SWINGS, ROUND-A-BOUTS, FITZ GERALD REPORTS & YORK’S NEW CEO

The local Nationals member for the Electorate of North West Central, Vince Catania, is trying to call in the cavalry on the Shire of Carnarvon where employee harassment and bullying is allegedly rife.

The cavalry is the Minister for Local Government, Tony Simpson who with his donkey, a Jenny not a Jack, but maybe a Jolly, will take ages in traversing the 900 kilometres to Carnarvon and will never wish to arrive in time.

Mr. Catania is the Secretary to the Minister for Water, Sport and Recreation and Forests, Mia Davies.

Mr Catania is being proactive in his electorate by intervening with a Minister, requiring a Minister to act on behalf of his (Catania’s) constituents. This is what good elected members’ do, no matter what the personal political consequences (including how much he has pissed Tony Simpson off.)

In 2014, Ms. Davies failed to intervene in serious issues facing the Shire of York involving the same Minister. She has also refused to intervene in a potentially catastrophic issue related to one of her own portfolios, Water.

Where York is concerned, Ms. Davies is not a good elected member, in fact she is a distinct liability.

The fact that she is being touted, by some, as the next Leader of the Nationals is quite incredible, is hardly based on the quality of her past performance and really means nothing if her party loses at the next State Election on March 11, 2017.

Someone who has arrived in Carnarvon is Mike Fitz Gerald (and his Fitz Gerald Strategies) who has been hired to investigate the Shire’s problem, but has not particularly impressed Mr. Catania.

What Mr. Catania is worried about is Fitz Gerald’s online metaphorical industrial relations incantation ‘Problem Employee - Problem solved’. This appears to be an extremely trite allegory covering complex industrial relations issues, especially when employees have threatened suicide.

Mr. Fitz Gerald seems to have a continuing problem of failing to impress, then disappearing into the woodwork to contemplate his navel and his inconsequential, monomorphic industrial relations stratagems.

His Fitz Gerald Report commissioned by the Shire of York Council could have been easily labelled the ‘Fizz-Gerald Report, expensive, with lots of froth and bubbles, but no champagne.

Certainly what was revealed (only to a privileged few) was a litany of adverse accusations including public harassment, abuse of power and monumental examples of power-hungry self-interest that has seen a number of people lose their public credibility- and deservedly so! (This reaction was not caused by the report itself but a synopsis of the report published in The West Australian Newspaper.

The tally has been two Shire Presidents, probably two Deputy Shire President and one Chief Executive Officer. The eventual score should include four (4) senior staff members of the Shire of York Administration. Nine in total!

Unfortunately, an extremely lazy Mr. Fitz Gerald never equated his investigatory findings to charges that could be laid under criminal or civil law, or government regulations. Thereby some have gone unpunished to the level they could, and should, have been.

Collateral damage was the eventual resignation of another Shire President, Matthew Reid, who inadvertently exposed that there are numerous potential charlatans in the peripheral support industries that leach off the failures of the Minister for Local Government, his Department and the Local Government Act, 1995.

The Fizz Gerald Report was totally ignored by both Simpson and his Department, yet at no stage did Fitz Gerald himself attempt to defend his reputation as an accredited, experienced industrial relations strategy specialist and/or the veracity of his findings in his report to the Shire of York Council about its quorums’ concerns. 

He took the money and ran. Now he is in Carnarvon peddling his wares- ‘same old,’  ‘same old’- ad nauseum.

The current Shire of York Council should have learned something from all this.

One major lesson is there should never be obsequious, myopic, small town reliance on the abilities of any single Public Service Officer, including the Chief-Executive-Officer, either by Council or ratepayers.

Given his past local government administration experience, Paul Martin appears to have all the qualities, credentials and acumen to move York forwards towards a far more self-reliant and productive future.

However it should be remembered that former Chief-Executive-Officer, Ray Hooper, and Commissioner, James Best, claimed such an ability to provide this positive end result, leaving York in a financial and emotional mess-with a community partially divided.

The current Council believes it has a man,’ very capable of moving York forward’. However this does not absolve Council of any duty-of-care. It is Councils’ responsibility to move York forward in the direction it was elected to do so, not rely on its employee, the CEO.

The Chief Executive Officer of a Shire Council is there to administrate and facilitate. The Council is elected to adjudicate on what the CEO has to do to achieve Council’s goals on behalf of its Local Government Area electorate.

In the tale of a dog, Council must be the dog and the administration is the tail. In the past the tail has often managed to wag the dog- which is totally unacceptable to the local community in general.


This Council has urgent issues that it must deal with much sooner than later. It knows what these are and must exorcise them prior to the next Local Government Election in October, 2017.

The Council wishes to make serious inroads into its dilemmas in the next six months and should be allowed to do this without unwarranted criticism.

One problem that no Regional, Rural and Remote Shire Council envisaged is the attitude of the Minister for Tourism, the Premier Colin Barnett.

Mr Barnett’s apparently intransigent stance is that Perth will be the centre and total focus of his tourism policy in an attempt to fill empty hotel rooms and expensive, weed-covered, sites where new hotels were supposed to be built.

This suggests empty hotel rooms and a collapsing tourist industry in most other towns in Western Australia at a time when it could be one of the saviours of the State’s economy.

Mr Barnett’s opinion is shared by very few- other than the major hotel chains, the Crown Perth casino complex and the quasi-government agency, Tourism WA, in its promotion ‘Experience Perth’.

If numerous members of the Liberal Party, both inside and outside Parliament, have their way, Mr. Barnett will neither be Premier or the Minister for Tourism after the Federal Election in July, or before the next State Election just nine months away.

Given Mr Barnett’s city-centric tourism philosophy, the sooner he is overthrown the better for the future economic health of Western Australia and in particular, York.

David Taylor.