Consultation key to Gerald’s indigenous voice on Council

rue consultation with the community will be the key to success of the next local government term for new Orange Councillor, Gerald Power.

First Indigenous elected representative for the Colour City, he believes that his lived experiences can help overcome crime and social issues afflicting some of our poorer suburbs.

Succeeding after three previous attempts for Council, he said that the accrued community profile he had created over nearly two decades finally paid-off.

“That was my fourth time that I had run, and I think the reason that I got elected this time is my higher profile.

“It’s about being consistent and building a voter-base since 2004, about working with the community and being known, and building the base up,” he said.

Cr Power was first-place on his independent “Power to Change” six-person group ticket in December’s poll, that, largely by chance, ended-up being comprised of all Aboriginal candidates.

“It was an all-Indigenous ticket, yes, but that was an accident, I actually had two non-Indigenous candidates on my ticket but, when I rang them up in September when I was really trying to get people to run with me, they said, ‘Oh, we’re running now on another ticket’,” he laughed.

From the Juru people of Bowen near Townsville in north Queensland, he came to Orange nearly four decades ago at a time when racism was still highly-prevalent in Australia.

“When I was growing-up, it wasn’t cool to be black and I travelled to many towns, but Orange was different, the people here really accepted me as a person.

“I experienced racism many times, and then I came to Orange, and I thought, ‘Jeez, they’re friendly here’,” he said.

Before the poll, he had publicly-stated that it was time that our original Australians were represented on Orange City Council, seeing his election as righting an historic oversight for the city. 

“I’m hoping to provide a definite Indigenous voice for the city that I felt had been lacking as an Indigenous man,” Cr Power said.

He said though that he has more than one string to his bow with a strong background in community services, much of it with the local Aboriginal community.

“I think it’s a benefit that I was a public servant for many years with Family and Community Services (FACS), and I noted that a lot of other candidates didn’t have that public service background.”

Cr Power also believes that the outreach community work that he and others introduced to Glenroi and other parts of Orange during a crime wave in 2004–2005 can be reactivated in the future.

“We had a crime wave with cars being burnt-out and we had a program addressing community poverty and anti-social behaviour; the cars are being burnt-out again, and now it’s time to go back to do ‘A, B, C, D, and E’ just like we did then,” he said.

“It’s about engagement, it’s about taking those stakeholders on board… the problems have re-emerged with a new generation that need engagement,” he said.

Cr Power said that this philosophy ties-in with his belief in the importance of the new Council placing emphasis on community consultation.

“One of the things I’ve noticed, is the consulting with the community process needs more of a push. For instance, the draft social housing plan only had something like 13 community responses, it may have been a few more, but not much.

“That’s a low response for an issue that affects the community, a lot of people have read it, but decided, for one reason or the other, not to comment. That’s something that we’ve got to do a lot better with… the consultation process was my first-point on my four-pronged platform,” Cr Power said.

He added that cultural heritage protection around new developments like the proposed mountain bike tracks for Mt Canobolas are another central component of his plans on Council.

“This is not about stopping the bike track being built, but of identifying some of the cultural-sensitive areas that it needs to avoid.

“Local elders tell me that the consultation process, until now, wasn’t quite good enough in that regard, I’d like to see it done better,” Cr Power concluded.