If ever you wondered which level of politics you should enter, the answer is blatantly obvious – it is undoubtedly councils. Yes, it’s grubby, it lacks any sophistication or intelligence and the people deals with (or compete against) are the most corrupt, but that’s how you make money and making money is the name of the game.
Long gone are the days when individuals entered politics with the genuine desired to make a change and improve the community, state of country. It is now a career – a highly paid career. In fact Australian politicians are amongst the highest if not the highest paid politicians in the world. I believe the Australian prime minister is paid more than the president of the US.
See, whilst higher levels of politics have a greater impact on the future of the nation, there isn’t much money in it. These levels of politics set strategy and high level policy, but the money is really at the coal front where the detail policy and business deals take place.
There is no doubt that the higher the level of politics the less grubby the individuals involved, in a general sense – of course there are always the exceptions. It is also the case that the level of intelligence and capability required rises too, with notable exceptions once again. But the money in the trough is inversely proportional. The trough does not constitute the budget but more an indication of the money one can make through legal or illegal means.
So, if one is driven by power and a semblance of idealistic vision for your nation then Federal level is the way to go. But if money is the key driver, as it is for most Aussies, then, leap in to the cess pit and roll in the sewerage that is council politics - the rewards are high. Just walk into any council car park, particularly in the North shore (Mosman, Lane Cover), and it is a showcase of European sports cars – Ferraris, Maseratis, Porsches – you name it. If you had this image of the hard working councillor yanking at the door of his battered Datsun 200Y, Torona or Holden and puffing n belching his way home, then wipe that image right out of your mind – reality it quite different. It’s far more like getting in to their Ferraris and zooming home with absolutely no regard for the road rules. No authority would dare fine them, it’s far more lucrative to all to simply be on the pay roll.
The recent development in Auburn threatened to upset the money making machine. One of the councillors had gotten a bit over-zealous with the exhibitionism! Was he going to bring this whole rort into public scrutiny?!!
Quick action was required and delivered. This guy was Lebanese and we all know that all Lebanese are Muslims and we hate them, so here was the perfect scape goat. The state government, Councils and Police decided to pick on him. We couldn’t have one jerk spoil it for all the other jerks in the system.
Now If you were charged by the head hog to make this problem go away, without spoiling it for the other hogs and make it seem like harsh action was being taken against corruption, then, what would your solution be? Ummm. .. ummmmm – let me think!
1. I’d get rid of that councillor and the best and easiest way to do that would be to sack the whole council.
2. I’d get another councillor from somewhere else, one that was into all of this, to replace the council.
This way, you would have got rid of the high risk individual, it would appear that you were taking harsh action on corruption and you would now have an “insider” there who could cover-up everything else and make it look like it was working swimmingly well!
Oooops! That sounds terribly like the option taken by the State government!
A councillor who had his snout in probably Australia’s largest trough was assigned to manage a council which has a relatively modest trough! So we have a Big Fat Hog poo pooing the Auburn council and managed to bring some level of satisfaction to the other big fat hogs who were getting a bit nervous about this young Lebanese stallion giving it all away! It’s sorta’ the Mafia type solution.
The thing is that Councils are a law unto themselves. Anyone who has any dealings with them would agree with this view. The councils have policies which apply only to Mr. and Mrs household owner (who can’t really afford to add to the trough) and are totally transparent to developers with wads of contributions to the trough collection.
The whole process is quite a joke. They have an appeal process where Mr. and Mrs. Householder can get an independent assessment of issues. But when the council meet to make decisions these independent assessments are completely ignored regardless of the fact that they prove the council are acting against their own policy. Typically, the councils have one big fat hog, “sponsored” by the trough contributors, bullying and controlling the decisions of the council and what the big fat hog wants is what the big fat hog gets.
You may ask, where the governance of councils lie. The simple answer is, with no one. Officially there is a state minister accountable. That minister and their department have no interest what-so-ever unless it is election time. But usually things take so long that by the time one gets a response from the minister the election is gone and so there is no interest.
Then there is the toothless ICAC. ICAC is deliberately under resourced. The corruption is so in-grained in the system that if one attempted to sufficiently fund ICAC it would consume the entire state budget! Whilst the council level corruption may have much larger amounts of money involved, the profile of the “stings” are much lower. The higher the level of politics the bigger the profile and so ICAC always have bigger fish to fry than the Big Fat Hogs in councils.
Every now and then there is a minor hiccup in the system as with the case of the Auburn council, but quickly things are brought back to a state of normalcy and the Big Fat Hogs continue wallowing in their cess pits getting enormous pleasure from their pockets overflowing with cash, driving back to their mansions in their Ferraris.
Aussies in their blinkered state of patriotism always like to portrait other governments and societies as being corrupt, we simply are incapable at having a real good look at ourselves. In reality corruption, in these other countries that we so like to put down, is mere shrapnel compared to the millions of dollars involved in Australia.
Don’t for one moment be fooled into thinking that the current NSW state government is attempting to clean this all up. They are simply interested in reducing the cost of councils to the state government. Remember the troughs are being filled by developers not the state government, so why should they care! There will simply be fewer larger councils and therefore fewer larger troughs with bigger and fatter hogs with their snouts in ‘em.
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