The CCC has again released adverse findings after yet another investigation into local government, this time into the mayor of the City of Cockburn. He’s standing aside while the findings are investigated by an independent inquiry. I don’t really want to write about the findings themselves; they’re pretty self-explanatory. But a story that has come up during the saga raises a troubling issue about the ability of the powerful to quash democratic protest.
Residents of Cockburn have been collecting signatures for a petition calling on the Local Government Minister to sack the councillors. According to a report in Cockburn’s local community newspaper this week, staff at the council have been contacting shopping centres asking them to remove the protestors.
The first issue this raises is the fact that the council appears to be using its power to bully stores into preventing residents from exercising their democratic rights. Aside from the fact the council isn’t actually the subject of the findings, and thus seems to be grossly overstepping the boundaries between the council and elected members, it’s a worrying indication of the mindset of people whose job it is to help foster good communities.
A second, broader issue is the problem with our “privatised” communities; with the lack of public meeting spaces. Naomi Klein wrote about the problem of privately owned public spaces in No Logo. Without wanting to pretend that there was some gloriously democratic past, in which the people were always free to spread their ideas in public meeting spaces, private ownership adds another barrier to the ability to participate fully in democracy.
By its very nature democracy is controversial. The debate between competing ideas can sometimes get difficult, loud, and uncontrollable. When governments try to silence their opponents they may sometimes get away with it, but there is always a mechanism to remove them should the people choose to do so. But where is the mechanism to remove the corporation who owns the local shopping centre?
Today’s meeting place, the central place for regular community gatherings, is a controversy-free zone. And when a debate is between a local council that can afford $20 000 for a public relations company to help them spread their message, and a group of people with some pens and clipboards, then taking away the right for the powerless to spread their ideas in public meeting places makes democracy even more unbalanced.
We’ve had the same problem getting to public housing estates to leaflet them in local, state and federal elections. And this is - supposedly - public space. This isn’t just the towers in Docklands etc, although the same problem applies.
What kind of problems, alister? Do people try to prevent you walking through the area?
*boggle* Obviously this is a shocking move on behalf of the council, but who on earth at the local shopping centre has been listening to them? Or is that the point of the story - that the shopping centre staff have been falling down laughing at these “requests”?
Yes, because local shopping centres couldn’t possibly see the advantage of being on the council’s good side. It’s not like they deal with planning or anything like that….
According to the story, the shopping centres were asking them to leave, claiming they’d been informed by the council. J’s right, I think.
Everyone:
We have had all the hullaballoo in the news[?] media about the evils of terrorism …. yet when something like this happens, I read about it on a blog and not in the newspapers nor see it on TV nor hear about it on radio.
It is important news. It is news we in Queensland [or Tasmania or wherever] have been denied.
Here is a local government organization using its constituents money to carry out actions that correspond to one of the main aims of terrorist organizations …. that is, to silence dissent and the reasonable expression of community displeasure.
That should have been headline news.
I’m not exaggerating. The difference is only in degree and in actual methods used.
Of course there is a world of difference between the use of bureaucratic power to stifle protest and the use of murderous force to stifle protest …. but the result is the same …. and those in the community who try to object to egregious wrongs are shut up.
Much is made about getting rid of our three tiers of government with the States always being the ones raised for the chop, but for mine there is a worse performance and more ingrained corruption happening at the local level than at the State level, and this is the area that needs urgent reformation. I have gone through this long ingrained poor performance and corruption with the local councils in my area, Wollongong and Shoalhaven and they have been worse than the NSW government, and that’s saying something.
I guess I’m just used to municipalities where the developer-council relationship is one where the developers are the ones issuing edicts, not the councillors. How refreshing to learn that there might be some places where this isn’t so.
Tig Tog,#8
First time ever.
Graham @ 7 -
<blockquote<yet when something like this happens, I read about it on a blog and not in the newspapers nor see it on TV nor hear about it on radio.
To be fair, the story did run on a local news site.
Graham Bell - this was headline news. The story ran on the front page of the Cockburn Gazette. You can find more updates and local headlines at http://www.inmycommunity.com.au
Crankynick [10] and Dave [11]:
Thanks …. can’t say I have ever seen the Cockburn Gazette on sale at the newsagent’s in town over on this side of Australia.
When you look at all the “celebrity” trivia and utter drivel dished up to us day in day out, perhaps you can understand my annoyance at not being informed about a serious and egregious bureaucratic attempt to silence a legitamate community protest.
Maybe it’s because I lived in Queensland during the worst years of Joh’s rule and don’t like to see the same sort of thing happen to others.
Anna Winter:
Truly amazing.
You’ve put up a serious topic …. the lack of space that is still public - and - an almost casual use of bureaucratic power to stifle public expression of displeasure.
Yet in two-and-a-half days there have been only a meagre thirteen comments. Why? These are two matters that eventually affect all of us in one way or another.