Kieran’s Commentary

To anyone who has been trying to contact me, 3 have suspended my mobile service. There’s this small issue of an unpaid three hundred dollar phone bill.

The habits we have when we’re employed soon become unsustainable when we’re doing part time work and caring for a family member. They become even more unsustainable when your bloody employer screws up the paperwork two fortnights in a row and you don’t get paid for a month. Latrobe University I am looking at you.

Anyway, enough grumbling from me. If you’re trying to contact me, I recommend email or instant message. I’ll post an update when the phone’s back on.

“Jack Stone” at Albury Wodonga Online has written an article entitled Patricia Gould and the Apexians, Branch Stacking? Jack, you’ve totally missed the mark on this one.

Jack claims that Patricia Gould has been sniffing around the Albury Apex club for supporting candidates in the upcoming election. It’s probably true, community service organisation members make good candidates.

But branch stacking? Rubbish. In no way, shape or form could this type of activity be described as branch stacking.

Branch stacking involves dishonestly filling a branch of an organisation with new members in order to take control of that branches voting power within the wider organisation. The people recruited for this purpose do not participate in the organisation for any purpose other than to take control of it. The person stacking an organisation might pay the membership dues of stacked members, complete their membership forms, and/or equip themselves with the fraudulent proxy votes of “their” members.

Recruiting candidates to support a council bid is NOT branch stacking. Councillors will be elected by the public. It is definitionally impossible to “branch stack” councillors into a council.

Last year Jack Stone published an article on my site, The Wodonga Online Times, claiming he had evidence that Rodney Wangman planned to rig the outcome of Wodonga City Council’s election. The method? Recruiting a ticket to support him in the election.

The claim was probably true, the notion that any sitting mayor would not try to recruit a ticket in order to ensure their re-election is almost absurd. But the further claim that this constituted “rigging” the outcome is just fantastically absurd.

His most recent claim about Patricia Gould is also, probably true. Why wouldn’t she try and recruit Apex members to support her campaign for re-election? People involved in community service are respected in the community, and might make good councillor’s if elected.

I do believe it is worth examining candidate’s intentions in the upcoming elections. But to conflate their actions with “branch stacking” or “rigging” in this manner is just dishonest.

Jack, I know you don’t like Patricia Gould, or Rodney Wangman for that matter, but stop being a bloody idiot.

Update: Jack started his post with the words “…if you scratch my back…” positioned near a picture of the APEX logo and a photo of Patricia Gould. Dave from Albury, a blogger and member of the Albury Apex club has posted this response:

“To compare the relationship between Mrs Gould and the Apex Club of Albury to the practice of branch stacking is inappropriate and entirely without basis.”

I like Jenny Hansuka, but I have to take issue with her latest contribution to Wodonga City’s newsletter, “City Life”.

In the “Councillor Comment” column, Cr Jenny Hansuka claims that council is not just “about roads, rates and rubbish”:

learn that council is not just about roads, rates and rubbish. The spectrum of services that council is now responsible for has grown and will continue to do so as major community issues continue to emerge such as environmental sustainability, community safety, economic development and social cohesion for which the community expects its local council to take act on

I disagree. Council is all about roads, rates and rubbish.

The greatest community expectation of local government is that they be good at being a local government. The first and foremost priority of a local government is, and has to be, the provision of basic municipal services such as roads, rubbish collection, public toilets and public space.

The extent to which council has a mandate to branch out into these bigger picture issues, and I do believe it has this mandate, must occur within the framework of providing excellent basic municipal services.

Environmental Sustainability
If council invests in and provides excellent public transport, well maintained bike paths, and simpler planning regulations that promote sustainable development, then environmental outcomes will flow from this as a matter of course.

Community Safety
The key to a safe community from a local government point of view is well maintained roads, public spaces that are clear of dangerous rubbish, efficient rubbish collection, and appropriate planning. As council has finally realised in the CBD, for example, toilet blocs that look and smell like something out of the soviet bloc do nothing for either safety or community involvement in the CBD.

Economic Development
When council works to maintain the best possible basic services for the lowest rate load, they will attract development on a two fold basis.

People will move to a liveable, well serviced small city. Businesses will develop and grow in a town that gets municipal infrastructure right whilst maintaining the lowest possible tax burden.

Social Cohesion
Get the planning right, get the provision of basic services right, get the maintenance of roads, bike paths, parks and the CBD right, and the social results will flow from this.

Jenny says that Councillor’s need to think big, they need to consider the next fifty years as well as the next ten years. I would argue that council needs to think in terms of doing the basic things better; build long term social, environmental and economic outcomes on this base.

Jenny, it’s all about the roads, rates and rubbish.

New Assignment topic from Friendo:

Niccolo Machiavelli has been admired by many followers as the ‘father of modern politics’ agree or disagree, explain why. compare, contrast Italy circa 1513 when he wrote The Prince and 2008, today.

History remembers Machiavelli for The Prince. It condemns him for the cynicism, indeed sheer opportunism of that work. We coined the word “Machiavellian” to describe the scheming, opportunistic and amoral outlook we presume this work embodies. And we do so falsely.

Machiavelli worked as a public servant and diplomat in the Florentine Republic during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Italy was a series of fractured and often warring city states, occasionally existing as Republics, Princely states, or Papal states.

The dominant political philosophy was one of Divine Right. The ruling order was considered to be ordained by God, the duty of statesmen was to be good Chirstians, uphold God’s law and respect the authority of the Pope.

Machiavelli, in his role as a diplomat and public servant, saw the sheer hypocrisy of this philosophy. States were amoral, the system of international relations was defined by conflict, and Prince’s were either strong or dead. As for the the Pope, he acted like any other temporal Prince, and his power to issue religious sanction did not prevent the sack of Rome.

In 1512 the Florentine Republic was over thrown, and the Medici family returned to power. Machiavelli, as an important figure in the previous regime was discredited and out of favour. The tradition in this situation was to try and gain favour by offering gifts that demonstrated loyalty to the new regime. And so Machiavelli wrote The Prince; he offered the new regime his political acumen. It was a gift that was rejected, Machiavelli never returned to a position of political influence, and his letter (The Prince) would not be published until five years after his death.

When it was published, it caused a storm, and it was widely condemned. Machiavellian became a pejorative term, his hypocrisy, opportunism and cynicism were seen to be self evident.

It is little wonder that The Prince scandalised the political establishment in Europe. It stripped away the righteous pretensions of Princes and Kings, and described the political reality as it was.

Consider the following ideas:

• The duty of the Prince was not to uphold Christian or chivalric values. The duty of the Prince is to survive, in order to create the stability in which other people can be “Christian”.
• It is better to be feared than loved. Why? To maintain power, and why? See the first point.
• It is better to appear honest and be as deceitful as necessary. Why? See the first point.
• It is better to appear merciful and be merciless. Why? See the first point.

Machiavelli explains a wide range of seemingly evil ideas. If you’ve conquered a new state, kill the previous rulers, subjugate the ruling class. But it makes sense when you understand the central tenant of his philosophy.

Power is the starting point. Without power The Prince cannot do good things, and thus The Prince’s overriding concern must be the maintenance of his power.

Everything flows from power. It is little wonder that his ideas scandalised those who deluded themselves with the fig leaf of Christian duty.

But has the world changed? Europe is no longer a system of warring states. The monarchs are dead. Is Machiavelli still relevant?

It is clear throughout Machiavelli’s work and life that he was essentially a republican. His theory was not predicated upon the assumption of monarchy, merely the assumption that it was a monarch he was trying to impress with his ideas.

The Prince is The State.

In world affairs we no longer draw on the fig leaf of Papal authority and religious duty. Instead we use the fig leafs of democracy, and international law.

The fact remains, that for a state to do anything, be it embrace democracy, or pursue economic development, or less noble goals, it must survive. It must retain the autonomy to act, and that requires the crushing of threats to power. This philosophy of power is in the current age described as “realism”. It’s proponents argue that it is not moral or immoral, merely a statement of fact.

But we idealists have long feared what embracing this realism might result in. I think we fear it for the same reason the kings of old despised it.

In Machiavelli’s time the issue was one of the exercise of power without recourse to religious illusion. I think many a King realised that in this reality, King’s could be swept away. Is it any wonder that a common attribute in any successful revolution has been the destruction of the Monarch and any other key proponents of the old system?

In the modern era we fear the existence of power exercised without recourse to the illusions of law and democracy. No matter how true it is, do we really want to live in a world in which people recognise the meaninglessness of these precious fig leaves?

Machiavelli left us with a truer understanding of the reality of politics, and for this he will forever be hated, despised and feared.

Got a topic you reckon I couldn’t tackle? Or that I should tackle and haven’t? Throw me a topic and I’ll give you five hundred words. Usual caveats apply.