All of them - GONE!

And you thought you had weird politicians! Late last week the entire Tweed Shire Council were sacked amid accusations of corruption. Because I'm in good old isolationist Queensland, it sometimes takes news like this a few days to cross the border from NSW, even though the administrative centre for the Tweed Shire Council is no more than 30km away. Of course, corruption in politics is nothing new, but what I find interesting about this story was that it involved the entire council. Normally enquiries of this nature focus on one or two politicians at a time, in this case they're saying that everyone on the council is tainted -- and this is apparently just the beginning. Well, let's look on the bright side, it could effectively delay any council plans to pave or seal Urliup Road.

Further news came in the form of this story which suggests that the source of the fraud centres around the councillors effectively lying about their allegiances in the lead up to their election. They claimed to be "independent" candidates (as if that means anything anymore), when they were actually funded by a group of developers en masse. I seem to recall my sister telling me about something similar happening in Melbourne in the lead up to their elections last year. The outcome there was slightly different, as the man challenging for the job of Mayor, who ran eight "stooge" candidates (i.e. candidates who claimed to be representing other interests, but all supported him), ended up getting owned hard by incumbent John So.

Now that this sort of thing has spread to the Tweed Shire in Northern NSW, one wonders just how many other areas are similarly tainted. Perhaps this explains why I generally only treat politics as an object of ridicule these days, and spend more time riding my bike and enjoying the outside world.