Have you ever noticed that whenever an organisation starts talking about “community guidelines,” “respectful engagement,” and “trusted information,” the conversation usually ends with someone being told to be quiet?

Welcome to Cessnock.

Council’s proposed Social Media Community Guidelines arrive wrapped in all the familiar corporate buzzwords: Openness. Relevance. Respect. The sort of language that looks wonderful in a PowerPoint presentation and even better framed on a wall in the communications department.

But buried beneath the polished wording is a question every ratepayer should be asking:

Who gets to decide what information the public is allowed to see?

Under the proposed policy, content considered “misleading or deceptive” may be removed. That sounds reasonable enough—until you realise the people deciding what is misleading may be the very same organisation being criticised.

If a resident questions a project, challenges a council decision, or disputes the official version of events, who wins the argument? The public—or the person holding the delete button?

Council repeatedly refers to itself as a trusted source of information. Fair enough. But in a healthy democracy, the public should never be expected to rely on a single source of truth. Competing views, public debate and scrutiny are not bugs in the system—they are features.

The policy also seeks to prohibit content that may be considered offensive, humiliating or intimidating toward council officials.

Nobody is arguing that abuse and harassment should be tolerated. But there is a world of difference between abuse and robust criticism.

Ratepayers have every right to be frustrated about roads, developments, spending decisions and council performance. Sometimes accountability is uncomfortable. Sometimes tough questions sting. That’s not a failure of democracy—it is democracy working exactly as intended.

What is most striking about the proposal is its unmistakable preference for orderly conversation over messy public debate. Unfortunately, democracy has always been messy.

The people of Cessnock don’t elect councillors to act as brand ambassadors. They elect them to ask difficult questions, challenge decisions and represent the community—even when doing so makes the bureaucracy uncomfortable.

Council belongs to the people who fund it, not the people who manage its social media accounts.

The solution to criticism has never been better moderation policies. It has always been better answers.

And if a policy needs a glossary of buzzwords, a communications strategy and a social media rulebook to defend itself, perhaps the problem isn’t the comments section.