Colin Barnett, as the initiator and champion of the WA shark cull, has suffered a personal defeat at the hands of the EPA.This excuse for a policy was introduced without proper assessment - even down to the absence of any assessment of the technical and legal risks. It has now been knocked into touch by the adjudicator.
Sound familiar?
The policy of forced local government boundary changes (as Col and Homer are very fond of saying, there no forced amalgamations simply because they do no deign to call them what they are) was also introduced without proper assessment of costs, benefits and risks - as Home has 'proudly and unambiguously stated.
The danger of not doing your homework, Col and Homer, is that an independent arbiter will be unable to see the justification for what you are doing. In particular, if you cannot demonstrate the benefits and that risks are appropriately managed, an objective person will say you have no business imposing costs on those who do not want what you are forcing on them.
So, the shark cull is gone today.
Tomorrow (well, in a few months), Col and Homer's local government so-called reform is likely to meet the same fate at the hands of the Supreme Court.
From Col's perspective, I suppose, this will at least have the relative 'virtue' of, at worst, being shared with Homer. More likely, he is already congratulating himself on having successfully set up Homer as the fall guy for this failure.
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