A Systems Approach

Now we know that the shire had a systems failure that allowed James Trail to spend $170,000 without authorisation. We know Gary Evershed did not notice the $170,000 back in 2008 when he was paid to undertake his well publicised due diligence.

What does this mean for us - as citizens and ratepayers?

That we have a shire administration system that doesn't have the necessary checks and balances? That we have a sloppy culture that means compliance with rules isn't necessary? Our councillors are asleep on the job? Councillors signed off on the accounts every month, including  Smart and Middleton.

If the rules are not complied with then we do not have due process, and that is a violation of democracy.

Secrets revealed now have no magic power, they cannot alter history. Revelations can illuminate but shining a light onto something rotten does nothing to restore and revive fabric that is putrid. When something as serious as a failed and corrupt democracy is exposed then it will never be an adequate response to merely blame the perpetrators. Yes, we can identify those whose behaviours fell below the acceptable standard for a civilised society, but we must also question how such people came to be leaders and why they were allowed to continue representing citizens living within a supposed democracy for so long.

None of us can avoid the effects of government corruption; its cancer affects us all. Our individual lives may appear to be humdrum existences remote from those who administer the rules of civic society, but the webs of deceit surrounding systems of government will snare us all. We need to understand that we are living within systems that are inextricably linked and from which we cannot escape. However enchanting the idea of living as free spirits detached from outside influences we are all in fact systems people. Like it or not we have no choice.

The sun rises at dawn to wake us because we live on a planet that is part of the solar system. Our children go to schools that are governed by rules that define the education system. The health of the nation is the concern of another system. We travel on road and rail networks designed by those who govern where and when a transport system is provided and maintained. As a driver we can only legally use the roads if both we and our vehicle participate in a government licensing system. Agriculture is controlled by means of a whole bundle of systems governing every aspect, from animal welfare systems to systems that allow the licensing of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, and systems that allocate quotas for the crops that farmers are allowed to plant. Food is delivered to the shops by means of production, packaging and distribution systems.

We need some of these systems to curb the chaos that could eventuate if we all tried to live as free spirits exercising unfettered free will. In our individual lives we develop informal systems that make for smooth running of the routine functions of everyday life.

Systems surround us and we need to understand that every man made system needs continuous monitoring, ongoing attention to ensure it functions as intended as it encounters changes in the world around it.

When we use a systems approach to examine a problem we identify the impact of each link in a system, how it affects other links, examining the interconnectedness of everything. To do this efficiently we need an audit trail.

Our local government is an administration system, and if everyone operating within the system follows each process step-by-step there will be a clear audit trail. This audit trail offers transparency and openness, it demonstrates that due process was followed, and the system operated correctly or incorrectly. By having the audit trail, and reviewing the content, we can implement improvements when something does go awry. When we have no record of why decisions were made and who made them our democracy is at risk.

When we undertake a systems review we have to constantly feed-back and feed-forward our information, adjusting assessments of risk of failure as we methodically examine the chain, testing all the links. No system can ever be failsafe, but risks can be minimised if we recognise where the weaknesses are. Recognition of a potential point of failure offers us an opportunity to consider how probable that failure is and the importance of any subsequent impact, and we can then develop and implement improvements. Ignoring weaknesses potentially allows a single point of failure to cause an entire system to fail

Citizens could, and should, involve themselves by checking the actions of their local government comply with both the letter and the spirit of every democratically determined policy and procedure. But how many citizens will ever do this? How many are truly vigilant protecting their precious democracy and freedom?

All too often we imagine that our freedom is threatened by strangers; and the media controlled by corporate Australia promotes such views. It is more comfortable for the corporations and the politicians if the Commons believe that stopping the migrant hoards and repelling the terrorist threats will ensure our freedom is safe.

But if we read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Universal Declaration on Democracy we will understand that our forefathers did not come together after a second world war to draw up an agreement on how we could isolate each nation. Such a significant agreement on human rights was drawn up by a generation of people who had just survived a world war. Some had fought in two world wars with only two decades of peace between conflicts. They knew about Hitler, understood how the charisma of one man and a small group of his followers converted decent German citizens into Nazi thugs.

For individuals to enjoy freedom they must live under systems of government that are free from corruption, systems that serve the people, the Commons. Government must place humanity and the good of the people before the institutions created to serve man.

We ignore the monitoring of our systems of government at our peril. The lessons from history are there, and they are harsh. All levels of government, federal, state and local must be free from corruption if democracy is to prevail.

Many listening to Minister Simpson’s comment that there is no scrutiny in local government may judge it to be a mere trifle, a bureaucratic oversight, nothing too concerning, but it is concerning and it is serious. In 1995 the State shifted many functions of government previously scrutinized by our elected members of Parliament to the new local government institutions created by the Local Government Act. Other matters associated with large budgets of public monies were placed in the care of statutory authorities, institutions beyond Parliamentary oversight, such as Tourism WA and the regional development commissions.

This process left democracy dangerously unprotected in ways that those men and women who lived through WWII would never have allowed. This speech from the late Hon Andrew Mensaros makes clear his view regarding the enduring nature of democracy’s need for checks and balances;

‘A certain feeling of pride was evident on the Government side last week when our young, enthusiastic and quite talented friend the member for Victoria Park very proudly included in his Address-in-Reply speech a reference to the fact that the Government had introduced 27 new statutory authorities during its time in office. I wish he had the insight of experience as I do and could have heard his predecessor, who sat where the member for Mt Lawley sits, scolding the Brand Government for introducing too many new statutory authorities. I refer to Hon. Ron Davies. For good measure at the time he said that the creation of statutory authorities went against the democratic philosophy,...

... All these steps reduce the accountability of Government. The result is that we lose some of the merits of our representative democracy. It is these changes which create the public perception of corruption. Not only that, but also ultimately the changes create corruption itself. No society is more corrupt than the one where there are insufficient checks and balances of the sort we have in this Parliament. As a grown man, a practising solicitor, I experienced the last days of Nazi Germany and I experienced then the graft which was to be found at virtually all levels of society. The same thing is repeated under Communist rule. Traditionally Parliament is the true and absolute check and balance. The more activities one removes from parliamentary scrutiny the nearer one approaches a dictatorship. Many small signs are worthwhile indications of the Government's embarking upon what I call contempt of Parliament. 

What Mensaros was observing as small signs of contempt were red flags warning of the systematic reduction in the checks and balances of the system of government. Democracy was being eroded to the detriment of the Commons.

At a local government level the loss of due process over matters of civic importance is a loss of democracy; it is not a trivial matter it is contempt of the Commons. A democracy that removes the right to determine how we develop the culture of our community, is not a democracy at all. Without self-determination there is no freedom.

Mensaros saw the signs and predicted problems. He was wise, what he was observing was the people of WA being robbed by their own State government. Tax payers’ money funded the lifestyle of Brian Burke and his cronies.

Eventually the Royal Commission that came to be known as the WA Inc Inquiry revealed there was no adequate systems review, the government had arranged the financial affairs of state so the routine checks and balances of good governance were absent. The Commissioners recommended significant changes in the systems of government as a matter of urgency. They recognised that a repeat of this failure was possible without systems changes. Sadly the changes to tighten controls and introduce the scrutiny that was so clearly necessary just didn’t happen.

The public had barely come to terms with WA Inc when the investigations into Wanneroo Inc commenced. A change of government from Labor to Liberal-National meant the Wanneroo inquiry was never satisfactorily concluded. The Kyle Report opened a small window onto the corruption within Wanneroo City Council, but Commissioner Kyle was then blocked from continuing his examination by political intervention, and an altogether less rigorous process closed the matter down.

In both WA Inc and Wanneroo Inc there appears to have been an acknowledgement that there was something rotten in government, first at state level then at local level, but neither inquiry led to anything that might deal with the malignancy that remained. WA government needed more than just the removal of the primary malignant cells it needed the removal of all the second and third tiers of government officials who had colluded and assisted the wrong doing. It needed a much more radical approach.

When the commissioners reported on WA Inc they wrote;

‘The matters upon which we have reported reveal serious weaknesses and deficiencies in our system of government’.

The newly elected Liberal-National government, led by Richard Court, refused to acknowledge that there were systems failures, claiming instead that;

‘... that the problems in the 1980s in Western Australia were simply the fault of bad people, rather than any failing of the political system.’

This response was astounding, suggesting no respect for the processes of democratic government. Relying on a subjective judgement of what constitutes good and bad people is just not an appropriate way to defend the democratic rights of the Commons.

Hitler could not have done what he did without others to help him, neither could Burke. Removing the key players, what might be viewed as the primary cancer, is never enough. After World War II the heads of all nations came together to create a new paradigm for world governments, because they knew the old systems just did not protect citizens from psychopathic leaders. Post WWII leaders formed the United Nations and offered world agreements on human rights, then they offered the world democracy.

This is not the place to argue about whether what they did was right, or about whether something other than democracy might be better. Democracy is what we have, and on paper it doesn't look too bad an option. But do we cherish it? Do we actually support it and protect it? Or do we just pay lip service to democracy, and only vote if we are forced to, wriggling out of our responsibility as citizens whenever possible?

Why would citizens not cherish democracy? Why, when so many of the persecuted people in the world are craving a chance to enter a polling booth would many Australians prefer to go to the beach? Many believe that whatever they do nothing will change, but they are wrong. Step back from your responsibilities as a citizen in a democratic country and corruption will fill the void. Voting without thinking is not respecting democracy. Blindly following the rhetoric published by career politicians and public officials promoting a particular ideology without critically reviewing how their results match their words, is not supporting democracy. Voting for a councillor without knowing what his cultural values and manifesto are, and without holding him to account for his post-election performance, is not respecting democracy.

Maybe it does sound difficult, maybe democracy takes a bit of effort, but consider the alternatives and we quickly realise that it's probably the best we've got for now.

'Politicians are all the same, so what does it matter how I vote?'

That's often said, and probably does have a grain of truth because the way WA does politics is tough and unpleasant, so of course the psychopaths rule the playground they call State Parliament.

Big promises are made before elections and then strategies and directions change. Not much that an ordinary citizen can influence there, except ask questions, and demand answers.

But what of our local government?

Can we have any influence over the systems of government at the local level? We are entitled to have democracy within our system of local government; indeed we must have democracy at grassroots level, because that is where it impacts us most, decisions affecting our homes, our families, our neighbourhoods.

Local democracy is a right, but do we have it?

We might all prefer to go to the beach and let the law deal with government corruption, pay for some more lawyers and legislate away the potential for fools to encourage knaves to corrupt democracy and remove our rights. But this can never happen, legislation can never protect democracy. Once we delegate responsibility for oversight to any group we need to then be concerned about who oversees the overseers, and so it goes on.

The only sensible way for citizens to challenge corruption is to use a grassroots approach. Nobody has to get involved in everything, every council decision, but if everyone fully engaged with decisions affecting their own neighbourhood, and shared the information so that others could see patterns of behaviour, to recognise system failures, we could begin to see improvements.

A systems approach to any review can begin as a top-down or bottom-up exercise, or for the very best results we might use a combination of both. When concerns were initially raised over the planning for Karridale there was no reason for us to think we were being lied to by the shire. As the review of the strategic planning continued using both a feed-back and feed-forward approach our perspective had to change. The signs that something was wrong can be subtle, and will usually be experienced as a slow dawning rather than a blinding flash. As the review progressed new pieces of information, and new connections to other information we had, were checked against what had already been understood. New information can profoundly affect interpretation of prior knowledge. Inconsistencies in the detailed information being provided might require us to look at the top of the organisation, not only to examine the culture but to see whether cronies are colluding.

For example, before we knew that the CEO, the Planning Director, and the Property Developer were old mates from their student days we accepted an explanation that false information favouring the developer was merely an officer level oversight by the planning department. After we knew they were cronies the explanation provided was accepted less readily.

Systems reviews never confine themselves to isolated events because we need to understand patterns of behaviour before we can gauge the probability that we have identified a weakness or failure. However good a system of local government administration is in principle compliance with the policies and procedures determine how well it will serve democracy. Compliance depends on both individual personality traits and corporate culture. The man at the top determines the culture.