Motion to Accept: Lipshutz/Magee

LIPSHUTZ:  ‘One of the issues (looked at) is risk management….made very clear in the preamble that all councillors can attend meetings and not just members of the committee….risk management…..has taken up a great deal of time at committee level ….because that’s something that’s very important. (If a disaster happened then it’s important that) this council could be up and running very quickly (and Audit Committee looks at this and makes sure it happens)….Fraud prevention (is also important because council is big business) and deals with many millions of dollars and so many people on staff. Given that there is always the possibility of fraud …..happily this council hasn’t had that….(due to prevention)….and honesty of our employees….but you only need one to make it big….(the Audit committee thus provides) oversight….(Other changes to the charter)…. enhance the role of the Audit Committee and make it clearer (as to what the committee does)….’

Magee declined to speak. Motion passed unanimously. Readers will of course note that many of the issues we’ve highlighted in the past (such as the ‘permanent’ membership of Lipshutz, Gibbs and McLean) did not get a mention. Reading this morning’s Age, one article by Barry Jones struck us as spot on in relation to the level of debate/discussion in this council. The last section of the article is included below:

“Despite the exponential increases in public education and access to information in the past century, the quality of political debate appears to have become increasingly unsophisticated, appealing to the lowest common denominator of understanding.

In 1860, in New York Abraham Lincoln began his campaign for the presidency with a very complex speech about slavery at the Cooper Union, 7500 words long, complex and nuanced. All four New York newspapers published the full text, which was sent by telegraph across the nation, widely read and discussed. In 1860 the technology was primitive but the ideas were profound and sophisticated. In 2011 technology is sophisticated but the ideas uttered by presidential aspirants are embarrassing in their banality, ignorance and naivety.

It is instructive to compare the debate in the Victorian Parliament in 1872 on the Education Act and the debate in 2006 for the Education and Training Reform Act, a consolidation of legislation passed in the previous 134 years. Which debate was of higher quality? In 1872 MPs were discussing ideas – especially ”free, secular and compulsory” education, while in 2006 all the speeches were about management and training as a factor in job creation. In 2006 I suggested that it might be time to actually define ”Education”, something omitted in the draft bill, and to explore its role in personal and community life, but this was rejected as too ambitious.

In 1872 the minister, J. Wilberforce Stephen, quoted the poet and educational reformer Matthew Arnold eight times in his speech and expressed the hope that the legislation would ”set an example to our progenitors in England”. There was no comparable ambition in 2006. No ideas on education were mentioned and it is doubtful how many MPs in 2006 would have recognised Arnold’s name, even as the author of Dover Beach.”