Wagga Awakes! Council Cuts Ties To China

Wagga council voted on Tuesday night to end its 32-year-old relationship with Chinese sister city Kunming. In a hotly debated motion, the winning vote to ditch Kunming was cast 4-3.

The meeting was held via a conferencing app owing to COVID-19 restrictions with the motion’s initiator, councillor Paul Funnell, addressing the council.

In a speech full of blunt truths, he highlighted the existential problems of being a democratic council with “…a business ethics document that speaks of transparency, ethical decision making and procurement practises”, while its sister city holds to “the very opposite” of those policies.