a lot of people are a little bit curious exactly who I am and where I come from, so here it is…

Cr Ben Smith is a new young fresh face on Ballina Shire Council, elected in September 2008.

Ben is the youngest person ever elected to Ballina Shire Council, offering a unique perspective of ideas, thoughts and strategies for the long term future of the shire.

Ben comes from a background in software engineering, having developed and released business software worldwide with Australia’s largest software companies, and has a background in small business spanning almost a decade, specializing in the field of IT and communications.

Ben, more recently has been working with the majority of the clubs industry in Northern NSW as a lead IT consultant.

Ben loves the lifestyle our area has to offer and is dedicated to long term sustainability of the shire, both environmentally and economically.

Ben is passionate about empowering the community, to give citizens a voice and a chance to have greater say about the direction of our shire.

Ben is currently single; his interests include bush walking/mountaineering, gym, salsa and the nightlife scene.

Hi All,

I spent today reading through the council papers, researching and preparing for the ordinary meeting on Thursday.

I’m really excited about the upcoming council meeting this week, it’s going to be a big one, lots of interesting and controversial issues and additionally, the potential to make some solid progress for the Ballina Shire abroad.

Everything is on the table this month, Ballina’s LEP, various donations to be considered, Cr Jeff Johnson has put up some interesting motions, you have councillor expenditure policy, some interesting statistical data on fuel consumption and of course, Allan Rich makes a cameo appearance back from the grave to provide support for the motion for video recording of ordinary council meetings that will surely create a thriller atmosphere in the chamber.

Almost like a plotline in a movie, and ironically would make for interesting viewing, ha.

Video Recording Ordinary Council meetings with provisions for taking into considering of privary is workable, and an important part of the process of maintaining an informed electorate and healthy democracy.

Notice how, however I was very specific with the video recording, there are legitmate privacy reasons that will need to be addressed and will be addressed.  There are also, for obvious reasons the necessity to only film ordinary meetings and not confidential sessions or committee meetings.

Any proposal of this nature needs to be thoroughly thought through and done properly, and I’m hoping that will be done on Thursday and we can get it through in a comprehensive form that supports these ideals.

As I write this it’s 9pm now and I still haven’t had dinner, but before I finish up I do want to touch on the issue of fuel consumption which makes a return appearance in the October meeting.

Back in the July 2008 meeting council requested that a report on council’s fuel consumption be presented to council by the October meeting, this report has been produced and the results of it, to myself atleast, are extremely interesting.

The report explains that diesel amounts to over 70% of our fuel consumption.  The report also notes a large portion of that diesel usage is from the ferry and other heavy vehicles the council owns.  Further to this, the report basically explains to meet our target of reducing our fuel consumption by 30%, council is continuing to downsize its fleet and look at other alternative ideas.

For a number of weeks now I had been looking at ways to reduce the running costs of the ferry so that we can sustain the ferry in the long term, biodiesel was an idea that came to mind, after further discussing the idea in general with John Truman and realising the true potential of biodiesel within our shire I have discovered, in light of the report on fuel consumption, that biodiesel has massive potential and it’s usage can save the shire up to $700,000 pa. 

In addition to this, it’ll reduce council’s co2 footprint by around 78% (source: US Dept. Energy and Argiculture did a report on the use of biodiesel) and thus go a long way in achieving our reduction goals.

So basically in a nutshell, this is where I’d like to see council take a potential biodiesel program…

- Council will work with local cafes, take away businesses etc within the shire, collecting waste cooking oil that would normally be thrown away or end up in landfill.
- These businesses receive recognition and support.
- Council then uses this to make it’s own biodiesel.
- The biodiesel is then used within the fleet to reduce costs and any surpluses would be onsold to the community via whatever viable means of doing so.

By adopting this we will be:
- Saving around $700,000 pa, massive savings
- Reducing our carbon footprint by around 78%
- Reducing landfill/waste within the shire.

Additional advantages of adopting such a concept include the following:
- Bio diesel works in existing diesel engines no need to fork out money for new vehicles to adopt the new technology.
- Minimal upfront cost, we can get a trial plant up and running that’ll produce 500 litres per week for around $5,000
- As above, potential for massive ROI.
- Bio diesel can be produced for as little as 24 cents per litre, and the price will be much more consistent and will fluctuate less than the price of petroleum based diesel.
- It will drastically reduce the operational costs of our south ballina ferry operation, so that we can sustain affordable fares.
- It will potentially provide for additional commercial opportunities for the council to then onsell surplus biodiesel.

The list goes on, but basically this is a key policy I’ll be working on over the coming couple of months, and hopefully we can get a successful trial out of it within 3-6 months, and then if successful move it into full swing.

Anyway, it’s getting late, so i’m going to finish up, feel free to comment.

Goodnight all.

Cr Ben Smith

Normally I’d refrain from making any specific comments about party politics federally on this blog, but today I had to make an exception.

http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20081017-And-the-Wankley-Award-goes-to-Conroys-net-filtering-scheme.html#comments

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1399635276;fp;16;fpid;0

The whole thing about federal politics was last year everyone just wanted to get rid of howard, and fair enough, he was becoming far too cocky and lost touch with the average man on the street, along came Rudd who promised the world, a populist and at the time seemed to be a good option, he started the term well, and then has managed to continually screw things up from there, the alcohol tax, which was nothing more than a revenue raiser, and as the people on the ground know, was a complete balls up in deterring “binge drinking” and other anti-social behaviour.

People just changed their habits, they simply outsmarted dumb policy.

Now Mr.Conroy and our friends at the Rudd government have decided to top that by coming up with dumber policy, this policy is the concept of filtering the internet.

During the federal election last year, the howard government wrongly at the time made labor out to be communists, which in my mind was extreme and just plain wrong, yet, nearly 12 months later we’ve been dealt up with an internet censorship policy that, the only country it compares to is China itself.

The Rudd Government is proposing to filter internet access for every Australian in the country, whether you like it or not.  They will be offering a child friendly based filter and an “opt out” option(which is still filtered) where you can have a little more access then your 12yr old.

There are a ridiculous number of problems with such a proposal, The obvious one is choice, we are adults, we are human beings and we have the right to make responsible decisions for ourselves and our children and thus view whatever we damn please on the internet.

Controlling what people can and cannot view is a communist policy, plain and simple, it is anti-democratic in every way possible.

The other problem is that it’ll block some sites which we should have full access to view, filters are not perfect, more so, in relation to the filters as if Australia’s internet speeds weren’t slow enough already compared to the rest of the world, well guess what? your internet just got slower.  Filtering takes time, and the end result is the censorship would create additional problems with broadband in Australia that we just don’t need.

The final thing I’d like to point out is that, as with all good dumb policy, smart people will just work around it, there are a number of services on the internet, that you can sign up with and utilize a proxy server to send and receive your information, so for example, you can have your data proxied via the US, which means whatever can be accessed there, you’ll have access to, high school kids have been using this trick for years, to get around school filters, and I suspect the next day, if this legislation gets through, you’ll have tutorials floating around the internet on how to get around the filter.

Assuming those tutorials aren’t filtered.

It’s been proven world wide any government that has tried to legislate the internet has always failed miserably, The US and their Net neutrality act is one such recent example.

But the bottom line is this, it’s just plain idiotic and I would suggest that the common man would already know and be aware of this fact, and it just goes to show just how out of touch with reality federal politics is, and I can only pray for the day that decisions affecting the common man, are actually made by the common man, and not by a circus full of clowns.

Cr Ben Smith