Site proof of residents’ angst
GLEN Eira’s own Wikileaks-style website has generated more than 100,000 hits in its first year, many from residents slamming the council’s planning decisions and governance.
But acting mayor Jamie Hyams said it was hard to take a website seriously when contributors did not put their names to it.
Two full-time moderators and two occasional helpers have managed the gleneira.wordpress. com site anonymously since it was founded in June 2010. Some contributors use their real names, others use a pseudonym.
The site publishes council meeting outcomes, petitions, reports and letters to and from councillors which residents analyse and discuss. Recent issues on the site include Glen Eira Swimming and Aquatic Centre’s construction and the Caulfield Racecourse development.
A moderator said several councillors had posted comments on the site and mentioned Glen Eira debates in council meetings, which showed the site was making councillors aware of the community’s discontent. ‘‘We don’t want to merely be hitting a nerve, we want dramatic change in the way this council has operated for over a decade now.’’
– Rebecca Thistleton
Glen Eira Debates 
August 15, 2011 at 9:58 AM
Hey Jamie did you know it’s very difficult to take a council seriously when countless reports are put out and no names attached to them so no one is accepting responsibility. Jamie did you also know that it’s incredibly hard to take councillors seriously when within months they continually contradict their own arguments? and did you know that it’s impossible to take anything seriously when you allow the words ‘extensive consultation’ to be used when everyone knows that no such thing exists. Just look at the recent effort.
August 15, 2011 at 1:20 PM
I wonder if other Councillors also place no value on our contributions to public debate. Yesterday I spent several hours going through documents before writing a comment, so its disturbing to hear Jamie be so dismissive.
As Anonymous (not the Strident one) has pointed out, Council reports rarely identify their authors. When the review of the Planning Scheme revealed what a wonderful job the Planning Department is doing, would its credibility be enhanced if we knew who wrote those comments?
The Draft Community Engagement Strategy lists a range of engagement tools and techniques, and acknowledges each has its advantages and disadvantages. We can probably scrub surveys and questionnaires if identifiable information has to be attached to each response.
At one of the public meetings concerning the Racecourse Precinct, Council demanded the full name of someone who only wanted to give their first name. It wasn’t designed to encourage people to speak and express their views openly.
On a personal level I never received abusive and threatening phonecalls at 3am until after I got involved in objecting to developments in my area that failed to comply with the standards contained in GEPS. Maybe its unrelated–I don’t know. Council does however provide my personal details to developers, and some of them don’t take kindly to having their profits threatened.
August 15, 2011 at 4:45 PM
Anonymity is catching. That’s pretty obvious when you discover that in the minutes of last council meeting the carbon reduction proposal is created by Mr. Nobody. Even the perfunctory accompanying report is also penned by the ubiquitous Mr. Nobody. Wasn’t it Koestler who wrote about ‘rule by nobody’? That’s how bureaucracies work – no one takes the blame or responsibility. My argument is that the buck stops with the CEO and all those silly, silly councillors who allow this practice to continue. I’d be interested to know what Cr. Hyams thinks of such anonymity and how it enhances council’s purported objective of being as transparent as it possibly can be?
August 15, 2011 at 5:12 PM
Keep on keeping on Glen Eira Debates. You are fulfilling an important public function that councillors ignore and denigrate at their peril. I choose to write anonymously and resent Hyams implication that because of this my views are less important than someone who signs their name, or that my views are consequently unjustified. If council can accept and act on anonymous complaints, and they do this continually at great expense to ratepayers, then I have every right to make my complaints public and also anonymous. If Hyams and others don’t like this, then they had better realise that residents have no trust or faith in this current council and their only safe option is to remain anonymous. As Thistleton writes, change must come, and it will come.
August 18, 2011 at 10:40 AM
Congratulations to Glen Eira Debates on being recognised!
What Cr Hyams fails to recognise is the great service this blog is to the residents of Glen Eira – it’s about collating publicly accessible knowledge and putting it into a format that is easy to digest. Not all of us are able to decipher meaningless mumbo-jumbo, so we greatly appreciate that there is a translation service available.
As for anonymity, to quote the Victorian Privacy Commissioner’s five rights:
“The right information
to the right people
for the right reason
in the right way
at the right time.”
August 19, 2011 at 11:04 AM
I like this quote, Liz, and it really sum up what this blog is all about and I commend those who put in the time and effort to bring matters to our attention that we would otherwise know nothing about. The next question is, why don’t contributors publish their name? What deters us? Think about it! I know why I don’t.
Councillor Hyams has nothing to fear from this site, annonymous or otherwise, if Council is going about its business in an open and transparent way. A good start would be a more user friendly Council website. At the time of writing this (Aug 19), and after much searching, I can find nothing about the August 22 public meeting regarding the racecourse? Why isn’t it on the ‘Calendar of Events’?
August 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM
Dear anonymous,
you should also note that the ‘Public Notices’ section on Council’s website is stuck on May 2011. A public question referred to this at the last council meeting. The response was that the question was not understood and that the questioner needed to be more specific since council did not know what May 2011 referred to.
Major improvements to the website have been promised for years now. In fact an online survey took place. The results, actions resulting, and overall evaluation are yet to be placed in the public domain, nor can residents really detect any major changes as a result of this further expenditure of public monies!