Blurred vision
I DON’T think it is too early to look at just what the CoGG administrators have brought to the table during their tenure, now approaching some 12 months.
Not a lot really for the city. They appear to have consulted a considerable number of people but not always and not often enough.
They have consulted many and on numerous occasions, over the saleyards to no great effect.
In fact you might say they have consulted their way into a corner on this particular issue.
They didn’t consult anyone on the library closures until after the closure announcement and then found themselves facing a storm of protest from the very people that they should have consulted.
There is one shining light however, a shining light that I will call the, Dr Kathy Alexander (pictured), ‘how to pad your resume’ legacy.
This is a shining light that has almost no relevance to Geelong and the community but should guarantee the good doctor a continuing and permanent place in the bureaucratic world she inhabits.
What a shame it is not a world that you and I are familiar with at any level and bears no resemblance to reality.
I am of course referring to the Our Future Vision report that will not be not completed until the final talkfest next month.
Loudly proclaimed as the culmination of a consultation with more than 16,000 people drawn from a broad range of community groups, business leaders, students, as well as representatives from our Wadawurrung, CALD, aged and disability communities. Good stuff indeed.
I’m not sure whether this is some sort of record for community consultation but I do hear the Guinness Book of Records was sniffing around.
What I do know is that even if we fail to get in the records for participant numbers we will certainly make it in for the number of platitudes and homilies.
Just to kick it off what does Dr Alexander have to say in her introduction?
It’s actually just white noise but to get the drift of the whole report, Dr Alexander views it so:
“The community has finally had its say about the Greater Geelong’s future direction. It’s great to have a high level of community consensus and passion about our region’s future direction.
“It would be a very unwise for a politician who did not take note of a set of directions from a representative group from our community who have achieved a high degree of consensus.
“The final Our Future Vision will be a community-owned document, outlining our collective aspirations for Greater Geelong. “Turning that vision into reality will involve our whole community, and include partnerships between all three levels of government and collaborations with local business.” That’s all nice to know and thank you Dr Alexander for that introduction to Geelong over the next 30 years. I’m slightly troubled by the fact that future councils and politicians won’t be bound to these thoughts and directions and that we will have to rely on them accepting that it would only ‘be very unwise to not take note’ of the thoughts of a whole community. Councillors and pollies are not well known for their ability to keep their own promises and thoughts constant yet alone those of an anonymous group of people from five, 10, 15 or 20 years in the past. I’m all for a ‘thriving, inclusive and sustainable future for our region’ but really was this, Our Future Vision project, ever going to be a practical way of achieving anything? Can you remember what was in the last federal or State government 30-year plan? Can you remember indeed if there even was one? This legacy, to the future careers of our administrators, has cost us, the ratepayer, well over $500,000. It will not provide one concrete benefit to the community and will sit in some archive as a curiosity piece within 12 months. Meanwhile the administrators will fail to make decisions on the libraries and saleyards, Elcho Park and Osborne House just like when we had councillors. In fact the new councillors in October will face the same problems as the old lot after nil input from the professional, experienced, highly credentialed and highly-paid expert administrators. The old council was sacked as being hopeless at various levels for various misdemeanours. If I ask myself what have we gained from the administrators, for once I’m at a loss for words but I’ll try: Not a lot really.