Mayoral Memo - 4 May 2022
On Star Wars Day, somehow I thought it would make sense to look at the economics of the Death Star. You can imagine when Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine showed the Galactic Senate his original concept plans. He would have proudly shown his colleagues the 160km diameter DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station complete with a superlaser powered by eight kyber krystals that could destroy a planet. I am sure the room would have been suitably impressed. Somewhere, sitting down the back, was a Senate member who asked the obvious question. “What is our budget for this?” When you seek to control singular rule and social control over every planet and civilisation within the galaxy, who cares about a budget? Regardless of the size of the project, it needs a budget and maybe, with just a bit more planning and consideration of the budget, the design team may have been able to address the known weakness with the exhaust port. The very weakness that allowed Luke Skywalker to hit the opening with a precise shot and destroy the entire DS-1.
It may not always be fully documented but all expenditure has a budget. From pocket money at school through to a household or business and government. The Federal Government will have total revenue of $580 billion next financial year. That is a big number and often difficult for people to wrap their heads around. When a resident says that the Federal Government should fund a new mobile tower near their area, surely the government has enough money to do it. A tower is only $200,000 which only represents 0.00003 per cent of the total budget. The problem is, the government has more than one person to satisfy across the nation and more than just mobile phone towers to build. The numbers are smaller but when one of your children asks for the newest iPhone as it is only a small percentage of your annual wage, they ignore other important expenditure items like rent or mortgage, electricity, food, etc.
The Dubbo Regional Council budget for the 2022-23 financial year is currently on display and I encourage all residents to look at it. Council does not have a bucket of money sitting around just waiting for ideas on how to spend it. When residents ask a Councillor for new shiny infrastructure, to fund that it means that something else needs to not be funded. With over 2,000km of roads in our network, when a request for road improvement is made, it would mean another scheduled road improvement would not be done. Yoda said, “The greatest teacher, failure is” and we are only too aware of the $20.3 million operating deficit left from the last three years of the previous Council so I urge you to read the draft budget and make your submission.
Councillor Mathew Dickerson
Mayor of Dubbo Regional Council
Last Edited: 24 May 2022