Chief Minister surveying the population in the guise of researching community consultation ...

trevar, I reckon it’s you that has the warped idea of consultation.

For it to be at all useful it certainly does need to be two-way – both parties need to be prepared to listen to the other. If the citizen says “I am concerned about outcome X from your proposal.” and the government comes back with “OK, fair point, we will put in place mitigation Y.” then it behooves the citizen to take a genuine look at the response, and not just expect that their own preferred solution (usually, “Drop the whole proposal.”) must be adopted.

Both parties need to act in good faith, with the government recognising that there may be legitimate concerns with their proposals that need to be addressed, and the citizens recognising that the government must balance the interests of everyone. Consultation should be neither a box to be ticked nor is it an automatic right to gainsay every proposal.

54-11 said :

JTK, you are quite wrong. What passes for consultation in this jurisdiction is nothing but superficial fluff.

I thought JTK was being sarcastic…

Suzzane Barr is Andrew Barr’s wife. Sheesh where have you been!

JTK, you are quite wrong. What passes for consultation in this jurisdiction is nothing but superficial fluff.

Selective spin-doctored “facts” are placed in front of some people, depending on who reads/listens to the various media used at the time, the govt already has predetermined outcomes sorted so true options are not made known, and the govt then proudly proclaims how it has “consulted” and goes ahead and does what it wants anyway.

QUOTE: Curious – the survey supervisor given as the survey contact (not made clear whether she’s in the department or the Chief Minister’s Office) is one “Suzanne Barr”. No Canberra Google result. Any relation to Andrew Barr one wonders? UNQUOTE.

I think we can safely assume she isn’t his wife.

It is two way – If you dont like what you are hearing – just elect a different cute looking popular type person next time?

I still think they have a warped idea of consultation. They seem to see themselves as the consultee, rather than the consulter. Consultation is not a two-way communication. The party being consulted should be the speaker, and the party doing the consulter should be the listener. They clearly misunderstand this.

Perhaps they feel that the community’s discontent comes from misunderstanding what they’re doing, and they don’t realise that the discontent could come from being displeased with what they’re doing, even though we understand it.

It is good to see that they are looking at how they can contact people —-

The recent whines from people over the ‘lack of consultation’ with various projects that I have heard indicates that the people in this region dont read the paper any more.

I wonder if they watch youtube?

In communicating with people, never forget what the cuppa-soup people have resorted to:

“The presence of the words Wheat, Soy and Eggs in bold type in the ingredients list indicates that this product contains Wheat, Soy and Eggs” And sure enough, the ingredients list has them in *bold* type.

The world has gotten dumber.

I for one wholeheartedly encourage a system where they can get some sort of written response – so that when Harry of Holt has a whine, they can cay – but Harry – we spoke with you at 6.50pm on October the 3rd. Kind of like read receipts in emails…..