Bugger All

 

The Chamber of Commerce on Monday 16 Aug had a Lunch and Question Time with both Damian Hale and Natasha Griggs, I unfortunately was unable to attend. However some of my colleagues where and one of them was able to record it, so I was able to watch it and see for myself  what actually happened.

What I would really like from Damian is a solid position in regards to the houses and the businesses that are affected by this decision, he seems to beat around the bush a lot when asked this question, ” we support Defences position and the houses have to go”, but the ” after the election we will work to help these businesses” seems to contradict that very statement, perhaps he is trapped within Labors position and cannot extricate himself, if this is the case then clearly state this, you were able to go against Labor policy on Muckaty Station, surely as taxpayers we are also entitled to the same representation in this matter. Or maybe we should take the same thing out of that and treat our future as a forgone conclusion.

Recently it has occurred to me that we have become more accepting of bad decisions or poor judgement of our elected representatives, I wonder if this not because we just don’t have the time anymore or whether we doubt our ability to change what is going on.

If one thing has come out of this fight with Defence it has been the decisions made by bureaucrats and politicians that have both baffled and astounded me, I appreciate that our political system is adversarial, but I wonder when that actually started to impede good judgement and smart decisions in relations to our lives.

By this I mean that we elect people and send them to Canberra and expect them to consider all the facts when making decisions on our behalf and at least expect that those decisions will actually improve our lives, not make them harder. I would at least expect that bureaucrats would at least look at everything including the collateral damage they might inadvertently inflict on others and consider them in those decisions, or at least give us sufficient warning that this is coming.

From my inquiries, I have worked out that Defence probably would have made a decision on the Housing as far back as 2005/6 when Lyons was put into motion, this was intimated by Damian in his answer on Monday as well, it seems the decision the reevaluate the standards for Defence housing in 2007 would have been part of this process,  if this is the case,  this makes their decision to keep us out of the loop even harder to swallow.

I wonder why it would have been so difficult to at least inform businesses in the area that this was coming so that they could plan more appropriately for the future.

Unfortunately it appears the politicians have decided that this does not seem to suit them and they would rather that these things do not come out untill it is a forgone conclusion, this malaise would appear to be starting to infect government departments as well.

So what comes of all this?  Not a lot I suspect, we have to fight our battles and hope at sometime things might change for the better, whatever the election brings I suspect our future rides on the people who have all the say and none of the responsibility no matter who wins the election.

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