My Mental State

Just over a week ago Cr Smart passed judgement on my mental condition. It was not a flattering verdict that he delivered. He assessed me as having some form of obsessive compulsive disorder because I persist in asking questions. 

To clarify; I was not asking the same question over and over and receiving the same answer. If that had been the behaviour he was complaining about I might, just possibly, have agreed with him. 

No this was not the situation that Cr Smart was complaining about. He complained because I continued to ask questions of the shire administration, and much more rarely of councillors, that have never been answered. The shire will not give answers to what should be relatively simple questions.

By not answering questions, and maintaining the wall of silence over a period of years the institution can move to a position where the information is no longer available. This avoids the need to ever provide a reason for irrational and random acts that the community do not understand. Cr Smart claims some fictional statute of limitations on asking questions, suggesting that only current agenda items are relevant. 

He conveniently forgets that the questions I am asking today were first raised in 2007, and then again in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013.......

"Why did the planning officers, CEO, and shire councillors use a figure of 1,000 when the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge Statement of Planning Policy states 500?"

"Which CEO decided to scrap the CSIRO Sustainable Futures Project and did Council endorse this decision?"

"Which CEO decided to scrap the Karridale Concept Plan, how much did the project cost and were there any disciplinary measures taken against the professional planning team who incorrectly used a figure of 1,000 rather than 500?"

"Why did the shire not undertake the letter drop that was intended to inform every resident that planning for Karridale was commencing? Were any planning officers disciplined over this apparent oversight?"

"Why were the Consultation Mechanisms recorded in the Council Minutes not followed? Were there any negative impacts on the professional planning team who failed to comply with Council's consultation schedule?"

However much I suffered distress from the telephone call Cr Smart initiated, and you can be assured that it was most unpleasant, he has since partially answered ALL my questions by explaining that the planning process for Karridale was random.

Honest maybe, but are we all comfortable with paying for a professional team who undertake random acts of planning? 

How does anyone assess their compliance, their performance? 

Where this attack from the elected representative who holds high office might have reduced my resolve to rubble another event during the past week firmed my resolve to continue to seek the truth. 

Tony Benn died. 

He was a great British politician, and much more than that he was a true advocate for the whole of society.The weakest and the most vulnerable found a voice in Tony Benn. Today the obituaries for Tony offer a reminder of the suffragetes struggles, and how they were so often condemned as mad women. Tony placed a memorial to one woman within the House of Commons.

Many years ago I attended a function at Duchy Home Farm where we discussed the organic farming methods that had been introduced by Prince Charles. At the time his innovations attracted much criticism from the media and he was labelled a crank, a mad man who talked to the trees. His strong resistance to the pressure of his detractors almost led to a constitutional crisis, the media whipped up a frenzy of opposition to his ideas. He coped with the animosity, and now the tide has turned, people listen much more readily, are much more open to consider the possibility that our nutrition and health cannot safely be handed to the care of agribusiness corporations. Neither can the care of our environment.

An example from much further back in time might be John Ruskin, architect and thinker. His reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft. When he attempted to publish his ideas as a series of essays under the heading 'Unto This Last', he was neither accepted nor respected. He describes their reception by recording that they were "very violently criticized", The publisher was forced to stop publication after four months. Subscribers sent protest letters. Ruskin countered the attack not by retreat but by publishing the four articles in a book in May 1862.

Ruskin's title 'Unto This Last' is a quotation from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard chosen at a time when Christian values still had meaning for most individuals.

In 1860 the newspapers referred to his writings as “windy hysterics”, “absolute nonsense” and “intolerable twaddle”. But by 1906 seventeen from twenty seven Labour MPs entering Parliament cited that Ruskin's work 'Unto This Last' was the book that had most powerfully influenced them to pursue social justice through politics.

It is easy to be led by the media about what views we should hold. Who's opinion matters and who should be ignored. It is also easy to be led to believe that only professionally qualified , or democratically elected, people have any right to voice an opinion. Ruskin's writings had a resounding impact on the politics of England because wise people listened. Our councillors need to listen, they represent all of us, even the mad woman from Karridale.

When Rachael Carson wrote 'Silent Spring' her research was not universally hailed as an important insight into the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the planet. She was treated as a dangerous woman who was attacking the highly respected agrichemical industries. It took decades of her message being repeated, and many times the question had to be asked 

"Why are they allowing that chemical to be used when they know it is harming health?" 

The question was not asked once, and when no response came Rachael Carson just never asked it again. Our lives would be very different if she had not persisted.

I am certainly not placing myself among the great advocates for change. If I wanted to aspire to such a position I would not have buried myself in a tiny backwater such as Karridale. I've played my part in the big world and the last phase of my life involved a move to Karridale. I moved here to live quietly, peacefully, and to be close to my family now that my cancer is in remission. 

I have everything I want except democracy and social justice.

Unfortunately corruption of our systems of local governance is something that is difficult to ignore. The decisions made by Council, and how those decisions are implemented and executed by the public servants employed by the shire administration, affects us all. 

Do we have corruption here in Augusta-Margaret River Shire? 

You tell me. I can be confident that nobody at the shire will answer that question.

Until we get some honest answers to honest questions none of us will know if we are dealing with the random acts of fools or the clever manipulation by knaves. But my health does not benefit from the antics of either fools or knaves.