The dummy motion trap

It’s a pretty devious way of gagging your opponents. Haven’t heard of that ploy before.

I once had a situation where I had to vote on a development I didn’t want to go through, but it looked like the numbers were going to go against me. So I put up a range of amendments to mitigate the damage that I believed would result from this development. I voted for these amendments, and so did the majority of Council. Then the amended development was put to the vote and I voted against it, but as I expected it got up. But some of the other Councillors were flabbergasted that I “voted against my own amendments”. They couldn’t figure out that it was an entirely legitimate ploy and they walked right into it…

As to Minister Barr’s gagging of the community’s right to have input into the school developments, I disagree entirely. I think it likely that there’d be little adverse comment on the proposals, so all this seems a bit like another unneccesary and unjustifiable dilution of democratic principles by a government that seems to getting over its election result a little too quickly.