WHITTLESEA: What is the Mayor really like?
Sir,
What is Whittlesea Mayor Aidan McLindon really like?
There has been a lot of adverse publicity raised against our new Mayor of Whittlesea City Council , Aidan McLindon.
I met Aidan several months before the local elections when we both ran as candidates for Whittlesea Council last year. We both held similar values and what we wanted our city to become.
Aidan believes that we all should be able to live and prosper in a democracy where freedom of speech is encouraged.
He is a local school teacher and is passionate that children in kindergartens and schools should not be sexualised which we can see happening in broad daylight.
He says independent schools of faith should be free to teach their students without encumbrance and has courageously advocated to ‘let kids be kids’.
Prior to the recent Council election Aidan put in a huge effort by personally door knocking most of the homes in his Ward on the commitment to advocate for a freeze on rates for two years and to support family friendly policies at Council, amongst other things.
This produced him a huge primary vote of 54 per cent in the Kirrip Ward in which he ran. It was by far the highest vote in the municipality and was the only ward in the city that was declared on the evening of the counting of votes. The rest of the candidates had to wait weeks as no in had a clear majority.
Then he was voted in as Mayor by the majority of his peers. They must have see leadership qualities in him and a passion to get things done inside the council machine.
There were some obvious constraints and skulduggery going on from the very first council meeting where McLindon’s motion to reign in rates without compromising basic services was lost – 6 votes to 5.
Some nine weeks later he decided to run as an independent candidate for the Werribee by-election. His democratic right in the holiday period where most of council was in shutdown mode.
He told me this was to enable him to raise the city’s issues about his opposition to a large commercial incinerator planned for the north and others in Labor controlled suburbs and to review the Local Government Act which is very restrictive.
He wanted to see local government freed up so that Councils could function without those unnecessary restrictions.
At the same time he wanted to support the overturning of the Labor control in Werribee which had been held by them for 48 years. (He never expected to win that by-election of course it was a chance to assist a bigger picture).
There was a massive swing against Labor and no doubt Aidan’s involvement played a role in that to the point that Labor just won by a few hundred votes after the Greens.
Although Aidan’s action was unconventional I believe his motivation was honourable. Councillors are permitted to run for office in other realms if they take leave. This is not uncommon.
However, opposition forces in and out of Council have used this as an excuse to discredit him – unjustly I believe, and at the recent Council meeting at the last minute a Councillor turned a petition report into an attack motion against Aidan which was passed when this should not have been allowed according to Council meeting rules.
The CEO should have advised that this was out of order. The recent council meeting held on Tuesday descended into a kangaroo court to trial a person for enacting his democratic right.
A brave resident protested from the public gallery “I’d rather be one person of integrity than to go with the flow”
I agree, Aidan McLindon is that one person.
Ross Lee, Doreen
(pictured)