The Facts about Government (and Life, basically the same)
The Hard Facts about Life, Government and Council.
Hi Everyone,
I haven’t made a post in a while, so I thought I’d make an update and let you know how things are progressing in the Ballina Shire.
In one sentence, as best as they can.
Having been in council now since September I want to provide my honest observations of what real world politics is like from a normal citizen’s perspective that’s yet to become lost in day to day political life.
Let’s cover some political realities.
Reality One. We’ll never have enough money to get everything done that everyone wants.
There’s are unlimited wants and needs of the community and limited funds, there is no way that I see, that we could ever fund everything in the shire that we want, it’s impossible. Ballina Shire Council, is financially one of the best positioned councils in NSW and yet we still cannot fund everything that the community wants, can we fund all of the things the community requires, aka the no frills of government, most definitely, but then you’ve got your upgraded sporting facilities, community halls, and literally hundreds of other projects the community is after that we just don’t have the money to pay for.
Even when looking at the basics of roads, waste, sewerage there’s still a backlog there, we could spent millions on it to bring it all up to speed but then we’d have no money left, so frankly it’s dumb financial policy let alone the fact that you’ve gone out and brought all this new infrastructure and then there’s the question of how are you going to finance it’s maintenance so that isn’t an option.
Reality Conclusion
Unless the day comes that the state governments are dissolved and money goes straight from federal to the local community then you’re always going to have a shortfall in funding, and even when that happens, at some point you will still come across a shortfall, because the more you have the more people want, it’s a never-ending cycle of growth and development and it’s so highly integrated into the thought patterns and behaviours of modern day society to grow and get more of this and more of that, that while as long as you have that you’ll have the problem that there’s no enough to go around.
So no matter what happens, we’re never going to get everything we would like, we will never get everything we want done.
This is frustrating, particular for the elected councillors because day in day out, they make promises that this will be done or that will be done and in the end it doesn’t happen. Councillors, or politicians in general for that matter could stop making promises, could stop saying things will get done, but they’ll have a hard time getting re-elected on the basis that they promise nothing!
And so the cycle goes on! So Councillors are ruled once again by human behaviour, stuck in a ride that we just can’t get off.
Reality Two. Yes it is happening you just didn’t know it.
As a citizen we’re ALWAYS asking, why aren’t they doing this, why aren’t we doing that etc etc etc Well the reality is that it’s happening you just didn’t know it. Once again another human behaviourism if you can’t see it in front of you, or it’s not in the media then it apparently doesn’t exist. One of the best quotes I’ve heard thus far in council was from one of the Senior Managers at council who said “I’ve been involved with council for 20 years and I still don’t know everything that council does!” The jobs, tasks and projects council is involved in are probably well into the thousands.
I guarantee you no matter what your thought is, it’s lying around somewhere in council in a file, a staff members head or on the meeting agenda.
At any given time, the staff on the ground, the middle management, the senior managers and the councillors never and will never know absolutely everything that’s going on in council at any given day and of that percentage that the councillors know of, the average person on the street probably knows about 3% of that.
There’s a selected few that will know probably 20-40% of what’s going on, and maybe one or two that know about 70-80% but beyond that the majority don’t know what’s going on. I know, because I was one of them pre-September!
Reality Conclusion
Unless its staring you in the face or if it’s part of your day to day environment you’ll either not know or not care about what’s going on in the political arena, most people don’t until it affects them directly. This all comes down to another human behaviourism which one again we’re all controlled and governed by.
Reality Three. YES it does make sense, you just have to do the research.
There’s been thousands of times in the media and in general where individuals have complained about the “idiocy” of council, or any form of government for that matter, why are they doing it that way, why this process it’s stupid blah blah blah.
No matter how stupid you think something might be, no matter how ridiculous the procedure or request by council, I can GUARENTEE you there’s a legitimate reason for it, if you delve into the background enough.
People think of common sense and assume that due process follows this, sounds great in theory but the reality is that we have state and federal laws and regulations that have been formed over hundreds of years (thousands if you want to go back further) and they’ve constantly been built on and built on to keep up with the times, to take in consideration new information, events, legal cases and a zillion other factors, the end result is you get some very good well refined laws and regulations, while on the flip side you get some very mixed up ones and numerous ones in conflict with each other.
Governments are ultimately ruled by our system we’ve built upon for hundreds of years now, there are rules and regulations in place that we have to follow and that’s unfortunately that.
Reality Conclusion
The reality is that we’re bound to our “great” system we build hundreds of years ago and it’s cause/effect relationship, next time you blame the “idiot” government for doing something in a certain way, look again and do the research you may well find it was your great great grandparents that initiated your troubles!
Reality Four. It’s going to take years, get used to it.
The unfortunate reality is that to get the community to identify and agree on it’s priorities, to then get the funding, then get the plans, policies and resgulations put forward then to get the stakeholders involved and working together, then to finally do a project and then get it complete, it takes a ridiculous amount of time and unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it.
From an outsiders view point a simple project looks like it’s taking a century to do, internally it’s just going through the standard processes.
It’s frustrating as all hell, everyone is frustrated by the lack of progress from getting an idea from concept to reality, but no matter which way you look at it, there’s hundreds of elements in any given project or task, hundreds of stakeholders, hundreds of random factors including funding factors, and all it takes is for ONE of them to hold up a project for years. It’s the fundamental difference between public and private sector if a private sector wants to do something, they just do it, they don’t need to consult anyone, they’re private it’s for their own benefit they do it, done, sometimes they can even ignore stakeholders and most of the obstacles anyway, as they often do.
The public sector doesn’t have that option because fundamentally it’s there or the public, so things take time.
Reality Conclusion
It’s a frustrating process, I know everyone in council wants projects to be delivered as quickly as possible, every stakeholder wants it, the community wants it, but the process doesn’t enable it to do it, sometimes you get lucky sometimes all the stars align and you get what you want. For example, I am convinced that if Janelle Staffin wasn’t elected federally, we’d still be waiting another 30 years for the Alstonville bypass, it was just that her and a number of other factors all came into play and aligned themselves and BOOM we got progress on the bypass.
And That about sums it up!
I think in summary we’re at the mercy of the system we’ve created, for all of the great things our modern systems, laws and societies bring us they also bring a number of burdens and hold us back just the same.
Changes unfortunately aren’t made as quickly as a news article or a TV commercial they takes years and decades.
The problem is that we’ve created a society that expects everything now, the magic pills are all around us, the “Buy Now Pay Later”, the lets hand out home loans to everyone mentality and work out how they’ll pay for it later, the ab rocker that gives you rock solid bodybuilder abs in 30 days.
The reality is results take time, sometimes a lifetime, it takes decades to change some things and in many cases even longer to change society and human behaviour.
It’s unfortunate, it’s frustrating but it’s what we’ve created, it’s what we have to work with, we need to stop criticizing the system as individuals and start working with it and for it, we need to change our behaviours on a macro level and eventually over our lifetime we’ll see the results.
It’s the old quote “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”
Or maybe something a little more modern, From the film Bruce Almighty
“If you want a miracle….Be the miracle”
Regards,
Cr Ben Smith