FOLLY IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN LAUNCESTON

Good intentions fall foul of reality and especially so in Launceston. Over time General Managers have been emboldened, for whatever purpose, to use the Act to empower themselves and their underlings  to impose their 'world view' on the strategic direction of councils –nowhere more obviously than Launceston.

We might ask why GMs would want to do this but it seems that typically they regard the 'elected representatives' with distain and use every strategy available to them to them to hold the elected representative accountable to them. The converse ought to be the case but no it is not.

One view expressed by management is that it they who have the 'expertise and experience' and in ways that exceed the elected representatives and the community's collective knowledge and experience. It's an assertion that does not stack up but they are getting away with it and the Act allows the the discretion. 

Basically local government management has been able to negotiate extraordinary remuneration packages and they are hanging on to all this and without delivering on any kind of rigorous performance indicators. 

Concerningly, in a 21st C context typically they lack an appropriate mix of academic credentials and real world experience given that typically these 'bureaucrats' rise through the ranks without ever been challenged or tested 'in the court of 'peers review'. 

However, COVID-19 just might be a dark cloud that has much more than a 'Silver Lining'! 

Somewhat like in poker game with a suspect pack of cards, when you open a new deck and shuffle the cards, chances are the odds will change dramatically.

SECTION 65 of Tasmania' Local Government Act (TLGA) demands that council's make decisions on 'expert advice'. Typically a GM will assert that their advice is expert advice and if there is any doubt they'll find enough compliant experts to support their intuitions and/or prejudices. 

Here a 'developer' might well be offering 'incentives' to whoever in order to prevail in decision making. Independent expert advice, on the 'growing body of evidence' has become a rare commodity in local governance.

So when UTAS four years ago was so insistent that moving their operation to Inveresk was going to not only save the university in Launceston but also the city's CBD, all contrary expert advice was flawed and irrelevant. It turns out that the ringing alarm bells were rather conservative. And COVID-19 just upped the ante and in ways beyond comprehension in June 2016 when the levies only missed over-topping by centimetres. 

So  much for SECTION 65 and GMs' ability to gauge expertise and make a guarantee in good faith.

LINK TO THE VIDEOS CLICK HERE

It turns out that the 'Inveresk Precinct' is rather quickly evolving into the city's and UTAS's 'Cemetery of Hope' as the predictions of scientists et al are even more quickly than imagined proving to more true than one dared to consider. But, the die-hards cling to their aspirations, and against the evidence, for fear of being called out for inability to 'stay the distance.'

You see, when the waters are flooding the aspirations and imagining of the 'Grand Plan' the aspirants see themselves far far away with their 'spoils'. The next lot of citizens who inherit their legacy will no longer be able to touch them or gain access to their ill gotten gains.

All this sets the scene bureaucratic opacity, discretionary accountability and the paradigm of self service. And in Tasmania, albeit that it manifests itself unevenly, local government is a broken and somewhat sinister operation once you get past roads and rubbish considerations – and even they get caught up in the dysfunctionalism.

Launceston's latest folly comes in the form of building the city's bureaucracy ever larger to embrace 'CULTURE'. Well over a decade ago 'management' was persuaded that there needed to. be an 'advisory mechanism' to shape strategic policy development relative to 'culture' and specifically in regard to the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery (QVMAG).

Bureaucratically sinister as ever that 'mechanism' was rendered decorative and was never allowed to recommend anything at all of substance. This is especially so currently where the staff have elevated their status, gained salary packages that challenge academe's dizziest hights and deliver not all that much. Here the process in hand is going on in camera and masquerading as being a 'community consultation process'.

The real strategy seems to be about building an ever larger empire and shaming the State Govt. into funding an even larger 'cultural edifice' to deliver even higher salary packages to the self appointed movers and shakers. 

There might have been a time when such a ruse might have had a chance of working but no longer – at least not postCOVID-19! That too seems to be a bureaucratic, and somewhat machiavellian, strategy given that failure to win will inevitably mean that the status quo must prevail. 

OH MY GOODNESS!

So at every turn, and there is more to all this than is indicated here, the city's ratepayers and resident are imagined as 'milch cows' to give more and more to needy bureaucrats, and possibly the greedy elected representatives too, well away from the daily grind in the longer term.

 65.   Qualified persons

(1)  A general manager must ensure that any advice, information or recommendation given to the council or a council committee is given by a person who has the qualifications or experience necessary to give such advice, information or recommendation.

(2)  A council or council committee is not to decide on any matter which requires the advice of a qualified person without considering such advice unless –

(a) the general manager certifies, in writing –

(i) that such advice was obtained; and

(ii) that the general manager took the advice into account in providing general advice to the council or council committee; and

(b) a copy of that advice or, if the advice was given orally, a written transcript or summary of that advice is provided to the council or council committee with the general manager's certificate.

62.   Functions and powers of general manager

(1)  The general manager has the following functions:

(a) to implement the policies, plans and programs of the council;

(b) to implement the decisions of the council;

(c) to be responsible for the day-to-day operations and affairs of the council;

(d) to provide advice and reports to the council on the exercise and performance of its powers and functions and any other matter requested by the council;

(e) to assist the council in the preparation of the strategic plan, annual plan, annual report and assessment of the council's performance against the plans;

(f) to coordinate proposals for the development of objectives, policies and programs for the consideration of the council;

(g) to liaise with the mayor on the affairs of the council and the performance of its functions;

(h) to manage the resources and assets of the council;

(i) to perform any other function the council decides.

(2)  The general manager may do anything necessary or convenient to perform his or her functions under this or any other Act.