SO, WHO ARE THE ‘STAKEHOLDERS’?

‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less’.

‘The question is’, said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things’.

‘The question is’, said Humpty Dumpty, ‘who is to be master—that’s all’.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Ch.6

What is a’ stakeholder’?

As every gambler knows, a ‘stake’ is the money or other consideration put up as a wager, or bet, that a hypothetical event is going to take place, like a fancied nag winning the Melbourne Cup, a favoured candidate being elected to political office, or a councillor’s friends getting permission to build an oversized shed.   

It also means a post stuck in the ground.   That’s no coincidence.  Centuries ago, gamblers would place their wagers on such a post, and in time, a wager came to be known as a ‘stake’.

Later, in the 18^th century, the word extended its meaning to include having an interest of almost any kind in any situation involving some degree of uncertainty or risk. 

From the earliest days, it was customary for an independent person, one who wasn’t betting, to hold money or goods staked by gamblers, in trust (so to speak) for the eventual winner of the bet.   That person, predictably, became known as a ‘stakeholder’.

A stakeholder had no interest in the result of the wager other than a duty to hand over the amount staked to the winning party (or parties, where multiple stakes were involved).

That is what ‘stakeholder’ meant until the end of the 20^th century.  My 1982 Macquarie Dictionary simply defines the word as ‘the holder of the stakes of a wager’. 

I presume ‘stakeholder’ still has that meaning, but in recent years the word has been hijacked by the corporate world.   In the hands of government bureaucrats and their equivalents in industry and commerce, it has acquired a further meaning, namely, a person who has a direct interest of any kind in the outcome of a given situation. 

That meaning contradicts the original meaning, which applied as I’ve said to somebody who had no such interest but was essentially neutral regarding any such outcome.

Confusion

We live in a time of much linguistic confusion.  Fine distinctions in the meanings of words are being recklessly discarded in favour of bureaucratic distortions and the vagaries of everyday speech. 

No doubt influenced by the prevailing climate of political correctness—no variety of English is superior to any other, every ‘text’ ranks as literature and ‘all must have prizes’—even professional lexicographers now act on the principle that paths of grammatical and semantic usage should always be laid where most people walk.  

What does it matter, they say, if speakers and writers use ‘infer’ to mean ‘imply’, ‘affect’ to mean ‘effect’, ‘less’ to mean ‘fewer’ and ‘stakeholder’ to mean something close to the opposite of its traditional meaning?

It matters because in every such instance, a semantic distinction is lost, with a corresponding loss of linguistic precision.  Take the case of ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, which signify a distinction between ‘uncountable’ (abstract or generic) and ‘countable’ (concrete) nouns—hence less bread, fewer loaves; less money, fewer banknotes; less disputation, fewer arguments; less propagation, fewer plants; less government, fewer taxes, and so on.   These days ‘less’ is busily driving ‘fewer’ out of currency, and our language is the poorer for the loss.

I suppose that for those who use language as often to obscure as to clarify, or simply to make an impressive noise, linguistic precision is hardly going to be a paramount consideration.

Who ‘holds a stake’ in the YRCC?

Those pedantic reflections—as I suspect most readers will think them—have been prompted by an exchange of emails between Suzie Haslehurst, the Shire’s Executive Manager of Corporate and Community Services, and me concerning a ‘workshop’ (don’t get me started on that one) to be held for ‘stakeholders’ in the YRCC.

Suzie uses the word ‘stakeholders’ in its bureaucratic sense, to mean persons having a direct interest in the future of the project.   Having made my protest, in that respect I will follow her lead.

 Referring to an earlier email, I wrote to ask her what she meant in this instance by ‘stakeholders’.  I wanted to know whether the term included ratepayers in general, or was restricted to representatives of sporting clubs ‘and perhaps habitual users of the tavern’.

I added that in my view, ‘every one of York’s ratepayers, without exception, has a considerable “stake” in the future of the YRCC’.

In her reply, Suzie agreed that every York ratepayer has an interest in the future of the YRCC.  That, she said, ‘is why the engagement process included the option for public submissions to give everyone in the community an opportunity to provide input’.

She continued: 

In light of the fact that the operational model and ‘user pays’ principle were key themes in the submissions, [Council] determined that the stakeholders for the purposes of the workshop are the users resident at the YRCC.  These include the sporting clubs and event holders that utilise the YRCC on a regular basis and whose members may be actively involved in the implementation of the future management model(s) being explored. We will also be discussing with the users the fees and charges for the use of the facilities at the YRCC as part of this workshop.

To which, after thanking Suzie for her email, I responded as follows:

Without wishing to carp, I have to question the logic of your second paragraph.  The fact that the 'user pays' principle was a key theme in community submissions is no reason to exclude the wider community from participation in the workshops.  To the contrary, community members who support that principle need to be present to ensure that the people you have identified as stakeholders - who would seem very unlikely to favour full application of the principle - are not able unchecked to restrict its application to the issues under discussion.

I think there is widespread community support for the proposition that 'user pays' should apply not only to fees and charges but also to such aspects of maintenance and asset renewal as caring for and when necessary replacing the surfaces of courts and greens.  Is it likely that members of relevant sporting clubs would agree to that?  I doubt it.

What Council has decided regarding workshop participation is tantamount to stacking the process in favour of people who have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo so far as the funding of their activities is concerned.  That is a disappointing manoeuvre, redolent of the Shire's dismal past.  I'm certain it won't go unnoticed and unremarked.

I forgot to add that the arrangement Council decided on gave ‘stakeholders’, i.e. ‘users resident at the YRCC’, two bites of the cherry while the rest of us got only one.  They had the same opportunity to provide submissions as us common or garden ratepayers, but none of us was invited to take part in the workshop held last Thursday.  That was unfair.

What happened at the workshop?

Obviously, I don’t know much about that, because I wasn’t there.  But from the little I’ve managed to glean from rumour and report, it appears that my worst fears were realised.  For the most part, the ‘stakeholders’ present—mainly representatives of sporting clubs—showed little or no enthusiasm for the ‘user pays’ principle or the idea that they should take over responsibility for managing the centre, the option they had gathered to discuss.

I understand that all councillors attended except Cr Randell.  Others present, apart from Suzie Haslehurst, included the irrepressible former shire president Pat Hooper and former councillor Brian Lawrance, each of whom played no small part in the establishment of the YRCC.

An unsigned list of questions (see below) circulated at the workshop may provide a useful guide to the mood of participants. 

It reveals anxiety over the prospect of stakeholders having to manage and fund their own leisure activities as well as a contemptuous disregard for the interests of the majority of ratepayers who have had to shoulder the burden of paying for the centre at no discernible benefit to themselves.

It also reflects the naïve view that the centre is an asset that has the capacity in and of itself to attract business and population to York.  As I’ve pointed out several times in the past, that’s putting the cart before the horse.  Families move to take advantage of economic opportunities like jobs, not in search of sporting facilities. 

The YRCC has been in operation for several years. During those years, York’s population has at best stagnated, at worst declined, despite the existence of what the anonymous questioner describes as ‘state of the art resources’ incorporated in the centre. 

It’s worth reminding the clubs that York possessed a reasonably vibrant sporting culture before they fell into the trap of giving up their premises and independence in response to the blandishments of former CEO Ray Hooper, former shire president Pat Hooper, former councillor Brian Lawrance and other members of the council of the day.

What happened was sad, not to say disgraceful, but the clubs shouldn’t expect the generality of ratepayers to subsidise the result of their folly.   If they’d followed the wise example of the Croquet Club, which voted to retain its independence by staying put, they wouldn’t be holed up in their present predicament.

Discussion

I have no information about the discussion that took place in the workshop, but I’ll hazard a guess that it included some reference to the privileged position of the Hockey Club and to how the Shire swindled the Tennis Club out of a million dollars when it persuaded the club to migrate from its former premises.

And chances are that at least one of the clubs would have mentioned the trouble they would have in fundraising and in finding volunteers to work in the tavern bar.

My impression is that our councillors find themselves in a quandary. 

On the one hand, they seem to favour the proposition that the clubs should form an association to take over the management of the YRCC, including the restaurant and bar. 

On the other hand, they feel some sympathy with the clubs, as we probably all do (though in our case at any rate, perhaps not with the absurd sense of entitlement by which the clubs seem to be animated if the questions circulated at the workshop are anything to go by).

Presumably, the Shire will tell us in due course, or as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, in the fullness of time and at the appropriate juncture, exactly what did happen at the workshop, what was actually said and who said it.

More to the point, it might reveal what action will flow from decisions made by Council in the light of what participants had to say about the option(s) presented to them.

One thing I’m certain of—no decision will emerge for at least a year, perhaps longer.   So ratepayers, expect to continue for some time subsidising the meals of those who dine at the tavern, and competitive neutrality be damned.

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