The councils are lead by people who are themselves woefully corrupt human beings generally operating in the political world solely for private gain and largely funded by the real estate industry. They have zero interest in actually implementing environmental policy, and high interest in pretending to do so.

Case in point #1, one of our councils recently was given AUD$50M by the state to implement a new park. They failed to do so. This was largely because they decided the best place for doing so was on top of an endangered ecological community and their plan was literally to flatten it, replace it with an array of 'playing fields' (like 3+) and then - get this - spray it with sewerage in lieu of investing in adequate wastewater infrastructure, despite the fact all runoff would be directed in to a National Park. This proved to take longer to achieve from a regulatory wrangling perspective than they had counted on, the state-specified timeline has well expired, but somehow all the money has been spent and no longer available to return to the state and there is also no park. Note their other commitments to the same national park include a neighbouring elevated rifle range (so that it is now too dangerous to walk through the park, in a country with historically near-zero popular gun use), an off-road dirt bike allocation, and a neighbouring industrial district. The mayor (whose office never does anything, even respond to communications) suddenly spent public funds sending a letter to all residents urging them to complain to the state government on his behalf, and ordered the council to change their email footers to "save our sports" or some associated transparent drivel. Absolute duplicitousness and entrenched corruption.

Case in point #2, I recently identified outright false documentation being supplied by a career real estate developer (readily identified by the use of a long-established trust with a local real estate name and decades of legal records) in order to justify the clearance for potential development of a piece of land with something like 97% historic tree coverage. Nothing was done: either to the professionals who supplied the fake paperwork, to the applicant who was a consultant specifically hired to grease what palms needed greasing to get such things through council, nor to the trust, nor to the council. It didn't matter, because they cleared the land without any paperwork prior to any approval being granted. With this brought to the attention of council, whose own policies this breached, they did precisely zero. When I insisted, they simply stopped responding to emails. I brought this to the attention of the anti-corruption body and multiple government ministers, none of whom did anything. This is the state of local government in Sydney right now: a farce. My sole option is to launch a court case on my own resources, which is something all evidence points to as equally ineffective.

Case in point #3, I personally know of two large (100+ year old) trees removed within the last 12 months on false pretenses and one more that has been poisoned with intent for the same. The specific way the rules have been created ensures there is nothing that can be done about it.

Australia has become a highly corrupt cesspit of inefficiency, mutual back-scratching and amoral non-governance with little to practically differentiate it from the semi-anarchist developing world states it neighbours in Asia save the legacy of gin and tonic and a little less time to apply the intertia of destruction. This is why I for one want Julian Assange in power: he knows how to rally people behind radical transparency and it's high time this happened. In our lifetime? Maybe.