Sauce. Goose. Gander. Nahan.

Click to enlarge

Mike Nahan, masquerading as the Member for Riverton but trying to carry all the weight of being a Cabinet Minister, several times publicly called for a different outcome for local government from that recommended by the Local Government Advisory Board or accepted by his Ministerial colleague, Tony Simpson (particularly to get all of his constituency into the City of Melville).

So much for Cabinet solidarity.

So, he's quite happy to try to use public opinion to influence decisions when it suits him, but when someone (he assumes it to be a public servant, but apparently without any evidence) attempts to do the same for decisions he has or is about to make it suddenly becomes 'political games' and shouldn't happen.

Sauce for the goose. Sauce for the gander, Ned - oops! almost managed a full post without using his alter ego.

No doubt he would prefer simply to make decisions, announce them and have the hoi poloi roll over and accept them.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr Nahan - the century of open and accountable government - whether government likes it or not. Keeping secrets doesn't work any more.

Simpson 'Shares Blame' - But It's Everyone Else's Fault

There is something truly Pythonesque* about Tony Simpson's latest protestations. He admits that "the State Government could have handled the reform process differently" [presumably he means better] and that he "shared the blame for its failure" - but he also says it's the fault of scaremongering and self-interest from Councils.

He still doesn't get it, does he! It was a single member of the community who initiated the legal action. It was individuals and community groups who kept the pressure on throughout the so-called process. And it was community groups (albeit in one case with the active support of its Council) that brought about the binding 'NO' votes in three of the Dadour polls.

And his suggestion that he should have taken all the boundaries off the map and drawn circles around the regional centres might make sense if you were literally starting from scratch but completely ignores the reality of having to split most local governments two or three ways and then combining bits of half a dozen into one.

Even if the new state were better than the previous one, the transition costs (economic, financial and social) would be horrendous and long-lasting. Local government services would suffer for many years as all the parts were brought together and rationalised - and valued programs would be likely to disappear as they did not have 'majority ownership' in the new council(s).

* Reference to the 'Dead Bishop' sketch, in which the villain says: "All right, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame" - at which the policeman then says: "We'll be charging them, too".

Hills Gazette, 3rd March 2015. Click to enlarge