Council Merger a Political Game?

The recent debate about the merging of councils is another demonstration of political arrogance. Currently there are about 37 councils around Sydney. Each of them is responsible for dealing with local issues from approving development of properties to keeping the streets safe from fallen branches. The talks of merging councils were along the line of operational efficiency and economy of scale. However, as a person who has appreciated what my local council (Randwick) had done for the area, I seriously doubt the motivation behind this is purely operational.

I don’t want to point finger to anyone but it was already pointed out by academics that merging councils could not achieve economy of scale so that particular argument is already proved to be bogus. However, as a common local resident, I could see all the detrimental problems that could be caused by such merger.

First of all, local councils operate within the local setting. Thus they are more familiar with what is happening locally and what the local concerns are, and more importantly where do those concerns come from. Just think about this, residents of Leichhardt, an inner west suburb would have different concerns as compared to residents of say Coogee, a beach side suburb. The reasons behind these concerns would be completely different even if it looks like they are the same e.g. a development proposal application for expanding a house or building an apartment block. With a mega council that focuses on “efficiency” and economy of scale overseeing these diversely different areas, I doubt any in depth investigation would be carried out to sort out the rationale behind these seemingly similar concerns. What would result is that a “one-size fits all” solution to be applied to similar issues that would in the end resolve nothing and left everyone unhappy.

Another potential issue that I can see with the merger of local councils is that there would be a lack of understanding of the local situation. For example, if the new headquarter of the mega council was located in the city people would be commuting to the city to work. Unless these people needed to travel from the relevant suburb to work, they would not have a sufficient understand of local situations to carry out informed decisions. For instance, a mayor who lives only in the inner city suburb would not be able to understand traffic situations in the roads around the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick during the peak hours unless he / she makes an effort to go there. Even so, without a day in day out experience of the local situation, there surely would be gaps in local knowledge about these situations. Under such circumstance could we still rely on the mega council to make correct and informed decisions?

Also no matter how the structure of the new mega council is sculpted one question remains – who is going to make decisions of local issues? How many layers of bureaucracy is required to have an application or complaint being dealt with? Also with so many areas involved, how are jobs being prioritised using standards that are fair and equal to residents of all areas? I wonder whether all these logistic issues were considered before someone throwing out such merger proposal in the name of economy of scale. Personally I think helping residents is not just about saving money but what you can really offer. If you lose sight of this there is no point of being in a government service, which I think we already have enough half-hearted politicians in the State and Federal levels. Also we have already throughout the years witnessed the detrimental effect of decisions made purely out of the aim save money. What we need is better financial management for certain councils not merge them to save money.

If the purpose of the merger is for economy of scales, there bound to be restructuring and lay offs in the mega council to trim “duplicate functions” that currently reside in individual councils. That could leave us with less people doing the same job because a number of roles were considered as “duplicate” locally. How would that be more efficient then? People who propose that might argue that this would not happen but to be honest, have we seen any merger in history that did not result in restructuring and layoffs?

Further, one of my biggest concerns is about the responsibility of these mayors after the merger. When a mega council is created, it will cover suburbs of greatly diverse cultures and people. However, to get re-elected, extensive local approval is completely out of the window as people who want to be elected only need to focus in certain areas, e.g. wealthier suburbs like Potts Point and Darlighurst. This lack of need for local approval as a scrutinising mechanism of performance for councils would only contribute to further dis-engagement of the mega council with certain localities. I personally do not think that this is a healthy way to go to manage local areas and suburbs.

One of the arguments about merging the councils is to reduce the chance of corruption. This argument lacks weight in my opinion as corruption happens if it needs to happen, no matter what your structure is. The only way to avoid corruption is to have tougher sentences and more comprehensive administrative mechanisms to avoid them. Also education is key to reduce mechanism. Corruption is an evil that I personally do not think could be eliminated by any structural management. It would be naïve and unrealistic to put this as an argument for the formation of a mega council.

I personally genuinely hope that this merger would fall apart. However, if the call is in those politicians’ hands, I doubt that this kind of consultation would end up in a non-merger. I sincerely hope that some responsible local mayors would have enough weight to stop this kind of crazy ideas to become a reality.

One Country Two People

It is no secret that since the opening of Hong Kong to Chinese travellers tensions between the two areas have been building. The difference in culture and life style had become more and more apparent and clashes in these areas have escalated discontents between the two groups of people under the One Country Two Systems rule. These issues were brought to the forefront earlier this year when a new television show portrayed them point blank at the audience. There were backlashes and supports alike. The New York Times even covered that in one of their articles.  But the issue here was, if these problems do not exist there would not be material to be put on. Further does avoiding such issue by not talking about them help at all?

The show went on from being sanctioned in China (the southern region of China can receive television signals from Hong Kong, but all ad times and news were replaced by “local” contents instead) to become one of the most popular shows in Hong Kong as people started to appreciate it in a different light. But the issues that were raised continue to exist and continue to pose problems across the borders.

Opening Hong Kong for Chinese tourists to visit was a measure adopted to save the Hong Kong economy during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC, which was also known as the Financial Tsunami locally). The measure did save the Hong Kong economy as a lot of wealthy Chinese tourists took advantage of this opportunity to come to this shopping paradise and buy genuine products (as compared to the predominance of counterfeit products in the mainland). This kept the retail business alive and thus the general economy. It was a great move, but then it opened up something that was more deep-rooted – the difference in life style and perception between the very distinct groups of people.

Hong Kong people have prided themselves as the more etiquette trained and sophisticated group as compared to the mainlanders (people from mainland China). The colonial rule probably had done good to “class up” Hong Kong in a way that common social etiquettes were well observed and respects for others are highly valued. So it is not surprising that the more “earthly” behaviours of a number of Chinese visitors continued to cause discontents among the Hong Kong residents. Before the influx of Chinese visitors, in the up market CBD and shopping areas, there weren’t people squatting along the streets smoking. Also spitting in the streets was virtually eliminated after decades of continued education. So it is not surprising when all these happened, a lot of Hongkongers were very upset. However, this was tolerated at that time because they needed these visitors for the money.

However as the economy recovers and the need for this money lessens, Hongkongers have become less and less tolerant. At the same, the mainlanders who still think that they are “doing Hong Kong a favour” have grown more and more arrogant. Under such circumstance, clashes are bound to happen. Last year when a certain brand name specialty shop started to blatantly practice favouritism to mainland shoppers (which was understandable as these shoppers do shop without considering the price), it caused an outrage among the Hong Kong communities. Further when stories about the complete lack of respect to the Hong Kong society by mainlanders such as parents asking kids to urinate or even excrete on public transport or in front of other people’s shops surfaced, tensions between the two groups of Chinese immediately reached new levels.

In the midst of all these, Hongkongers is by no means pure and innocent either. There were local companies that organise these tours aiming to rip off mainland tourists. Stories about tourists being forced to shop at overpriced outlets were not uncommon. These so called “shopping tours” were very cheap to sign up for but people who joined would be butchered financially during the trip. These unsuspecting victims soon started to fight back by complaining and going to the media. Calls for compensations were frequent. Funny enough though, it seems that recently some of these mainlanders were skilful enough to even exploit these by signing up and then complain to the media asking for compensations that were a lot higher than their sign up costs.

Having moved overseas for some time now, I was repeatedly told by my friends in Hong Kong that I am lucky that I do not need to tolerate or deal with these mainlanders. Nonetheless, I was by no means immuned from them during my last visit home. Mum and I were at the check out of a shop in Tsimshatsui, one of the major shopping districts, when mum was pushed aside aggressively (they nearly knocked her down) by a group of Chinese women jumping the queue to the cashier. I was shocked to experience this first hand but immediately could understand the anger of the Hongkongers when considering this is what they are dealing with day in day out.

There is really no easy solution to this. The mainlanders and Hongkongers are basically two distinct groups of people. As nice as it sounds to have a unification the social differences would continue to exist until the current generations of Hongkongers disappear. But this will take decades to happen. The lack of intervention form both sides of the border did not help either. It seems that at this point it is really up to the civilians to tackle this difficult problem, but I don’t see either party would be giving in. I am sad to see that it comes to this but then being sad about something that has no solution did not help either. I just sincerely hope that one day this could be resolved in a civilised manner and the two territories could have a real unification for the better of the Chinese race, if that is going to happen at all in my life time. 

It was a glorious moment for China, but has the shine worn off?

An Election With No Selection

As September is drawing closer and closer, I feel more and more torn about the whole Federal Election thing. This is the second time that I don’t really want to vote for anyone in an election.

Democracy gave us an illusion that we have a choice but in fact from the Australian politics perspective that choice does not exist. Well, it does exist but how do you choose from candidates who, one of them does not seem to know what she is doing or saying but just asking for more tax payer money and the other who only cares about adding the Prime Ministership to his CV and does not care a darn about the general Australians? In the last election, we still have a stronger but smaller party to choose from but this time round, that option is gone too as it seems that they have lost the plot too.

At the moment there is no best bet for the September election. If I chose Labor , then I will be participating in another round of fiasco of mismanagement and lack of vision. Probably more tax increase because no money for other things. However I am always surprised that when it comes to their own welfare there is always money. I still continue to question about why retired politicians who are receiving huge sum of money as consultants for private businesses need the Government to provide an office at Macquarie Street while they don’t need it. Also why do we need to pay for their airfares every year when they have more than enough money to fly business class or even first class themselves? Every time a new tax is introduced I question that. Even worse was the recent news that the Labor Government just increased the payout of severance packages for people in their offices if they did not get re-elected – which is quite obvious this is a hush hush approach to save their financial asses.

As for the Liberals, they are really nothing liberal about. They are against basic human rights such as marriage equality. Now I don’t want to get into the whole religious debate. For me it is not about religious righteousness but about basic rights. Faith and believe is a very personal relationship between an individual and God, and I do not condone using your religious agenda to achieve personal preferences. Not allowing people to get married because of your personal religious agenda as a Catholic is similar to what you attack about the Muslims. Yes Tony Abott I am looking at you. Further Tony Abott is not the most religious Catholic in the world for he nearly had an illegitimate son! Who is he to cast the first stone and cry foul to marriage equality? Also the Liberals lack of vision about the NBN project is a blatant way of putting Australia’s economic success in the future in jeopardy. Do they really care about Australia? Or they just care about whether they have enough money for their retirement funds in the future?

As for the Greens, well I really got nothing more to say about them except having my face’s colour turning green when I imagine them to become a ruling party (which they would not anyway). While I appreciate a lot of their efforts and their visions, nothing much was accomplished in the last few years apart from showing that they do have a say in the Parliament.

Seriously in the last three years, the Australian political scene showed us nothing but fiasco and stupidity.  Apart from more taxes being introduced and people yelling at each other and throwing names at each other each week, what has been done? Julia’s speech on misogynist will still go down as one of the great speeches for women politicians but Australia needs a Prime Minister who actually has a clear vision and at the same time the ability to bring this vision to reality. Julia Gillard might have a vision but at this stage she seems to lack the ability to carry that out. As for Tony Abott, he is neither a visionary nor a capable person from what he exhibited in the last three years. He just look like a spoiled brat who knows nothing about life but just want more from his supporters. If he became Prime Minister (which probably he would) Australia could enter a long period of dark age for nothing would be done because Tony Abott will just be focusing on staying in power and getting rid of differences in the party and the Parliament. Debates will become talk shows that don’t even scratch the surface of any social issues.

I wish the No Parking Meter Party was a federal level political party as at least its agenda is out there and I do genuinely do not like parking meters in certain areas.