On Friday Lucy Turnbull was in town. Addressing a packed room in her capacity as Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC), Turnbull emphasised the undervalued art of collaboration in city making. Speaking highly of Newcastle's transformation, Turnbull, more so than others, understands the importance of having robust and respectful civic debate. Outside the GSC, however, Turnbull has also had a front row seat for many a stoush where disunity, self-interest and bigotry, the key ingredients for downfall, have largely gone untrammelled.
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Elsewhere in the city that morning, and certainly not in the auditorium full of people who care about Newcastle, Councillor Allan Robinson was requiring no introduction. His misdemeanours while collecting a $32,000 ratepayer-funded allowance, are so routinely shrugged off as larrikinism that some were asking why his foray into headlines again deserved any attention at all.
As an openly gay ratepayer in the City of Newcastle, and as someone under 30 who is committed to the future of this city, I'd like to tell you why this time we need to give Cr Robinson our undivided attention.
When asked to explain his homophobic moniker for the openly-gay deputy lord mayor, Cr Robinson told this paper: "I have no problem with p--fs. I have one work for me and I'm very good friends with three p--fs who I'm proud to say they are my friends (sic)". So problematic was the remark from the Newcastle Independent councillor that this paper felt the need to censor it.
The Guardian, however, a national publication with an audience of 2.8 million people, all of them forming opinions about Newcastle, printed the response in full, including the charming nota bene from Robinson: "If you're a f---ing p--f you're a p--f". Not done, Cr Robinson added: "I have serious problems with people who want to spend $40k or $60k of ratepayers money on painting rainbow coloured crossings on concrete."
Cr Robinson, as a voter unable to bear the indignity of your terms in office, let me tell you what I have a serious problem with. I have a serious problem with someone who is paid to lead our community using his time in City Hall to make sexist remarks about female councillors and the Lord Mayor. I have a serious problem with you referring to one of your employees as a p--f in a newspaper that you expect will be read by that man's family, friends and co-workers.
I have a serious problem with you speaking to me, a representative of the demographic with the highest rates of suicidality in this country, and as a ratepayer who contributes to your $32,000 annual allowance, through words and insinuations that are borrowed from generations of schoolyard bullies, workplace bullies, passing cars, aggravated assaults and homicides.
Above all, I have a serious problem with you, a councillor, dragging the name of this city into national publications beside your repulsive comments, undoing the work of decent people from both sides of politics who were fighting good fights in this city decades before you even appeared on The Footy Show.
This is not an instance of political correctness gone mad. This is an instance of a man using his publicly-funded platform to deploy language that is routinely used to intimidate and assault. This is a man who is clearly unable to change his ways, unable to model even the most basic principles of common sense and decency, feeling cornered by his own behaviour at work and then lashing out in ways that would result in anyone else being terminated on the spot.
I do not ask Cr Robinson for his resignation. I expect it.
Let's put Cr Robinson's remarks into context. Although 2019 is almost two years since this country legalised same-sex marriage, it remains within living memory of a time (June 1952) when this newspaper printed the names of known homosexual men in this city, destroyed their careers and estranged them from their families.
Also within living memory are the countless hate crimes against Novocastrians who, while walking around this hard old town at different times in the past, have found themselves on the receiving end of fists, boots and implements during assaults that for so long, too long, received less attention than Cr Robinson will cop this week.
Considering his comments, in my capacity as a gay ratepayer in this city, I do not ask Cr Robinson for his resignation. I expect it. Moreover, I expect his fellow Newcastle Independent councillors to demand it. No, what I ask of Cr Robinson is that he imagine himself in the shoes of a gay man in Newcastle, a city that is both progressive and yet completely without social infrastructure for LGBT+ residents.
I ask that he think about how he might feel as he's set upon by a group of drunk strangers in Hunter Street, or some equally familiar setting, and to consider what word he might hear in that awful moment when someone swings for his jaw.