Another extinction. Tea ladies!

Dear reader, it’s quite a while since Council’s were amalgamated. Not a bad initiative at the time. And for one working on the coal-face the greater efficiencies became self evident. Gone, the instances of poorer shires sponging off wealthy shires, the multiplicity of overlap and budgets stretched so tight in the poorer municipalities for roads and rubbish. There was nothing left over, not even enough for chrissy lights.

I’ve lived through this transition. Gone, the tea ladies. Gone the primacy of the Town Clerk, the Mayor and the City Engineer. Fancy that! Just three people with overall authority.

Old Castlemaine Gaol. The Kleptocracy at work. Site worth millions. Community capital? Priceless! Sold secretly to developers by unelected Council Officers for 500 thousand.

Then, with amalgamation, the Council structure became corporatised. And within the change came a new structure, in which the Council Officer, unelected, unaccountable and remote from the public eye, became the principle vehicle for interpreting decisions filtered down from the elected representatives. Councillors come and go, but the Officer, sinecured and safe, became an entrenched part of Council business. And they’ve grown like topsy. The population explosion of Executive Officers, middle management, policy officers, place-makers, urbanists, strategic and statutory planning officers, strategy planning executives, and senior advisory staff, has been nothing short of exponential. One would say, proportionate to the explosion in rates. An average house in Central Victoria, will be rated at almost twice the amount as a house in Melbourne. Though the wheely bins are very nice.

Local community of ratepayers. Left out in the cold.

In my own little municipality the unelected Council Officers decided they’d sell off one of the biggest council assets, the old prison to a few developer mates. After having spent hundreds of thousands of ratepayers money on restoring it, they decided in their wisdom the public, the rate payers who sustained them couldn’t be responsible for such a signifiant asset, and besides the developers represented the clean broom of free market accountability. Their intention, to follow the proven path in converting the site into real estate indicated a popular trend. The outcry was stupendous, and thinking that it were just a noisy minority, (their contempt for the public sustaining them thus) they held a public meeting on Brownlow night. To their surprise the hall was packed, and yet the die was cast. The ratepayers responded in the only way they could, and sacked the mayor in the following election. . But the unelected, supine, satrapcy remained firmly entrenched. In the adjacent shire, (Macedon Ranges) the same unelected swill are trying to convert, (and they’re still at it!!) Hanging Rock into an ersatz, Disneyland. A common device in stripping public assets. The public are promised the banality of another conference centre, (to which they are not encouraged to participate) and the certainty that the experience of actually visiting the rock is converted into a turnstile oriented gouging experience.

We understand that when public assets are sold and converted into rent seeking enterprises, we the public MUST be treated as serfs. We enjoy this condition every time we go to Melbourne Airport and are gouged for appalling service and the unmistakable impression that we are swill, to be abused, as an obligatory part of being processed. Its punishment for giving up what was once ours. But with Council there is still a delusion felt by ratepayers of ‘community service’.

Hanging Rock. The kleptocracy hard at it!!

I blame it on corporatisation. In them olden days a Council staff were employed to serve the community. Now that process is secondary to climbing the greasy pole of executive advancement and higher salaries. The greatest obscenity being the remuneration of Council CEO’s. Usually the most egregious feather-bedder. They’re paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to exert non-authority, and allow developers and members of the public who have vested interests in manipulating public policy to achieve personal windfalls. The entire system is ossified, and corrupt. A corruption of a corporate business model that rewards politicking rather than imagination, and assumes that officers are the acme of free enterprise and venture capital.

But they aint. They’re just people. The edifice they serve is just Council. We don’t ask much, just occasionally the right of a fair hearing and transparency.

Perhaps it would work better if we installed a new model. Councillors, without vested financial interests. A Town Clerk to administer policy. And an engineer entrusted with ultimate responsibility.

Nah! It’d never work. .