Anyone who had the opportunity of watching ABC TV's documentary "Rats in the Ranks" which followed the shenanigans of Sydney's Leichhardt Council, will know what i mean when i say that local councils and councillors are a dysfunctional lot.
Rats was followed up by the very clever satirical comedy "Grass Roots", which focused on the fictional Arcadia Waters Council. It was almost spot on, only let down by the fact that the councillors of Arcadia did in fact have a mild degree of intelligence. But they captured the dysfunctional, egotistically self centred approach of those who think they are representing their community.
Which brings me to junkets. When we think of junkets, we might be inclined to think of those overseas study tour things, to work out how garbage is collected in Copenhagen for instance. Or visits to Sister Cities, to develop a program which is perhaps the most useless waste of resources in the history of waste. I will be following up on many of these later. And there ain't no shortage of examples!
But the junket we are looking at today is the Municipal Association of Victoria's "Councillor Development Program", held in mid July at the struggling town of Lorne, on the Great Ocean Road. Tough Gig.
Costing $1080 per person, and taking place at the thoroughly downmarket Cumberland Resort on the beach, the weekend contains the following:
2 Nights Accommodation at the Cumberland Resort
2 Pre Dinner Drinks
2 Fully Catered Dinners including drinks
2 Lunches
2 Morning teas
1 Afternoon tea
Oh yeah there is a couple of lectures (snooze) and one or two workshops thrown in as well.
The weekend is apparently a "must attend professional development opportunity for councillors" and will "celebrate the end of an era for some councillors and a re-commitment for others."
Not only that, this weekend is a self help session for councillors after they leave this cushy gig. The weekend will "provide councilors with training opportunities...which can also be applied to their personal and post councillor lives." Classic really.
But don't worry, the accommodation at the Cumberland Resort is not as decked out as you might imagine, and only has all of the following: Heated indoor pool, spa, gym, tennis court, squash court, table tennis, pinball and pool table.
Spouses are welcome to accompany their councillor partner, and to keep them amused can engage in such things as in house massage, golf, sea kayaking and horse riding. I'm not making any of this up - this is all included in the junket brochure.
The $1080 registration will be paid directly by local councils - that's your rates at work. Don't even think for a moment that councillors will be paying for any of this out of their own pockets. This $1080 will come on top of Local Councils annual subscription to the Municipal Association of Victoria, often heading into the tens of thousands of dollars every year.
And lets face it, with the head of the MAV being paid around $300,000 every year, keeping this organisation running isnt cheap. Im still not quite sure what the MAV actually does, but more on that later.
But the most important point about this junket weekend in Lorne is the fact that Councillors head to election in November, just 4 months after this drunken festivity.
Why on earth would they need a development weekend, when 4 months later, half of them wont be around after they retire or are defeated?
If these junkets were to have any use, wouldn't it make sense to run it AFTER the new councillors are elected? And couldn't it just as easily have been run as a one day conference with a couple of workshops in the heart of Melbourne? Or at some council town hall somewhere - its not as if it wouldn't be for free!
Yet another fun filled weekend for councillors to engage in drunken frivolity. You bet, these are your rates at work. Keep in mind, these guys also earn over $20,000 a year in what they refer to as an allowance. The Mayor gets even more, up to about $80,000 in addition to a Statesmen and free petrol.
(If you have an example of council waste, i would love to hear from you. Email me at youngandgrumpy@gmail.com Your anonymity is assured)
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