THERE was some awkward viewing once the show started almost half-an-hour late at 6.23pm on Tuesday October 8.
Even though it was late, I remained transfixed to the screen.
And I'd wager you did too if you were watching the inaugural meeting of the newly elected and re-elected Newcastle councillors and lord mayor for the 2024-2028 period.
On Tuesday nights I usually like to catch up with the most recent streaming episodes of Slow Horses and The Penguin.
While streaming the council meeting, my mind soon wandered from the absence of horses and penguins in my life on a Tuesday night to the shenanigans in Orwell's novel Animal Farm.
The optimism for new beginnings that provided both impetus and appetite for change among the pigs in the novel eventually dissipates and melts into a resolve that things can get worse, despite assurances from aspirant leaders that better days lay ahead for all.
Like rubbernecking motorists and their passengers who slow down at a motor vehicle accident hoping to have a ghoulish inclination satiated, I wasn't sure what I was hoping not to see during the streaming of the council meeting.
It soon became apparent that what I didn't want to see was a new lord mayor lacking in confidence while chairing the council meeting.
While Cr Kerridge and his supporters are certain he has been elected to instigate his prescription for changes to council operations, he does not have - as former lord mayor Jeff McCloy pointed out in this masthead on Saturday - the numbers in the chamber to steamroll through even the most modest of items he took to the election. That makes a strong and confident authority - well schooled in procedural matters - in the lord mayoral chair extra important.
One example of the early burial of promised change was trying to get councillors to sit in their respective Ward groupings.
Stymied from the start.
People can bang on all they want about getting party politics out of local government, but it ain't ever going to happen.
It's naive to think it might, could or will happen. Democracy is messy, especially when you don't have the numbers.
In my view, the newly installed lord mayor appeared like a rabbit in the headlights. He did not display a commanding grasp of council meeting procedures around bread-and-butter matters such as motions, amendments, speaker rights and limitations.
He was regularly reliant on administration advice being relayed into his ear to clarify numerous "where-to-from-here" moments.
To be fair, these procedures are not without some complication for the newly elected neophyte who hasn't done the hard years serving as a councillor where procedural ropes are learnt. The corridors of power and text message applications used by councillors are frequently bogged down with tactical discussions.
And the Model Code of Meeting Practice for Local Councils in NSW doesn't make it any easier for those without experience in the chamber. Try grasping this Sir Humphrey-inspired prose drawn from Section 10.18 of the Code.
"Where an amendment has been moved and seconded, a councillor may, without a seconder, foreshadow a further amendment that they propose to move after the first amendment has been dealt with. There is no limit to the number of foreshadowed amendments that may be put before the council at any time. However, no discussion can take place on foreshadowed amendments until the previous amendment has been dealt with and the foreshadowed amendment has been moved and seconded."
Sheesh.
I want to believe lord mayor Kerridge's uncertainty in the chairing of the meeting was a case of opening night stage fright rather than a harbinger of impending doom.
I'm looking forward to hearing his vision for the city.
The big picture stuff for the next four years - once roads, rates and rubbish are sorted of course.
But it is clear from that first meeting that there is going to have to be a lot of negotiation to realise even the most modest of items that lord mayor Kerridge took to an optimistic electorate wanting a new lord mayor.
Time will soon tell whether such optimism could ever be truly realised without control of numbers in the chamber.
