We do need change

Just to clarify, a previous post on adjusting reality to fit a brand image was never intended to express an opinion that change is bad, or that change is impossible. Any of us can change reality if we are determined enough.

Changing reality is neither good nor evil, it is inevitable but how change occurs, the process by which we make the decisions that lead to the directions and manner of change, is the issue.

All life is change whether we are considering the individual cell in our bodies, ourselves as people, our families as a group, or our community, nation or the international community we are part of and will be affected by. Constant change is here to stay.

As individuals we can certainly have the cosmetic surgery, learn to speak another language, adopt the mannerisms and style of another culture, change our name, and consider ourselves reinvented. We can do all those things relatively quickly, but psychologists know that such significant change will require psychological adjustment, and that cannot occur in a short time scale.

We can also change the look and culture of our shire, adjust the focus of our commercial activities from agriculture to art, favour the out of town corporate developer over the resident land owners throughout the shire, stop the development of off-the-grid independent living in favour of developer designed clustered housing, retrospectively alter the purpose of dwellings from residential to holiday accommodation. Of course we can make all those sweeping changes, and more besides, and the changes can be quick if we spend enough money. But there will be a price to pay, and we must understand the risks.

Can such sweeping, shire wide, changes be implemented both legally and speedily?

Is it unlikely that the majority of the individual residents within a whole community will decide en masse that they all want to adopt an entirely new style of living?

Do you think it is likely that large numbers of residents approached their councillors and demanded change?

It doesn't seem likely that such a groundswell of opinion was seeking to change in 2004 when the CSIRO visited this shire to undertake the "Sustainable Futures" research. There was no mass desire for a cultural paradigm shift evident in the CSIRO report when a recommendation from the community was recorded stating that;

“The shire administration should lobby parliament to amend the voting rules for local elections so that absentee owners and corporate property investors could not vote in local elections for AMRSC.”

The residents could see what was happening, they could see the influence of the Fremantle set and they did not believe that the spirit of democracy was being served here in Augusta Margaret River.

Wealthy people had made a law that gave property owners, the direct ratepayers, the opportunity to vote wherever they pay rates. If a man owns, say 500 corporations and each of those separate legal entities owns a single house in this shire he can have control over 500 votes in this shire while continuing to live in Fremantle, Hong Kong, or Geneva.

To many people this would sound ridiculous, how could anyone have so many corporations? But a proliferation of corporations is an essential ingredient for the busy entrepreneur. In the reports when the Bottom-of-the-Harbour scams involving, Denis B Horgan, Leeuwin Estate, were reported it was said that one innocent dupe who was used merely to provide an arm's length relationship from a tax dodge was director of 309 companies. When Alan Bond declared bankruptcy his complex web consisting of hundreds, probably over a thousand, different corporations and subsidiary holdings that spanned the globe and were able to shift funds in ways that defeated the authorities hoping to recover the monies stolen from individual investors.

It's too complicated for most of us to unravel, but unless we do grasp the fundamentals of corrupt business we will never understand how easily a decent community can be asset stripped.

Step one - make laws that give corporations voting rights equal to residents but allow total anonymity for the corporations, thereby making it impossible for anyone to know how many votes one corporate player might hold.

Step two use whatever means are necessary to achieve a pro-development Council, obviously step one gave a head start here.

(Some manipulation is illegal, some is not. The methods used in Busselton, Cockburn, and other shires involved lobbyist activities conducted via pseudo community groups that were set up for the purpose. Initiatives ranged from ensuring campaign donations were offered in slices of $199, under the reporting limit, hiding donations by means of false invoices provided by a fishing company, collecting voting papers from residents homes, some had been completed some hadn't and offering to deliver and/or complete the voting papers on behalf of the resident, sending persuasive marketing material to absentee owners who might otherwise not have bothered to vote, and many more besides, some legal many illegal, but none were actions intended to serve democracy.)

Step three use consultants to undertake surveys and ensure that all questionnaires relating to shire matters, and planning notices advising of proposed changes are only sent to direct ratepayers, not tenants. Involve companies such as "CreatingCommunities", this agency has been given an unsolicited testimonial by Brian Burke and Julien Grill. Creating Communities are able to manipulate surveys and submissions to achieve any result required. Looking to see why that short stretch of Archibald Road was completed before the petrol station was approved I noticed the shire was relying on a report from Syme Marmion, referencing data from another report by Riley Consulting. Riley consulting are interesting, very talented groups of specialists indeed, but not local and not accountable for anything that affects us because we did not have any contract with them.

Step four stop holding general community consultation meetings. When the planning for Karridale commenced in 2007 there were two meetings and they attracted 60 and 100 plus interested residents, the shire refused to conduct such events in subsequent years adopting a policy of only meeting individuals for one-on-one meetings.

It really is that easy. The question being raised here is whether we all understand the principles of democracy and the process through which change should occur in democratic societies, by the will of the people. I believe "the will of the people" was intended to be the will of residents, not absentee property investors.

Councillors are elected to make decisions that reflect the needs and aspirations of the people they represent, even when what the majority of people want is not what they, the elected representative, personally wants. They are not elected to represent those who lobby hardest. Democracy could never work if that was the case because professional lobbyists will always have more time, resources, and capacity to persuade than the rank and file of working people.

Read again the words of Brian Burke and Julien Grill discussing "Creating Communities" and how they operate, think about the level of independence the CSIRO social scientists bring to their work, and make up your own mind about who you feel most comfortable believing. Any report, or any blog, is just words, the author can be right or wrong, well intentioned or malignant, it is always up to the reader to exercise their critical faculties as they read. 

If this all seems too dour then watch Rory S again and consider a shift of perspective!

Life Lessons from an Ad Man