Walcha Council has quietly achieved what larger councils can only dream of: a complaints system that runs itself. A resident lodges a complaint, receives a polite acknowledgement, and then the complaint does what all good things in the high country eventually do. It goes quiet.
Some ratepayers have mistaken this for a problem. It is, in fact, innovation. A complaint that is never assessed can never be wrongly assessed. A complaint that cannot be found can never be leaked. Under the old model, councils wasted precious hours reading complaints, weighing the evidence and writing back. Walcha has streamlined all three steps out of existence.
The system especially favours conflicts of interest. Under the rules, each councillor decides for themselves whether they have one. If a resident thinks that decision was wrong, they may complain. The complaint is then passed to someone, who passes it to someone else, who explains that it should have been more specific, lodged sooner, and about something else entirely.
The result is a beautiful symmetry. Councillors judge their own conflicts, and the complaints about those judgments quietly judge themselves. It may be the first fully self-regulating ecosystem in NSW local government. It deserves a sculpture on the main street, perhaps inside the birdcage.
Critics point to Council’s own procedures, which say a complaint should be assessed within 21 days. This misunderstands the high country’s relationship with time. In Walcha, 21 days is less a deadline than a mood. One complaint lodged in May 2025 has now been left to mature for more than 500 days, like a fine red wine, without anyone disturbing it. When the resident who lodged it asked after it recently, they were told the current general manager had never heard of it. Which is fair enough, because it arrived several general managers ago.
That is Council’s other quiet triumph. Walcha has embraced the revolving door so thoroughly that institutional memory has become optional. Each new general manager, acting or otherwise, starts with a clean slate, unburdened by anything the last one was told. A complaint lodged under one is local folklore by the next.
So here is a modest proposal. Council should stop pretending it has a complaints process and simply rename it. “The Archive” has a dignified ring. Residents could receive a souvenir receipt, suitable for framing, and the 21-day standard could be updated to read “in due course”.
Or, less amusingly, Council could do what its own rules already ask. Register every complaint, assess it on time, and write back with reasons, whatever the answer turns out to be.
All opinion and comment on New England Times Engage is the opinion of the writer and not New England Times.
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