Councillor John Ainsworth recognised for 30 years' service to the Nambucca Shire Council

On a property in Macksville he raises 65 head of mostly Angus beef cattle and grows four hectares of macadamia nuts, the machinery for which he designed and constructed himself.

A farmer and mechanical engineer, he always felt more at home working with his hands to sort out a problem, than probing through tomes of policy and business papers.

But in the mid-eighties politics found the farmer.

The then council’s new Local Environmental Plan (LEP) threatened to rezone farmland around his and other farmers’ properties in the Gumma Reserve as ‘wetland’—a move that would have caused the Macksville farmers to consult council on any prospective changes to their own properties.

With the threat of having their hands tied and livelihoods taken, John and the other farmers formed a collective of some 320 paid-up members called the Freehold Land Protection Association of Macksville and enlisted the help of Drs Robert Patterson and Michael Brennan to get an injunction against the council and to write a submission to the Public Commission of Enquiry.

Their submission was ultimately successful and forced the council to redraw the boundaries of wetland area as outlined in their draft LEP.

John’s efforts were recognised by his colleagues and for 18 months after they implored him to stand as representative for them in the next council election.

In 1987, he capitulated and stood for council, receiving the second highest vote in that election.

“I used to stay up late reading mammoth business papers. For a boy from the bush, it was crazy.”

An early blooper came through one of his initial theories—that to remain objective while reading development applications he must avoid personal details altogether.

“I deliberately wouldn’t read the name of the applicant just the application—to keep personality out of policy,” John said.

“Then I learnt about pecuniary interest, so that did away with that theory.”

It is a testament to his character, principle and popularity that ‘the boy from the bush’ has now stood for and survived eight consecutive council elections.

Councillor John Ainsworth has just been recognised for 30 years of service to the Nambucca Shire Council.

For around 15 of those years, he has also been appointed as deputy mayor.

He additionally stood for a position as a senior councillor on the NSW Farmers Board which has seen him take up multiple advisory roles on ministerial committees, including Landcare and the Premier’s Advisory Council which, among other things, influenced the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

"It’s taken me up and down the state,” John said.

“At one point I’d travelled so much with Ansett they gave me a golden ticket.”

But the jocular office bearer maintains both a strong sense of humour and humility in spite of his tenure.

“Cr Ainsworth is council's 'elder statesman' and is widely respected for the wealth of knowledge and experience he has gained over thirty years of serving local government and his community,” Mayor Rhonda Hoban said.

“After thirty years in council he still has a sense of humour.”

Always a farmer, it is no surprise that the single most important issue that John has pursued in his time on council is water supply.

But he maintains that he has no individual claim over council’s successes: “In council it’s not so much about singular achievements—you’ve got to get four other councillors to go along with you.”

In the early 90s, a major drought swept across the region, with the crisis reaching a point where there was reportedly only 30 days’ water left.

John decided that what was needed most was an augmenting of the existing water supply and campaigned his council colleagues for an off-stream storage option along with user-pays pricing measures, which were to be gradually implemented. 

The closure of Midco in 1999, which used up to a quarter of the shire’s water supply, put a pin in plans for off-stream storage, to John’s dismay.

The extended 2002/03 drought caused a rethink on the shire’s water supply and after a decade of testing, debating, community consultation and campaigning for $56 million in state and federal funds, the Bowraville dam was built by 2014.

The other landmark achievement for council during John’s terms was when Nambucca was deemed ‘fit for the future’.

In 1993, a new local government act (AS27), which for the first time accounted for depreciation in budgets, came into effect and threatened mass council amalgamation across the state as the fiscal futures of local governments were put under the microscope.

Scrupulous accounting and frugal spending meant that Nambucca was saved.

“We were the only Grade 11 council that was found fit for the future,” John said.

John is also proud of council’s achievements in building up the Macksville Industrial Estate.

After the closure of Midco, nearly 600 people were suddenly out of work.

The council’s solution was to advertise industrial land in the estate for $1.50/m2 with no subdivisions which soon attracted industries like the Smiths’ MidCoast Trucks, The Express Coach Builders and Lendlease to take up holdings.

“The businesses in the Macksville Industrial Estate now employ more people than Midco ever did,” John said.

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Another council success that John extols is the rezoning of Boggy Creek: “The new highway will open it up to development that we envisaged years ago,” he said.

John says that he has no real regrets from his time in office.

“It’s been an interesting time in my life,”John said.

“I have had the pleasure of working with some really decent councillors, and I’ve always gotten on well with staff.

“One thing I’ve learnt is that there are times when you’ve got to vote for the short-term pain for the long-term gain.

“But If I can be part of steering the council down the right path in a way that benefits the community then that’s great.”

One of the (not so) short-term pains that John has suffered through is the huge loss of personal time that a role in public office takes.

“Families suffer, but that’s the same for all political families,” John said.

His wife, Joyce, thankfully shares John’s unwavering sense of humour. 

But she says there were times when she and their two daughters wished that he would pack it in.

But with three years to go until this current term is up, marking an impressive 33 years of service to his community, John is confident that this will be his last term.

“If Nambucca Shire Council is still a council in three years time, I don’t believe I’ll be a candidate,” he said.

When that time comes, he says, he’s looking forward to spending more time with his wife, children and five grandchildren, getting back to some of his model engineering projects that have been sidelined for far too long, and dusting off the caravan for a new set of adventures.