ALARMING NEWS TO MUSE UPON

 

One has to really wonder just what the agenda is here and just who is trying to achieve what? The YMCA quite simply wants to survive and is up for change in order to do so. State & Local Govt for whatever reason is disinclined to offer a HANDup and it seems they have no charity. So apparently their regard for the YMCA is CONDITIONAL – CPR Town Hall Standard – and when you think about that the CoL Faux COUNCIL'S VALUES (Its discretionary KPI if you like) are not anywhere to be seen in this case. 

AND IT IS NOT ANYTHING THAT THE PRESS WILL PROMOTE EITHER 

To wit my recent letter to the Editor 

UPR ... A BRIDGE TOO FAR?

In the ‘health and caring professions’ there is a concept to do with professional relationships between service provider and ‘patient’. It’s acronym is UPR – Unconditional Positive Regard – in acknowledgement of the reality that a requirement to “LOVE” a patient would be totally inappropriate.

Anyone who has experienced a serious ‘medical event’ will have experienced UPR albeit that they might not be able to put words to what they have experienced. Indeed, like ‘love’, its not anything you can describe but you know it when it is there, and thankfully it is, and it is all around us all the time.

Arguably, that is not entirely the case in regard to ‘professionalism’ in local governance. It’s glaringly absent at the City of Launceston’s Town Hall.

On the evidence, Launceston’s Mayor, GM/CEO and most, it would seem, of the so-called elected ‘representatives’ as well, regard their constituents quite differently to UPR. If the bureaucracy at CoL were to be put to the test in the way that the ‘caring professions’ can be they would find themselves in front of coroners, Royal Commissions and any number of professional accountability inquiries – and they would no doubt be found wanting.

It appears as if no longer does this council see it as their role to deliver on SECTION 2O of the Local Government Act 1993. Rather, it seems to see itself as a revenue collection agency, the ‘approver’ of developments that its constituency finds faults in and as a ‘operation’ well beyond the scrutiny of mere ratepayers, taxpayers and the press.

If the class of ‘professional standards’ applied to the ‘caring professions’ were to be applied to the governors and managers of ‘placemaking’ at Launceston’s Town Hall they would most certainly be deregistered – some might even find themselves in prison.

Huon Council and Glenorchy councils have been sacked, why not Launceston’s?

Ray Norman

Researcher & Cultural Geographer

Launceston