NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

Incorporating Fair Comment on Matters of Public Interest

Lies, damned lies—and DLGC annual reports

As we all know, there is more than one way of deceiving our fellow human beings.  The most obvious is telling an outright lie.

This is the kind of deception most easily recognised as morally reprehensible and deserving of public censure.  It is a favourite of politicians in trouble, and sometimes turns on questions of definition. Everyone remembers Bill Clinton’s ‘I did not have sex with that woman’, implying that the act he engaged in with the young woman in question wasn’t the same as having sex, which may have come as a surprise both to her and to Mrs Clinton.

The other kind of deception may offer a bit more scope for subtlety, and is popular not only with politicians but also with government bureaucrats and chief executives of corporations.  Instead of telling lies, you simply conceal the truth. 

If you’re lucky, it will remain concealed forever.  If some horrid busybody digs it up, the trick is to say you don’t remember anything about it.  If push comes to shove, you blame the victim or victims for whatever it was that went wrong, or if that’s not possible, somebody lower down the corporate ladder than you.

For many centuries, lawyers have distinguished between lying (suggestio falsi) and concealing the truth (suppressio veri).  I believe the distinction was first clearly drawn by the mediaeval theologian St Thomas Aquinas in his writings on ethics and canon (ecclesiastical) law.  

The Angelic Doctor, as Thomas was known, seems to have thought suppressing truth slightly less odious than telling a lie.  Common law and common sense, on the other hand, have tended to regard both activities as being on much the same plane of moral turpitude.

DLGC Annual Report 2014/15

What triggered these musings was the Annual Report for 2014/2015 of the WA Department of Local Government and Communities.  It was published late last year.  You can find a link to the report by googling the department’s website.

(I’d give you the link directly, but it doesn’t want to work, not from my computer anyway.)

Undeniably, the report is a very handsome document.  In keeping with the department’s multicultural commitment and responsibilities, it is brightly illustrated with photographs featuring happy citizens, of diverse ages and ethnicities, making joyful use of the copious bounties allegedly dispensed by the department to the citizens of WA.

For a while, I was reading quite happily and began to wonder if I had got the department’s panjandrums—Jenny, Jenni, Brad, Bigfoot, Andrew and the rest—all wrong.  Were they in fact good people after all?  I even found myself having second thoughts about Minister Tony Simpson.  Could he really be as incompetent, stupid and vindictive as I had uncharitably represented him as being to readers of the blog?

Then I reached page 45, and quickly realised that if anything I have from the beginning treated those worthies, including the minister, far too kindly.

That page and the next provide a potted version of the department’s intervention in the affairs of the Shire of York during the period the report covers.  As you might expect, it is couched in soporific bureaucratic language designed to shackle disagreement by stifling thought. 

It begins with an outright lie, namely, that the department’s decision in 2014 to monitor council meetings and conduct a ‘probity compliance audit’ was ‘a result of a number of complaints from the public’.  No, it wasn’t. 

During the Hooper-Boyle-Hooper years, the department ignored hundreds of complaints from members of the public that should have prompted a probity compliance audit—and didn’t.  Complaints from members of the general public in York don’t seem to have cut much ice with the DLGC. 

In this instance, the department clearly acted on the basis of complaints coming variously in the form of letters, emails and phone calls from CEO Ray Hooper and his successor Michael Keeble, at least two Shire of York senior employees (go on, guess who) and our old friends councillors Hooper, Boyle and Duperouzel. 

All were terrified that a popular new Shire President, Matthew Reid, was going to fulfil his promise to bring open, honest and accountable governance to the Shire of York.

A major topic of concern was Matthew’s determination to clear up controversy over the use of the CEO’s corporate credit card.  That seems to have caused Ray Hooper palpitations of dismay, to the point that he went so far as to write to the FOI Commissioner (of all people) wanting to know if there was any way to stop people asking questions about it. 

That has always puzzled me.  If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should it bother you that people are asking questions about some aspect of your conduct?  Surely most of us would welcome such questions, because they would give us the chance to demonstrate how squeaky clean we are and how deserving of public trust.

Inexplicably, CEO Hooper, his senior underlings and his ‘acolytes’ on council saw matters differently.  For the present, we can only guess why.

The Fitz Gerald Report

Another topic of concern to CEO Hooper and his underlings and acolytes was the enquiry into his stewardship of the shire that led to the submission of the Fitz Gerald Report. 

As we all know, three councillors, acting on the advice of ex-CEO Hooper as he had by that time become, met for the specific purpose of suppressing that report, which promptly found its way online into the public domain, where it belongs and remains.   

Minister Simpson publicly accused Matthew Reid of releasing the Fitz Gerald Report to the public.  He didn’t.  I’m pretty sure I know who did, but I’m not saying.

Give us the money, Minister

Where the department’s Annual Report really hits its straps is in its brief account of the Minister’s appointment of James Best, ‘an experienced local government mayor’, as commissioner to act in place of council while the latter was suspended. 

Here, the department glides nimbly from suggestio falsi across to suppressio veri.  There is so much it should have said about the calamitous reign of Commissioner Best over York, but there’s none of it in the report, and most obviously, no ministerial apology, though heaven knows we deserve one.

The minister and his advisers are very well aware that James Best’s sojourn in York was, for us but by no means for Mr. Best, a disaster from start to finish.  No less aware of this are Premier Colin Barnett—for what that’s worth—and Mia Davies MLA and Paul Brown MLC, which is worth nothing at all. 

Together with his dozy sidekick Acting CEO Graeme ‘Gollum’ Simpson, Best managed to alienate almost everyone in town with his ‘visioning’ nonsense, false promises, terminological inexactitudes and furious self-promotion.   I say ‘almost everyone’, because…well, you know why, you can fill in the gap for yourselves.

So far as I’m concerned, Minister Simpson owes the Shire of York getting on for a million dollars, made up of $625,000 for the purchase of Chalkies, whatever we had to pay Commissioner Best by way of salary and expenses, about $50,000 for his additional ‘consultancy fees’ and the balance as compensation for pain and suffering caused by having to put up with Mr. Best’s arrogance and mendacity.

And to those who are busily wriggling out of the woodwork to condemn me for being negative and raking over the past:  in my last article, I invited you to post on the blog your positive suggestions as to what we should do to revitalise York.  A few faithful readers did do that, and I thank them, but from the dark side—NOTHING, not even from the Capital Screamer. 

I can’t tell you how bitterly disappointed I am.  But I’m not at all surprised.

Shire workers bring down the Great Wall of Bayly Road

For some time, the street boundary of a property in Bayly Road has sported a giant concrete erection known to locals as ‘The Great Wall’.

It was said to be the only construction in York visible from the moon.

The person who built this remarkable edifice was Mr. Steve Cochrane, who with his wife Tyhscha owns the property in question.

The story goes that Mr. Cochrane’s reason for building the wall was to minimise flooding on to his property, which is situated on the lower side of the road.

Some mean individuals put it about that the Great Wall was an illegal construction for which Shire permission was neither sought nor given.  It was even suggested that nobody dared do anything about it because of Mrs Cochrane’s position as a senior Shire employee.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cochrane was so delighted with his handiwork that after recent heavy rains he started to build a similar structure across the gateway of a property on the other side of the road.  Apparently this was intended as a friendly surprise for his neighbours.

Unfortunately, the owners of that property didn’t see the advantage of having a gateway they couldn’t drive their cars through and complained to the police.   Mr. Cochrane’s second wall was speedily dismantled.

This week, visitors to Bayly Road were shocked to see the Great Wall lying in ruins.  Rumours that this act of wanton destruction was carried out by agents of ISIS were soon replaced with the truth, that the persons responsible were members of the Shire’s workforce acting under orders from above.

Residents are asking if this means that Mrs Cochrane’s power as deputy CEO is on the wane.  ‘Nobody dared say boo to her while Ray Hooper and Graeme Simpson were in charge here’, one usually reliable Shire source told me. 

‘The bloke we’ve got at the moment is a different kettle of fish.  Blubbering doesn’t move him, and if somebody shouts at him, he simply takes no notice.  If the new CEO is like him, I can’t see Tyhscha hanging around for long.’