Trump and "getting the job done"

The post-mortem analyses of Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US Presidential election are still running hot as I write.

How the world will cope with a racist, sexist, xenophobic climate-change denier as the President of the world’s most powerful nation is entirely uncertain.

It’s hard to imagine it ending well, and difficult not to imagine Trump being the architect of his own undoing, in some way that is impossible to specify, but almost certain to happen.

Many commentators have speculated that his campaign successfully tapped into the growing anger and frustration of a declining, mostly white, American middle-class, who, as Bernie Sanders - Hillary Clinton’s key contender for the Democratic nomination – declared, are “tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and establishment media”, and just wanted change.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t “politics as usual”, and the ripples – or tidal wave - will be felt around the world.

Some commentators are already pronouncing the death of neo-liberalism, and its failed policies of deregulation, privatisation and free trade, and the wealth inequality, loss of jobs, and environmental destruction they’ve created.

Unfortunately, it’s been easy for right-wing demagogues playing patsy-politics to whip up and direct the pain and anger felt as a result of these policies at vulnerable scapegoats (refugees, immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, and even women).

It’s a classic case of victims victimising victims.

Australia, of course, is a different case. In so many ways, Australia has built a better society than America, especially with our much more effective social safety-net.

But the warning signs are there.

Australia, too, has its losers from neoliberalism, and its governments captured by neoliberal ideology.

Australia, too, has its far-right extremists (e.g., One Nation) who target vulnerable scapegoats (refugees and Muslims), as though they are the cause of the problem.

Like Trump, they tap into insecurity and discontent, but provide no useful or humane vision for a better society.

In the US, Trump supporters rallied behind his superficially clever “Make America Great Again” slogan, which taps into a general feeling of nationalism and discontent (message: “America used to be great, isn’t any more, but will be again if you vote for me”) but is so meaninglessly malleable that it can be pitched and interpreted in any way to suit any listener (“great” in what ways, for whom and how?)

Does “Get the Job Done” ring a bell? (message: “the job isn’t being done, but could be if you vote for me”. But what “job”, for whose benefit, and how?).

In that case, “the job” ended up having more to do with handing over envelopes of money to politicians in the back of a Bentley, and handing the city’s rail line to developers.

We know how that turned out, but in the 2012 Newcastle Council election the slogan resonated with voters who were so disenchanted with what they had and just wanted change.

The Donald Trumps, Pauline Hansons and Jeff McCloys of politics are snake-oil salesmen, trading on the genuine and understandable anger of people at politicians and governments who have continually let them down to serve the vested interests they really represent.

The grievances these “I’m-not-really-a-politician” politicians play on are real, but the analysis and “solutions” they offer are as vapid as the slogans and clichés they peddle.

Inevitably, their support wanes, and they fade to be replaced by the next charlatan hawking the next empty slogan and pointing at the next hapless stool pigeon.

We won’t create a better society by blaming and lashing out at victims, but by developing a vision for an equitable, compassionate and sustainable society for those with whom we share the planet, and for those to whom we’ll pass it on.

Questions hang over handling of residential development plan in green corridor

Newcastle Council recently rejected a controversial residential development proposal for the last significant area of bushland between the Blue Gum Hills Regional Park and the Hexham Wetlands – but not without raising questions about the associated planning process.

For many years, a community-based organisation known as the Green Corridor Coalition (GCC) has been advocating conservation of the 26 hectare site with the uninspiring title of 505 Minmi Rd, Fletcher.

Since 2009, the landowner has been trying to have the site rezoned to allow a mix of residential and conservation land.

The council rejected the rezoning plan at its June meeting, after a decision it made on the plan in December last year resulted in confusion.

In their report to the December council meeting, council officers recommended endorsing the plan, and told councillors that if they wanted to reject it they would have to “request that the Minister for Planning and Environment allow Council to discontinue the proposed amendment”.

By a majority vote, the December council meeting decided to “not proceed with the planning proposal”, and, following the officers’ advice verbatim, to request “that the Minister for Planning and Environment allow Council to discontinue the proposed amendment”.

At the time, the impression was that the request to the Minister would be a simple rubber stamp process.

Months passed, and when the Green Corridor Coalition started asking questions of the NSW Department of Planning and Environment about what was happening in response to the council’s request, the Department indicated that the legal effect of the council’s request to the Minister was that it was now up to the Minister to make the decision on the matter, and that that decision might not correspond with the wishes expressed in the first part of the council’s December decision.

But the GCC also discovered that the advice from council officers on which the councillors had based their request to the Minister was incorrect, and that the council had the legal authority to determine the matter without the need for any request to the Minister.

This authority derived from documents discovered by the GCC but not mentioned in the officers’ report to the December council meeting.

The GCC immediately brought this to the attention of a number of councillors, who raised the matter at the June council meeting for a further decision that noted the intent of the council’s December decision, acknowledged the documents confirming the council’s legal authority to determine the matter without the need for any request to the Minister, and confirmed the council’s rejection of the rezoning plan.

The relationship between local and state governments on planning and development issues is often fraught and unpredictable, and how the Minister or the Department will respond to the latest council decision is yet to be confirmed.

However, as at least one councillor commented at the June meeting, why did the December planning report fail to provide councillors with all the relevant information? Why were councillors incorrectly advised that rejecting the plan required a request to the Minister?

This wasn’t the first time that questions had been raised about the way that council staff were handling this matter. 

In October last year, the landowner’s consultant (a former council officer) was present at closed staff briefings to councillors on the proposal, while GCC representatives were permitted to address a council Public Voice session only after elected councillors intervened on their behalf.

It’s an excellent case study into why an elected council is such an essential part of local government. On at least two occasions, the intervention of councillors acting on behalf of the community helped to redress significant deficiencies in administrative action.

The rezoning proposal for 505 Minmi Rd may or may not be settled, but the questions hanging over the handling of this matter by the council administration are far from resolved.

Senate voting reforms make preferencing easier and safer

With a federal election on 2 July now looking pretty much inevitable, voters will need to know about recent changes to the Senate voting system.

These changes don’t affect voting for our local federal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives (the smaller, usually green, ballot paper).

However, Senate voting (on the larger, usually white, ballot paper) will now be quite different. Instead of having to number a single box above the line, or many boxes below the line, voters will now be asked to number at least six boxes above the line, or 12 boxes below it.

These changes replace the previous registered ticket system, where parties and groups with above-the-line boxes determined the distribution of Senate preferences, usually as a result of complex negotiations between them.

Due to gaming of the registered ticket system, which often produced odd preference flows that would surprise many voters, micro parties could get elected to the Senate with a tiny primary vote.

In the last Senate election, for example, the No.1 candidate on the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party’s Victorian Senate ticket, which achieved only 0.51% of the primary vote, was elected in this way.

Under the recent changes, voters themselves will directly control their Senate preferences, just as they do in House of Representative elections.

In practical terms, this means that instead of numbering a single box above the line on the Senate ballot paper, voters will indicate their own above-the-line preferences by numbering at least six such boxes in their order of preference.

If you vote above-the-line, when your ballot paper is counted your preferences will be allocated down each of the relevant groups in the order you indicate.

So, if the group to which you give your first above-the-line preference has six candidates, your preferences will be allocated in order down that group as though you had numbered it one to six below-the-line.

Then, the group to which you gave your second above-the-line preference will receive your next preferences. 

If your first preference group had six candidates, the candidate heading the group to which you gave your second above-the-line preference would actually receive your seventh preference, and so on, proceeding down each group in the order you’ve indicated above-the-line.

In past Senate elections, the vast majority of voters have voted above-the-line, and this is still likely to be the case in the forthcoming election.

However, if you don’t want your preferences to be allocated to candidates in the order that they appear in their groups on the Senate ballot paper, you can instead vote below-the-line, where you will be asked to number at least 12 boxes. 

If you do this, you can number candidates in any order you want, and your preferences will flow to the individual candidates in exactly the order you indicate.

In previous Senate elections, below-the-line voting carried some risk of inadvertent informality (which means the ballot paper couldn’t be counted), due to the high minimum number of candidates that a voter had to indicate, and the consequent risk of making an unintended error.

Under the new system, voting below-the-line will be much easier and less risky. It will be interesting to see how many more voters take up the below-the-line option in the coming election.

However you intend to vote, preferences often determine the outcome of elections, especially in the Senate, so if you want your vote to be fully effective, you should use the preference power you have.

Information on the new Senate voting system is available from the Australian Electoral Commission website, at http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/files/senate-how-to-vote-2016.pdf.

Will this council's legacy be scandal and broken promises?

At its February meeting, Newcastle Council drove the final nail into the coffin of election commitments aimed at making the council more democratic, open, transparent and accountable.

Regular readers of this column may recall that democracy and open government was a key issue in the two council by-election campaigns in late 2014 and early 2015, which stripped the former McCloyal conservative bloc of its council majority.

During those campaigns, Labor and The Greens agreed to mutual preference recommendations on the basis of a 10 point “Open GovernmentReform Package”, with a list of structural and procedural changes “intended to restore community confidence in the council and the office of Lord Mayor, and to establish systems that ensure the highest level of transparency, accountability and probity in our City’s governance”.

At the end of last year – more than a year after the reforms were pledged - the achievement score on the 10 point list was zilch. 0/10.

At the council’s February meeting, Labor councillors joined Liberal and Independent councillors to defeat measures proposed by The Greens that would have given some substance to those commitments.

Problems experienced under the disgraced McCloyal council bloc were a primary stimulus for the reform proposals, so it’s hardly surprising that the McCloyal die-hards (Liberal and Independent councillors) didn’t support these measures – they never have. 

But for the Labor councillors, this was an epic (though not entirely unexpected) backflip.

Despite election promises in the Open Government Reform Agreement*:

• Councillors and council staff still meet regularly in secret sessions (called “workshops”) closed to the public and the media, but not always to developers and other vested interests,
• The Lord Mayor has not kept a public diary outlining to whom she’s been talking,
• No changes have been made to get rid of unreasonable administrative restrictions that impede councillors from properly representing the voters who elect them,
• No effort has been made to establish a network of council-supported, community-based groups or committees who represent the interests of residents in the local communities
• No internal council ombudsman role has been created to independently investigate and respond to complaints about council administration
• Community members and groups still have the same (limited) opportunities to address the elected council, administered by council officers who strictly vet and control this system
• No attempt has been made to revitalise and expand Council’s ailing and depleted committee system
• The elected council still meets on a monthly cycle, rather than a fortnightly cycle
• Significant community assets (including significant trees) are still removed with no or little consultation with residents
• The council’s website is now harder to navigate, and less accessible, especially archival material, such as past council meetings.

[* The listed points here correspond to the 10 points in the Open Government Reform Agreement]

A number of reforms were proposed by The Greens (Councillors Therese Doyle and Michael Osborne) at the February council meeting, but were voted down by Labor and conservative councillors. 

The sad fact is that, despite the change in the council’s political complexion, and despite the political promises, very little has actually changed in the way Newcastle Council operates since the days of the McCloyal bloc ascendency. 

If anything, some aspects (e.g., the website) are even worse.

One positive change evident at the February council meeting was a new audio system, which at least made it easier to hear how councillors were rationalising these backflips.

Little wonder that – unlike their Port Stephens neighbour – Newcastle Council has been unable to rouse many in its community to care enough to stand up and defend them against the state government’s ill-conceived, ideologically driven council amalgamation agenda.

That agenda looks as though it will push the next council election from September this year into March next year - another full year of the current council.

It will be a disappointing thing indeed for Newcastle if the key legacy of the current council’s tenure is the scandal of the Jeff McCloy regime, and the broken promises of the Nuatali Nelmes period.