JAMES TRIES HIS BEST  David Taylor
Australia Day Address 2015

I was hugely impressed by Mr Best’s bold statement that ‘The splintering of the media has increasingly given a voice to those people at the extremes-not only are the voices of passionate extremists louder and more pervasive- through social media they are now focused more on their self-interest at the expense of the community interest- more focused on personal attack than on matters that build our Social Capital’.

Obviously, Mr. Best has a certifiable University Degree in Communications, focusing on the negative impact of social media on mainstream media in the 21^st Century. His thesis must have been written with a particular emphasis on the development of a class of self-interested extremists in Rural, Regional and Remote Western Australia.  A Fundamentalist, Jihadist, Social Media-Extremist Splinter Group bent on personal attack on the institution of Local Government and the destruction of community ‘Social Capital’.(Best may also have a degree in Social Economics)

Mr. Best must have shared many hours of animated discussion with News Limited’s, Rupert Murdoch, the Editor-in-Chief of West Australian Newspapers Ltd, Bob Cronin, and TV Executives such as Channel 7’s, Mario D’Orazio, to form such a clearly defined, academic, holistic evaluation  of the current fragmented media situation in Western Australia, Australia and the entire Western World. And how, in particular, this ubiquitous splintering of the media equates to York and its’ people?

Mr Best’s inference is that York- has within its community ranks- ‘extremists’ (a word that I would be very careful in what context I used it). It has a ‘dictatorship’ by a passionate minority- which is untrue, and a thinly veiled insult! It also seems that the extremist, dictatorial population of York should understand what civic obligations are- which is also insulting.

Most offensive of all is that these extremist dictators, in Mr. Best’s estimation, are focused on their own self-interest at the expense of their community interest.

What is extremely amusing among all his pretentious, offensive drivel is Mr Best’s quote from WB Yates “The Best lack all conviction- The worst are full of passionate intensity”.

This means a ‘Best’ has a lack of conviction’ which certainly guarantees York has, and I quote, an “uncertain future” with Commissioner Best.  I think that most people in York would rather be ‘the worse for passionate intensity’.

Mr. Best has obviously found a real buzzword “Social Capital”. He has used it as an ‘anaphora’, the meaning of which he will probably have to ask someone.

To be fair to Mr. Best, I highly doubt he wrote this speech. It smacks of political interference, and the jargon used by Ministerial, advertorial acolytes called Dumb and Dumber. Otherwise he downloaded it all off the Net. This is called plagiarism.

David Taylor –York Ratepayer.

IS COMMISSIONER BEST THE MESSIAH, OR JUST A NAUGHTY BOY?  James Plumridge

If, like me, you missed Commissioner James Best’s Australia Day speech, don’t despair.  You can find the complete text at http://www.york.wa.gov.au/News/Details.aspx?NewsID=53.

It’s not the Gettysburg address, ‘Fight them on the beaches’, or ‘I have a dream’.  James is not that kind of orator.  He doesn’t have dreams.  He envisions visions—that is, when he isn’t ideating ideas. 

Talking about civil society…

James wants to stir up in York ‘a debate about civil society’.  This would require ‘a whole of community vision’ and ‘building a cohesive and future-focused set of actions that we can agree on.’   

[Translation: ‘Let’s get together and talk about the kind of community we want to be and make plans to improve the shire for everyone who lives here’.]

…and Social Capital

James regards York as ‘a disengaged and dispirited community’ needing to build up ‘Social Capital’, that is, ‘the network of trust and collaboration that links individuals into a society’.

[Translation: ‘You’re a sorry lot right now, Yorkites, but if you could have a bit more confidence in yourselves and each other and learn to work effectively together your lives would be happier, more successful and probably more fun’. NB: This is a free translation.]

His plan is to gather together all the different organizations in town—from the CWA to the RSL, from the Croquet Club to the Church of Christ, from the Men’s Shed to the Salvation Army—and encourage them to ‘build a common identity’ through a process of ‘Community Visioning’.  In fact, he will be ‘facilitating a series of Visioning Forums to bring the community together and build York’s social capital’.

[Translation:  ‘I’m going to organize and oversee a series of town meetings where all the clubs and groups in York can get to know each other better, find out what ideas and dreams they have in common, unite to forge a common destiny and share their hopes for the future.’  NB: This is a freer translation, because of the linguistic challenges posed by the original text.]

‘Away, you passionate extremists!’

But there’s always a serpent in Eden (my metaphor, not James’s).  In York, the serpent consists of all those nay-saying reprobates, or ‘passionate extremists’, taking advantage of social media to promote ‘their own self-interest’ and focus on ‘personal attack’.

[Translation: ‘Those bloggers are a damned nuisance.  David Taylor’s the worst, followed by that Plumridge fellow and the cartoonist, whoever he is.  They must be in it for themselves in some way, because in my world everybody’s busy looking after number one, unless of course they’re completely selfless, like me.  I wish I knew what those radicals are after, and why they keep having a go at me!  It’s not fair.  All I want to do is lead my people—they are my people, Tony Simpson said I could have them—from the Slough of Despond into the Promised Land.’  NB: This is freer still, but I think captures the spirit of the original.]

Instead of ‘participating in safe and productive dialogue about our uncertain future’, the extremists ‘disengage from politics’ or become ‘single issue evangelists’, a ‘trend’ leading inexorably ‘to the dictatorship of the passionate minority’ (as distinct, presumably, from what York knows only too well, the dictatorship of a privileged few).

[Translation:  ‘And the bastards just keep harping on in English.  Why don’t they talk in high-sounding, vacuous riddles like Brad Jolly, Margaret Wheatley and me?  Do they think they can defeat Tony Simpson and take over the world?  Jeez, it’s worse than Islamic State round here!’  NB: not really a translation at all, just reading between the lines.]

The Second Coming—please, Lord, not another one, we’re still trying to get over the first!

James decks out his argument with a couple of lines from ‘The Second Coming’, by W B Yeats (not Yates, as James spells it, perhaps confusing the Irish poet with the author of a well-known garden guide): ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity’.

This apocalyptic poem, composed, Yeats said, in a mediumistic trance, ends with a kind of prophecy: ‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’

Well, our ‘rough beast’ came and went, slouching home at last to Dianella…

‘We don’t want no council training, we don’t want no thought control…’

James, York doesn’t need a ministerial appointee to help sort out its troubles. It was your deceitful minister, his ham-fisted predecessor, and senior figures in their department who, if they didn’t actually cause York’s problems, allowed them to flourish unchecked.

York doesn’t need ‘community visioning’ and a series of ‘visioning forums’ to bring its community together.  It needs a clear-sighted, democratically elected shire council willing to involve members of the public in decision-making and as informal advisers on matters of policy. 

That’s what Matthew Reid offered us.  That’s why so many of us voted for him.  That’s what your Minister stomped on, for the benefit of his political mates.

York doesn’t need dire warnings about ‘passionate extremists’ busy launching personal attacks via social media.  If only your minister and his predecessor had paid attention in the past to some of those ‘passionate extremists’, you, James, would be focusing on your chances of pre-selection for parliament instead of wasting your time and our money trying to fix us up.

I’ve said this many times before, but it bears repeating:  there can be no peace and healing in York until we’ve had an impartial, full and open inquiry into the issues canvassed in the Fitz Gerald Report.  Get Minister Simpson moving on that one, James, and you will have earned the respect of the York community and a noble place in the history of the town—perhaps even a statue, or better still, a shrine.

‘Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that reads it. Habakkuk, 2:2.’

James Plumridge

A response to James Best’s Australia Day Address  Jane Elise Ferro

In your Australia Day address, Mr Best, you made some comments and statements that puzzle me. Would you mind telling me what they mean?

Here goes:

1.“… town hall meetings that end in tears.”

I can’t recall any tearful endings to meetings while Shire President Matthew Reid’s conduct of meetings was being monitored by the DLGC.  Most residents were pleased with Cr Reid’s style of governance and saw no reason to weep.

How different from previous years, when Ray Hooper and his compliant councillors were in charge of meetings! There was plenty to cry about then, during the era you seem determined to close off from review with your now-famous ‘line in the sand.’

2. “…debate since Federation has made a difference”.  York has endured 10 years of a shire council and administration that many believe to have been corrupt. So how is York going to move forward without a lively, unfettered debate on what was inflicted on its people during those years?

3.Why are you concerned about “the current state of citizens’ engagement” when the OECD ranks Australia as a world leader in that category? How can you expect citizens to engage willingly in social and political processes when confronted by a wall of discouraging managerial jargon like ‘strategic facilitation’, ‘cohesive and resilient organisations’, ‘envisioning meetings’ and so on?  You can say the same things much more clearly in simple language that everyone can understand.

4. Your “concern for our children” is well founded if it arises from a broader concern over the decay of democratic institutions and processes and a corresponding rise in political corruption.  Here’s an instance of what I mean by corruption. Not long ago, in Northam, an indigenous kid was arrested and charged for stealing a chocolate frog. By contrast, in nearby York, a major government department is now doing its best to draw a veil over the illicit conversion of public moneys to private ends by pretending it’s too trivial (read ‘embarrassing’) to pursue. 

Sweeping wrongdoings under the carpet, and using insults and roughshod tactics to silence those who refuse to bow and submit, is hardly behaviour our children should model.  So I’m concerned, too.

5. What do you mean by “safe and productive dialogue about our uncertain future”? Productive, yes, but why ‘safe’? Should we submit to power for safety’s sake, instead of ‘speaking truth to power’? Remember Hitler (the blog hasn’t let you forget about him!) his henchmen, and all the ‘good people’ in Germany who played it safe by burying their heads in the sand.  Is that the way we should go?

6. Do you really want a change-for-the-better? If so, such change is increasingly made possible by Social Media rather than via ministerial support! Those who are choosing to take a stand against further suppression of the truth are using this avenue for expression in order to bare the realities of years gone by (you know, those years behind your line in the sand).

7. How can you justify your insinuation that those who express themselves through social media (eg, we bloggers) are extremists who are focused more on their self interest rather than community interests? Quite the opposite is true. Had Kalgoorlie or Chittering been able to publicize what their towns were encountering / enduring during the ‘reign’ of Ray Hooper, York may have been spared his more-of-the-same. If you read the blog entries carefully, we do not want the same situation to occur ever again. We want a vibrant, active town, a legacy for future generations.

8. The one statement of yours I agree with is: “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” Try honesty, integrity, justice, fairness, respect, communication, freedom, joyfulness, balance, equality, interaction, good governance, truthfulness, discernment, openness, free speech, security, understanding, wisdom, sincerity, humour, courage, flexibility, kindness, humility, compassion, generosity, gratitude, harmony, peacefulness, TRUST.

Jane Elise Ferro