WORRIED ABOUT ALLAWUNA? DON'T MISS DAVID TAYLOR'S LATEST ARTICLE ON THE 'OTHER' BLOG!

I’ve just finished reading David Taylor’s article, Mr. Carbone Monoxide—the man who would trash York, on the other blog, the ‘Shire of York official unofficial site’. 

You can find the article at http://shireofyork6302.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/mr-carbone-monoxide-man-who-would-trash.html#comment-form .

It is an astute piece of research and writing that draws heavily on David’s experience in the spheres of local politics and journalism.  If you care about the future of York, and the parlous state of local and parliamentary governance in Western Australia, please read what David has to say about both in relation to the topic of waste disposal in the Avon valley.

What you read may distress you, but it may also inspire you to endorse more creative and sophisticated forms of protest than we have hitherto seen against the use of the Wheatbelt as a repository for metropolitan waste, including toxic waste in the form of packets of blue asbestos.

It may even inspire some of you to engage in such protests and encourage others to have a go.

What David has done is unearth and expose a complex pattern of relationships underlying the proposed Allawuna landfill, perhaps originating in an earlier unsuccessful proposal, launched when Dominic Carbone was Canning’s CEO, to dump the City of Canning’s waste at Grass Valley near Northam.   

Remember Dominic?  He’s the bloke who looks a bit like Chairman Mao smiling as he plans the Great Leap Forward. 

As David reminds us, in 2009 the City of Canning declined to renew Dominic’s contract, alleging in effect that he had misled them regarding the investing of a measly $60m of the City’s money.  He’s now a consultant with connections to WALGA and a favourite with at least one senior employee of the Shire of York.   

The Shire came perilously close to engaging his services for a second time earlier this year during the reign of another of WALGA’s anointed, Commissioner James Best.  The less said about the first time, the better.

Our former MLA, Max Trenorden, led the charge against that earlier proposal.  In this, he was ably assisted by his research and media officer, none other than David Taylor himself.

My last History Channel, published on this blog a fortnight ago, raised several questions about the Allawuna proposal, notably why Western Australian politicians and pundits of every stripe have shown so little interest in SITA’s determination to lob millions of tons of Perth’s junk into York's agricultural zone.

I feel confident in saying that David’s article provides comprehensive, indeed definitive answers to those questions. 

A word of warning, though—read David’s article, and you may never want to vote for Mia Davies again.  Or for anybody else, come to that.

A jarring note

I’m a fan of David’s.  When it comes to investigative journalism, he beats me hands down every time. 

So I’m more than a little upset to have to take issue with his closing remarks in the article I’ve just recommended everyone should read. 

Those remarks refer (without saying so) to a postscript to my recent note of congratulation to Council (Newsflash—Council responds to publication of Pat Hooper’s ‘Minority Report’) for issuing a media release, signed by Shire President David Wallace, apologising to the people of York.   

‘Apologising’ is really too strong a word.  The tone of the media release is more one of reassurance than of apology, but let that pass.

This is what the Shire President had to say:

All Councillors of the Shire of York are aware of the release of the Minority Report and of its significance.

Those in the York community who have also read the report may feel that its content requires a response from Council.

Obviously there are matters raised that may be considered controversial and regrettable in the way that certain events were handled at that time.

It would suggest that Council at that stage did not present a united front in acting for and on behalf of our community.

We as your newly elected Council acknowledge this and now wish to assure our ratepayers and our community that the unfortunate episodes reflected in the Minority Report will not occur in the future.

A couple of days after expressing my congratulations, I added a postscript:

On reflection, and having read readers’ comments, I think I may have missed an important defect in Council’s apology.

The issue was not, as the apology suggests, that the Council of the day didn’t ‘present a united front’.  A Council consists of individuals who are entitled to disagree if that is what conscience tells them to do…

What went wrong here had nothing to do with failing to present a united front…

I had inferred from Council’s media release that what it was apologising for was the failure of a past Council to maintain ‘a united front’ on the issues that had prompted Pat Hooper’s ‘report’.  From that, I deduced a principle seeming to motivate the apology, namely, that councillors should in the interests of their community pretend to be at one when in fact they are divided on this issue or that.

Logic, it has been said, is the art of going wrong with confidence.  I was wrong to read into the apology an implication that isn’t really there, if that is in fact what I did.

It was reasonable for David to point out my error, if such it was, though why he should do so as the conclusion of an article covering at considerable length a completely different topic isn’t easy to understand.  His correction reads like something quite extraneous to the theme of his article, tacked on at a friend’s request.

I’m still not sure I was wrong, though I’m always happy to have my mistakes pointed out to me.  But I was sorry to discern a ripple of petulance in David’s final sentence, where he writes:

If I where [sic] the Shire of York Council, I would forget trying to do the right thing by communicating a sincere regret to the public, and let everyone wallow in the luxurious lack of transparency and no appropriate communication of the past.

No, David, you’d do nothing of the kind.   You would behave fairly and honourably, according to your disposition and custom.  I’m sure you’d never want to ‘forget trying to do the right thing’.  So who could have put that silly idea into your head?

Dominic Carbone

POSTSCRIPT:  People are ringing me up to tell me that Mr. Carbone is still on the Shire payroll.  Surely that can’t be true?  If it is true, how much are we paying him, and what for?

POSTPOSTSCRIPT: It's scarcely credible, but it seems our new councillors are going meekly down the same primrose path as some of their predecessors by rejecting the idea of open, honest and accountable government in favour of secrecy and confidentiality (which is just another name for secrecy when all's said and done).

This afternoon I received word that councillors are upset with the blog because people are using it to ask questions about the selection process for the new CEO.

Why shouldn’t details of the selection process be public knowledge?  (Nobody has asked to see details of the applications.)

Nor can I see why the reasons for using WALGA instead of a recruitment agency independent of the WA local government circus shouldn’t make it into the public domain.

As much as anyone, I’ve been keen to give the new council a fair go, to the point where one disgruntled individual accused me of being ‘besotted’ with it.

Let me make one thing abundantly clear—I’m not and will never be a mouthpiece for this or any other council or any member of council.  I leave that sort of thing to YDCM, which gets paid for doing it.

I called this blog The REAL Voice of York not because I have illusions about my ability to represent with full scope and accuracy the concerns of York people but because it was my ambition from the start to provide a forum for their opinions, whether in agreement with or hostile to mine. 

Open debate, together with open government, is the lifeblood of democracy.  It makes concealment, connivance, collusion and corruption just that bit harder to achieve for the political and bureaucratic narcissists who seek to benefit from them.

Nobody can say that I’ve strayed very far from my original intention for the blog.  I’ve given plenty of space—some say too much—to the inane witterings of an intellectually underperforming demographic.  Censorship does not come easily to me.

It’s not by arrangement that the great majority of those who post comments on the blog display an outlook on most issues that is similar to mine.  I would say that simply reflects the intelligence of the blog’s readers and their commitment to democratic values.

Why are councillors getting stroppy about the blog’s refusal to abandon the principle enshrined in its masthead, that there is no place for secrecy in local government—and precious little place for secrecy in government at any level?

You’ll have to ask them.  A couple of them you wouldn’t need to ask—they’re only on council at the behest and to do the bidding of the old guard and its hangers-on.  They wouldn’t know if ‘open government’ is a man or a horse.

It’s more difficult to understand why certain others seem to be going down the same road.  The best explanation I can think of is drawn from my experience of high school.  Remember the cosy feeling of being a member of a gang or part of the in-crowd—of being in the know, with access to secrets from which lesser mortals were excluded? 

Add to that some assiduous bureaucratic duchessing and a pinch of self-interest, and everything starts to make a peculiar kind of sense.

One councillor has even suggested that certain information was ‘leaked’ to the blog by my friend Roma Paton.  No, it wasn’t.  I have many sources, some of them surprising.  Having participated in selection panels from time to time, I also have background knowledge about how such processes tend to work.

Another councillor—yes, I think that’s who it was—posted a comment accusing Ms Paton of being ‘short on facts’.  My response to that, apart from exonerating Ms Paton from the implicit accusation, is that nobody would be ‘short on facts’ if councillors kept us properly informed.  It’s our money they’re spending.

Finally, I’m sad to say that on certain issues the new council has already been weighed in the balance and found wanting.  The issues I have in mind relate to Ashworth Road and to former president Reid’s application for reimbursement of legal fees.  I’ll have more to say about the latter in a few days’ time.