Council’s Survivor Game Has No Eliminations — Just More Rate Hikes

Tamworth Council executives have reportedly taken to calling their executive meetings a “tribal council”, a title usually reserved for a reality TV show where people fight for coconuts, not ratepayer funds.

The gatherings take place inside a building which costs so much to rent that the first challenge each week is simply working out how to sneak their coffees onto the ratepayers’ tab. Known internally as the Coffee Immunity Challenge, it’s the only event where everyone’s a winner.

Sources say the meetings play out like an episode of Survivor — complete with side-eye, whispering alliances, and the occasional backstab. Instead of competing for fire or food, council execs tackle trials such as:

• Budget Balance on a Stick – an impossible contest where the council budget tips over before it’s even lifted.

• Transparency Maze – where contestants try to find one clear answer in a 400-page PDF. Still no winners recorded.

• Public Consultation Endurance Test – see who can pretend to listen to locals the longest without rolling their eyes. Average time: 14 seconds.

Unlike the TV show, however, no one’s torch ever gets snuffed. The only thing extinguished each week is accountability, transparency, and the community’s patience.

If the “tribal council” ever bothered to put its strategies in writing, the documents would technically be available via a GIPA request. But much like a hidden idol, they’re buried so deep in red tape you’d need a machete, a map, and three alliances to even get close.

For now, Tamworth residents remain stuck as the silent jury, forced to watch the same episode play out again and again, wondering when Jeff Probst will finally stroll in, point at the execs, and say: “The community has spoken.”

This is false. This is not a real article. This is fiction.