30 May

In a time of rising prices of electricity, water and petrol, I hear politicians talk about the “cost of living pressures”.

Yet I hear no talk about the big game changer coming around the corner.

That game changer may be a turning point for all of us, and is summed up by the phrase “peak oil”.

Forget the banter about climate change and carbon tax.  The historical moment of peak oil is nearly upon us.

Technically, peak oil is the point at which we have extracted half of the oil that has ever existed, the high quality half that was cheap and easy to find, and easy to refine.

Beyond peak oil, it may cost the energy equivalent of two barrels of oil to get the one.

A majority of experts do not put peak oil too far away at all.  Paul Roberts in “The End of Oil” pointed out that oil pessimists nominated 2010 as a likely date.

Oil optimists don’t put peak oil far beyond that.  A 2004 report by the usually up-beat US Department of Energy noted that none of the predictions of experts go beyond 2020.

Peak oil is more than a technical and economic turning point: it is a point where we have to change our personal behaviours and lifestyle.

For me personally, I have started the process of changing my behaviour.  During March I promoted National Bike Week by attempting to cycle to work each day.

My own process of change started when I was an impoverished university student and could not afford a car.  My bike-riding ways returned when I could not drive as I had accumulated too many demerit points.

This was a sudden event, my own “peak oil crisis” that could have pushed me into anger and despair.  But I decided to use it as an opportunity to change my ways on a permanent basis.

What I have found is that we are quite able to reduce car usage.  It can be a pain, but it is surprisingly achievable.

I found planning ahead was crucial.  Do not just wake up in the morning and look at diary to see what is happening.

Arrange meetings for convenient times and locations, and put a time aside to do all your “run-around” chores at one time.

When you rely on a car, you get used to simply hopping in and charging off.  You don't need to plan ahead.  Freedom and acting on impulse are the deep psychological joys of driving a car.

I am certainly not perfect in my car use, but my behaviour change will keep happening.  Now I have the added impetus of a new-born son.

I know my son will not enjoy what we assume is a birth right of a modern Australian.  That is the right to have a car and drive wherever he pleases.

Instead, I may have to explain why his father and grandfather’s generations used all this marvellous geological endowment of oil, and left none for him.

25 May 2011

As you sit down tonight to watch these finely-developed young Queenslanders playing at the hallowed Colosseum of Lang Park, do not forget from where they came.

They emerged out of the small football clubs created in our local communities.  They played on fields mowed by our Dads, and changed in club houses made of Besser brick and tin by a local council.

The more I listen to my local community, the more I see how important junior sports clubs are to our community.

Junior sports clubs are where we build what we are now calling “social capital”.  This is where we see Mums and Dads meeting other parents, and learning to work together, and building a club to support their kids’ dreams of playing for Queensland.

Families lead such busy lives these days.  We work longer and harder than just about any other developed nation.  We don’t go to church anymore: we can barely organise ourselves to take the DVDs back on time.

But Mums and Dads will sacrifice their weekends and drive for hours so their child can play a sport for their local team.  They will change their shifts so they can mark the lines and staff the canteen.

These parents and volunteers are the people who are building something bigger in our communities.  If they put up their hands and say they need help, we need to hear them and act.

And they need help from Council.  In fact, I’m wondering if supporting junior sport is one of the most important things we do as a Council.

We need to help these volunteers maintain their fields, and make sure these local community clubs have the best possible (and least embarrassing) facilities to house their children.

Take the Burpengary Jets Junior Rugby League Club for example.  This year they have 26 teams, housed in a basic building featuring two change rooms and about four extensions.

In contrast to other big junior clubs, they do not have a mighty, pokie-filled senior rugby league club next door.  What they have built, they have built themselves.

The Burpengary Jets have put their hand up and asked for help.  Redcliffe Dolphins, Caboolture Sports Club and local businesses have heard and helped with sponsorship.

In the last budget of the Caboolture Shire Council, we allocated $250,000 to help build a better club facility.  So far, nothing has yet happened.

I believe Council needs to focus on creating better facilities for local sporting clubs throughout our communities.

We do not need to create Lang Park style stadiums.  We need to do the right thing by the young players, proud in their oversized jerseys, and by the parents who opened their wallets to buy those jerseys.

As you watch those mighty Maroon jerseys churn up the field at Lang Park tonight, remember that most of them were created at clubs like the Burpengary Jets.  Remember they were forged by the ranks of Mums and Dads who stood at the side line each winter to cheer them and watch them.

16 May

On Saturday 14 May, it was my pleasure to attend an afternoon tea and information session for the volunteers that run Council’s community centres and community halls.

These are dedicated people doing unpaid work for our community, and I started thinking how we can help them, and how we can build better community centres into the future.

After listening to these volunteers, it became clear that our community centres - the community halls and neighbourhood centres – are still crucial to the health of our communities.  In fact, they are more important than ever.

People may flock to suburban shopping centres to meet their friends and to socialise, but shopping centres are private spaces, not public ones.  If we want to have a meeting as a local sports club, or have a fund raising function at a shopping centre, it is up to the private corporation that owns the shopping centre.

Community centres are still vitally important because they are our spaces.  You and I own them.  They are often controlled by a committee elected by community members, or controlled by a Council that you can elect.

Our community centres are the places where the community can meet to discuss and decide on important issues, and places that a community groups can have somewhere they can call “home”.

Yet community centres are becoming much more than public spaces where we can meet, discuss and decide things as a community.  They are becoming locations where community services are delivered.

State and federal government are increasingly granting money to community-based groups to deliver community services.  In my community of Deception Bay, there are organisations that are funded to educate young parents, provide training and employment services to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, and to work with young people at need.  If these community groups did not do that, these things would simply not be done.

And where do they deliver these services?  At local houses they have to rent or buy.

The Deception Bay Neighbourhood Centre (DBNC) is a wonderful place where many State funded programs are delivered.  Queensland Health and the Department of communities run many programs out of DBNC.  DBNC itself also employs community workers to do counselling and help out people in need.

But it is too small.  Spaces and rooms at the DBNC are overcrowded and in high demand.  You could triple the size of the Centre, and it would still not accommodate all the groups and services desperate for space.

And this is where I am leading.  Local government needs to provide practical and modern community spaces that meet the needs of our community and our community groups.

Traditionally we have provided large spaces used for public meeting and dances, or for activities such as indoor bowls and judo classes.

But we need a whole system of smaller meeting rooms and office spaces where community organisations can meet young mums, or help kids caught up in the juvenile justice system.  We need professional offices for our local youth workers or counsellors.

The community centre volunteers at the afternoon tea last Saturday are on the “front line” of our community services.  They know the pressures in our local communities to have places where a whole range of organisations and services can meet, or can assist those who need our help.

They know that if our Council build new modern community centres that have a suite of offices, consulting rooms and meeting spaces, as well as a nice big hall space, that will be a great step towards building better communities.