The main principle of good public consultation is that you have to inform the public before you ask them for an informed opinion.  Begin by providing the public with background information on the current situation and by presenting the case for change.  Next, the proposed project should be well documented so that people can find out about the features of the project and what they do.  Lastly, there needs to be ways for the public to contact decision makers and to make formal submissions regarding their issues.  Many other councils and large organisations in north Queensland have no problem with this sort of public consultation.  Cairns City Council performed miserably in all the above areas.  As the consultation process is often the public’s only chance to reduce the impact of a proposed project on their lives, it is really a big deal when the consultation process is bogey.  In the case of the proposed botanic gardens redevelopment, the only information that was presented to the public was a couple of plans tacked on a wall. The only way I could take some information home with me was to take a photo of the plan, which was quite difficult as it was covered in shiny plastic. There were no explanatory notes with the map, no leaflets to take away for later reference and no web site to go to for further details.  (download original image) It is very hard to provide accurate comments on the proposal when you do not have enough information.  Even after being informed of these faults during the first round of the consultation process, the council produced an almost carbon copy performance during the second round of consultation. How can the Cairns City Council can propose to spend 30 million tax payer dollars without presenting the public with a solid justification for spending this money?   Most projects of this size have a formal impact assessment and public consultation process where all of the project details are discussed at great length.  The botanic gardens consultation process is a test case for the council's interest in public consultation.    Before the council reaches for the standard complaint that they do not have enough resources for public consultation, we would like to state that if they can’t do it properly, we will do it for them and for free.  That is the purpose of this site. We will provide as much background information as we can find, we will answer questions where we can, and we will post documents and submissions so that they stay in the public domain to further inform the public.  We hope that the public supports us by returning to this site to see what is going on.  Later on we expose and debunk the council’s second widely used bogus excuse for avoiding consultation – “we can’t deal with that now, because that is an operational matter”.  Without consultation, the government is an elected dictatorship – think about that!