NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND 3 James Plumridge

The perils of mateship 

‘And now, what about my little mate?’ (Attributed to the late Justice Lionel Murphy)

Every now and then a contributor to this world-famous and highly influential blog brings up the topic of municipal corruption.   That’s given rise lately to a fair bit of discussion about what such corruption means.

Most of us would agree that nepotism and cronyism are aspects of corruption even more repugnant than misusing a corporate credit card.  For the uninitiated, nepotism means giving jobs and other benefits to your relatives not because they’re the most worthy recipients but because they’re family. 

Cronyism—the posh word is ‘patronage’—means doing the same sort of thing for your mates.  Sometimes both happen together, as seems to have been the case with a certain tourist board in a galaxy far, far away.

In WA, municipal nepotism and cronyism are firmly proscribed by the Local Government Act 1995.  Section 5.40 says that employees must be selected ‘in accordance with the principles of merit and equity’, and that ‘no power with regard to matters affecting employees is to be exercised on the basis of nepotism or patronage’.

What does this mean in practice?  It means, among other things, that jobs should be advertised and contracts put out to tender, and that in either case, the most worthy applicant—the one who best fits the selection criteria, or comes up with the best tender—will be the one that wins.

Let’s put nepotism to one side, and fix the spotlight on cronyism with a couple of purely fictional examples of what a shire council might do or allow to be done that would bring it into conflict with section 5.40 of the Act.

Suppose that the council has built, at crippling cost, a spanking new recreation centre with a restaurant and bar.  Suppose further that a prominent councillor also holds office in a local sporting club and is friendly with another high-ranking member of the club as well as with a well-known former café owner. 

That councillor, supported by the shire CEO, is sorely tempted to save everyone time and trouble by arranging for his friends to pick up the jobs, respectively, of bar manager and catering factotum without forcing upon them the inconvenience of having to respond to a job advertisement or a call for tenders.

Should he resist that temptation?  Of course he should.  Otherwise, he would be in breach of the Act, and would lay himself open to accusations of cronyism. Worse, people will stop liking and trusting him and will dance in the streets when he finally gets the message and resigns.

Here’s my second example.

Imagine you are one of the shire’s most senior officials.  One of your friends is released from prison after serving a sentence for more than a dozen serious offences, several of them violent, committed under the influence of alcohol and drugs. The judge who tried his case has described what your friend did as spectacularly dangerous, and capable of causing serious injury. 

Your friend has kids and needs a job.  You know there’s a job that might suit him coming up in the works depot.  Trouble is, he’s not going to get a police clearance, and the selection criteria stipulate that the successful applicant must possess a current valid drivers’ licence, which your friend doesn’t have because he is under suspension for six months and the extraordinary licence he had before going to prison has been revoked. 

Also, there’s another applicant, a young man who does have a valid drivers’ licence and is already employed by the shire.  If your friend gets the job, that young man will have to go.

Do you pull strings to have the police clearance and driving licence stipulation waived so your friend can secure the job?  Of course not!  That would be cronyism, a.k.a. patronage, and clearly in breach of the Act.  If you were caught out, you would lose the respect of residents and ratepayers, and when your contract came to an end you might find the shire council, especially a newly elected one, very reluctant to renew it.

As I contemplate those two scenarios, I’m minded to give thanks to a beneficent providence that I live in a shire where vigilant councillors and upstanding CEOs have over the years taken immense pains to make such corrupt behaviour impossible. 

Are we going back to the bad old days?

With the departure almost a year ago of a person who took umbrage at being compared to Adolf Hitler, many of us thought that the days of shire intimidation were coming to an end.  It seems that we may have been mistaken.

On Sunday morning, 23 November 2014, at around 5 a.m., a good friend of mine, one of nature’s early risers, saw a person he knew to be a member of the depot staff—let’s call him Mr FC—throw a bundle of old newspapers over the gate into his driveway. Mr FC appeared to be severely intoxicated.  He was staggering and not wearing shoes.

Mr FC is known around the traps as a bit of a loose cannon.  Recently he was observed head-butting a woman in the Castle Hotel.

He has been suspended from duty (no doubt on full pay) for twice bullying other employees.  One instance of bullying involved the racial harassment of an Aboriginal employee, who quite rightly received a compensation payout amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, courtesy of the ratepayers of York.  Neither of the bullied employees still works for the shire.

It appears that Mr FC has friends in high places.  Perhaps Ms Gail Maziuk, Human Resources and Compliance Officer, would like to tell us why he still has his job.

When my friend challenged him, Mr FC gave vent to a string of expletives, or more precisely a rambling repetition of the words ‘f..k’, ‘f..king’ and ‘c..t’, the last two sometimes conjoined in a single phrase clearly intended as a description of my friend.

 ‘Ah, f..k’, said Mr FC, ‘it’s all your f..king fault I’m doing this, you f..king c..t… it’s your f..king fault this community…f..k off c..t…this community…I’ll have you, c..t…c..t…c.t…your f..king fault…’ And so on until, having presumably exhausted his linguistic resources, and with a cavalier disregard for public safety, Mr FC got into his car and drove away.

The entire incident was recorded on camera and a transcript made of Mr FC’s eloquent harangue, from which my account of it is taken. 

The next day my friend telephoned the Acting CEO of the Shire, Graeme Simpson, to complain about Mr FC’s behaviour.  Mr Simpson’s response was swift, compassionate and decisive.  He told my friend there was nothing he could do because Mr FC was not at work when the incident occurred.

Actually, there was a lot he could have done.  He could have asked my friend for a copy of his video recording of the incident (now on Youtube).  He could have played it back to Mr FC and told him that his behaviour had been disgraceful and an affront to the Shire’s already tattered reputation.  He could have suspended Mr FC from duty.  He could have threatened Mr FC with the sack if he ever bothered my friend again.  Or he could simply have sacked him, which is what, I venture to say, most honourable people would have done.  

Instead, Mr Simpson chose to do nothing.   Perhaps he would care to explain why.

Don’t go away yet, there’s more. 

Just a couple of weeks ago, my friend caught Shire Ranger John Gowerd taking photographs of the front windows of his premises, formerly a restaurant. Those windows, as many readers will know, are liberally plastered with newspaper articles about the Shire Council as well as extracts from this blog.

 Now, I know Mr Gowerd.  He is an intelligent, helpful and decent man, one whom I have good cause to esteem very highly. The Shire should employ more like him. So I wasn’t surprised when my friend told me Mr Gowerd seemed embarrassed by his task.  However, he refused to tell my friend why he was doing it, which indicated that he was acting under instructions from a good way further up the food chain.

Readers of the Fitz Gerald Report will know that one persistent accusation levelled against former CEO Ray Hooper was that he used shire rangers and other employees to intimidate residents who crossed him.  Didn’t we all assume that, when Mr Hooper slunk away in disgrace back to his lair in the city, those bad old days were over and gone?

Whatever the reason for taking those photographs, it’s London to a brick that it wasn’t being done to benefit my friend.

So my friend telephoned Acting CEO Simpson to ask why Mr Gowerd had been instructed to photograph the windows of what is now his private residence.   And again, Mr Simpson’s response was swift, compassionate and decisive.  He said to my friend, ‘I’m not permitted to tell you that’. 

So who was the person who refused Mr Simpson permission to tell my friend what he was fully entitled to know?

Mr Simpson, we ratepayers are stumping up a king’s ransom for you to help set our Shire to rights.  We don’t want another CEO, acting or otherwise—or a shire president, or a commissioner—who thinks he’s ruling by divine right or has secrets from the community that employs and pays him.  We don’t want and won’t tolerate a return of the bad old days of bullying, intimidation, secrecy and deceit. 

You are always permitted to tell us the truth, Mr Simpson, be it ever so uncomfortable either for us or for you.  When you said those words to my friend, you crossed a line.  Please don’t do it again.  We’ll be watching.

STOP PRESS

OMG, WTF, the Shire of York Strikes Back!

This morning at approximately 9 a.m. Shire Ranger John Gowerd paid a second visit to the Avon Terrace home of Simon and Heather Saint and took photographs of material posted in the windows.

The material is exactly the same as appeared in the windows at the time of his first visit, which was mentioned in James Plumridge’s latest Notes from Underground (see above).

This time, when asked why he was taking the photos and at whose behest, an obviously embarrassed Mr Gowerd uttered the immortal words ‘No comment’.  He did that several times.

It’s most unlikely that Mr Gowerd was acting on his own initiative.  So who was the unkind superior who ordered him to make a fool of himself with a camera?

Whoever you are, you now stand accused of a petty and vindictive act worthy of You-Know-Who himself.  We suppose your next step will be to contact the Shire’s lawyers to see if there are grounds for prosecuting the Saints for the heinous crime of putting news reports and cuttings from the blog in the windows of their home.

STOP STOP PRESS:  We’ve just learned that Mr Saint telephoned Commissioner James Best this morning to ask him why Mr Gowerd was taking photos of his windows.  The answer was that the Shire’s insurers had asked for the photos to be taken.

This begs two questions.  The first and most obvious is this—why didn’t Mr Gowerd relay this information to Mr Saint (and as a corollary, why didn’t the Commissioner or Acting CEO ask permission to take the photos, as courtesy would require, and as a further corollary, since Mr Gowerd had already taken photos, why send him back to do it again)?

The second is:  what has happened to make the Shire’s insurers nervous?  Has a former CEO threatened to take legal action against the Shire regarding material posted in the windows of a private home?   As every first year law student knows, the complainant would have no cause of action against the Shire, unless the Shire had asked Mr Saint to put the material in his windows (if only!), or unless there is a by-law prohibiting the posting of such material in the windows of private homes, in which case we suppose the complainant might apply to the courts for a writ of mandamus against the Shire.  Otherwise, we know of no legal basis for the insurer’s request. 

The Shire owes Mr and Mrs Saint a written apology and full explanation.  Stop keeping information from us, Commissioner Best.  As your employer and paymaster, the people of York have a right to know whatever is going on that could possibly cost them money.  Why not start your own blog?