Consultation on consultation

“Consultation begins with a decision” – a quote attributed to (then) Minister for Education Katy Gallagher at the first public meeting to discuss the closure in 2005 of Ginninderra District High School.

Caf, community consultation doesn’t have to necessarily mean a blanket veto but certainly some room for compromise on both sides.

Having a power station in your backyard is an example of where a veto would be valid I would think – not a ‘mob’ veto but democracy in action. The Government seems to be listening to the people in this instance but would they if an election wasn’t looming around the corner.

Governments going into consultation knowing that a decision has already been made is unethical to say the least or going in presenting the worst case scenario as the final product when really it is the fallback position that was the original intention all to ‘spin’ and to promulgate the image of compromise.

I’ve remembered one of the names of the community groups Simon Corbell set up – LAPACS – local area planning and consultation.

These were then disbanded by Simon Corbell, yet other areas of ACT govt (like ACTPLA) continued to send letters to the former presidents about development in their area.

I wish this govt would have a few ideas and stick to them, instead of continually tweaking round the edges of things.

A big problem is that this govt keeps on changing their mind on how to do consultation.

about 10 years ago when Simon Corbell was in charge of planning they sent out surveys to households about what we wanted and valued in our local suburb. These were then ignored (Most of Downer wrote that they valued quiet streets and local parks – the suburb was then zoned for 90% development.)

They set up special groups to lead consultation for each group of suburbs. People did a lot of work, but these were soon disbanded, and replaced with nothing.

Then they set up new groups. but didn’t allow them to consult with the community – like during the northside dragway debacle, the 3 community reps were not allowed to actually consult with the community. They were supposed to represent the community, by being 3 memebers of said community – a representative sample. They themselves were told they were not permitted to disclose any information about the Dragway to the community. Yet in letters to residents Jon Stanhope continually referred to the 3 community committee members as ‘consultation’.

LIkewise, the power station sent a letter to a disbanded tuggeranong group, and then called that their consultation.

Now we have the Northside community council etc. Woden Community council did a stack of work on what they would like to see in Woden town centre into the future, only to be totally ignored, as the govt builds on the old tennis courts, and plans a 12 storey monstrosity that will overshadow the outdoor phillip pool.

I can’t be bothered getting involved in any of the govt’s future ‘consultation’ methods, cos I now believe that as soon as the committee/group/method starts gelling together and forming some opinions, the govt will just replace it with some other form of local group.
And even if they don’t, they don’t actually listen to what the community groups recommend anyway.

Sorry this is vague – I’ve forgotten the formal names of the various forms of community representative groups that this govt has set up over the last few years.

Indeed Miz – that’s my idea of consultation also.

And to be fair, some sectors of the ACT government can do it fairly well. The Gungahlin Community Council has been involved from the very early master planning stages on the various facets of the college precinct – aquatic centre, shared library, sports fields and the college itself. And I believe that those projects have benefited from our input.

And ACTPLA has been doing a pretty good job via their Planning and Development Forum, which brings community councils and industry together with the planners. Plus Vic Smorhun has been responsive to many other operational suggestions we have made like improving the information provided on the DA notices webpages. And they’ve been endeavouring to share their methods with some other agencies like DHCS and TaMS, with limited success.

But that is pretty much where it stops.

So it was strange to say the least that Mr Cappie Wood put together this entire community consultation plan without so much as a word with us. That’s a good start…

I’ll give him some public consultation on October 18 🙂

Consultation, in my book, is asking what people think first, when a policy is mooted, BEFORE having an entire project in the wings and presumably having already wasted resources doing so.

Eg, no fait accompli announcements which have been the hallmark of the Stanhope govt, such as: public services being cut/sold/closed etc, or massive developments going to be built.

It’s especially galling when we are ‘told’ how good these ready-to-go ‘proposals’ are for Canberra.

Clearly their idea of Canberra is different to mine. I happen to like the open spaces, the fresh air, the clean water, and don’t appreciate being done over for urban infill, polluting power stations or loo water in my latte.

I agree mob veto would be a bit wild. But on the ohter hand, Stanhope’s policy of whack first apologise after is cart before horse. The example that springs to mind is hospital pay parking – introduced, machines installed, public outcry, change of policy. The only pay parking initiative to have lost money because consultation was an afterthought.

Civic shopfront closure is the issue that annoyed me personally. You can only get a granny ID card from the Civic library. With high density housing growing around Civic, this is the first place that needs a govt shopfront.

The libs sold the caravan park to koomarri for a dollar.

But labour allowed Koomarri to sell it to a housing developer, and did not tighten up the land use clauses. They then pretended to be shocked and surprised when the developer set about evicting all the low income tenants. This despite Deb Foskey having warned them in advance that this would happen. They were not blameless in that whole mess.

Wasn’t the original caravan park sale (to Koomarri) something that predated this government?

Anyway, I disagree with the idea that a consultation is only meaningful if those consulted have a power of veto, and I disagree strongly that such a thing would be desirable. The government is elected by the entire electorate, and therefore has a much stronger democratic mandate than the (much) smaller group that is arcing up about a particular proposal.