THE IDEAL MAYORAL CANDIDATE FOR LAUNCESTON NOW IDENTIFIED

Today, Cr Kerfoppz announced that they will be running for election as mayor of the City of Launceston in the upcoming mayoral by-election. 

Following Mayor Gibson’s untimely resignation and the deplorable and ongoing personal attaches he suffered, Cr Kerfoppz said "it occurred to me that the city is in the grip of some rather very dark, unproductive and shabby gutter politics."

The Councillor went on to say, "when I had given all that some thought in the days since Cr Gibson's resignation as mayor I wondered, where to from here.“

The Councillor ran for council in the last local government elections saying that "I just want to see the things that need to be done, get to be done. There needs to be major changes to the way Council serves ratepayers for that to happen."   

The Councillor has operated businesses in Launceston for many years and the Councillor says "I have initiated multiple developments."

"I believe that my business experience stands me in good stead, and I'm up for change and to the challenge" The Councillor said. 

"I consider myself to be hard working and to have developed the kind of business experience that should enable me to contribute more to the work of council and the whole municipality from the mayor's office and in ways that allows all the city’s ratepayers to work with Council in a collaborative way.” 

“Mayors have just one vote. Leaders know that while they might know a thing or two, it is their ability to collaborate and to work cooperatively with other people that matters most” the Councillor said. 

"Launceston is in crisis mode right now especially because far too many people are facing housing stress. Launceston people and their council need all their councillors and others outside the council to step up to the plate, to moderate the excesses of a few, and help citizens work together towards strengthening the city's position relative housing and many other things." 

When questioned about current business activities the councillor said that should voters honour them again with their support my personal business affairs will be rearrange in ways that will enable what must be done to be done. 

"I won't be just a ribbon cutting mayor and I won't be a mayor out of the reach the city’s ordinary citizens," 

Cr Kerfoppz said. ”I will work as hard on this task as I have been in my serious commitment to leading my various business operations and also supporting the community in small ways towards the best possible outcomes." 

The Councillor went on to say that "running as an independent councillor dedicated to enabling good decisions to be made is important element of my campaign. "

"My first commitment will be to the council’s work" the Councillor said. 

"Over my life in the city many people have come to know me, they know who I am and about the work I have done, they know that I am capable, and they all know that I love Launceston, it is my home.” .

Cr Kerfoppz has things in mind that need to done but said, “I’m very mindful that by myself I can do none of it and it will only get done if all around the decision making table we can speak our mind and then work together to do what ratepayers expect of their councillors and my vote will be 1 in 12”

"Good mayors do not make decisions they try to ensure that good decisions get to be made and ideally deliberated upon rather than debated" Cr Kerfoppz said.

Launceston voters are asked to carefully compare and contrast "The Kerfoppz Campaign" with all the other campaigns. Also, please distribute your preferences very carefully and then VOTE FOR LAUNCESTON!  

POLITICAL PUPPETRY: THE WEIRD LONGGAME PLAYED IN THE DARK

It is a kind magician's bargain, a joker's deal: give up your soul, win, get power and wealth in return. But once your soul has been handed over, that is, yourself, your very self, and your soul has been given up, the power thus conferred will never really belong to you nor will anything else be yours ever again. 

You are now a slave among enslaved puppets, a hollow entity and exemplar of all that you have become. You have given up your soul as they have theirs. 

You are just a puppet with a little bit of largely unspendable money at your feet but who can see the strings. Actually, who cares to look for them?

This Faustian deal has been played out for centuries. It turns up in the ballads, its on the stage in so many dramas and movies, and of course its in the puppet-plays which grew out of these deals. It is for the irrevocably damned because those with souls for sale prefer human knowledge over those higher forms of being in the world, those things that have no price – that which souls cannot buy.

The Faustian deal turned up in the 16th century, typically reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. However it usually turns out that Faust becomes a craven and dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for more than earthly meat and drink in an unsatisfying life. 

All that lay ahead is a deeper darker abyss than the one your soul paid for. It is what it is.

THE LAUNCESTON TOWN HALL CIRCUS

It is becoming increasingly bewildering as inexplicable events unfold in Tasmania and Launceston. Witnessing the lived experiences of a great many Launcestonians is nothing short of bewildering as daily inexplicable events unfold 

 

Senator Wish-Wilson has likened a lot of this political carry on to the histories attached to Roman Empire building. As he reminds us, the Emperors handed out free bread and staged circuses to placate the people and rid to themselves troublesome nonconformists.

Sadly right now the needy people in housing stress are not getting their free bread and good people are being fed to the lions because the autocratic empire builders, and their servants, are surplus to requirement.

 

The metaphoric similarities become increasingly obvious as the empowered throw away their money, hang on a minute, our hard-won earnings on frivolities in the hope that we will thank them.  

 

It is encouraging to see that there are increasing numbers of people who are becoming les os and less inclined to go quietly to the circus and engage in the gladiatorial blood lust or the Orwellian doublespeak that is being fed to the masses.

Douglas Adams told us that the answer to life, the universe and everything, according to the super computer, DEEP THOUHT [VIDEO LINK] is 42 – h2g2, meaning of life, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Adams also noted that us humans are sort of unique given our ability to learn from the experience of others. However, he also noted that we are also quite remarkable for our apparent disinclination to do so. 

Quite possibly all this explains in part as to why it is that self appreciating empire builders think that they can all at once be clowns, magicians, animal trainers, ring masters even, under some glitzy big top or other without the need to even hand out the free bread. 

These want-to-be empire builders of this weird world actually carry an enormous liability in their certainty that their double-dealing is too clever to be detected. Their trouble comes along when their folly is exposed and the crowds start to boo loudly.

LINK

OPEN LETTER: QVMAG REPORTING

The question below I addressed to the “Mayor and Councillors” and it as has become an ongoing pattern of managerial intervention in that it has yet again been responded to by ‘management’ without any apparent reference to the Councillors. Given that the question was to do with a strategic and policy determination matter I believe that management has yet again exceeded its authority unless of course management has been delegated ‘governance authority’ by the Councillors. If so, the Councillors misrepresented themselves when they stood for election and continue to do so in their unseemly deference to management. 

The GM/CEO has asserted that Councillors are neither the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) governing body nor the institution’s ‘Trustees’ entrusted with the security of the institution’s collections. Nonetheless the institution reports to the Councillors somewhat decoratively and with the report buried as it is on the 414th Page of the agenda there is unhealthy signalling. Quite possibly this is because ‘management’ oversights the city’s budget and thus, somewhat haplessly, the Councillors underwrite the lion’s share of the QVMAG’s recurrent budget – thus the lip service. 

By extension, this means that the city’s ratepayers are underwriting the QVMAG’s recurrent budget along with the funding of the institution’s capital expenditure and largely without any semblance of effective accountability. 

Against this background it also needs to be said that by bureaucratically, and inappropriately, bending the roles of governance and management, Launceston Town Hall has distorted and seriously warped the 'strategic purpose of the QVMAG'. Strategically, currently the institution operates virtually in a ‘rudderless’ way without a functional strategic plan and apparently without a ‘functional governing body’ to oversight the institution and its purposefulness. 

'In allowing this to happen, Councillors have clearly abdicated their governance role and the QVMAG is yet another exemplar of their abdication. Arguably, and concerningly, the QVMAG is the fraction that represents the whole. 

In a nutshell, the QVMAG, as an institution, was what it was, a purposeful, research oriented ‘musingplace’ that reflected the social dynamics and shifting cultural realities, and the times, it existed within – albeit that the critical discourse and its colonial leanings were contestable. Currently, Launceston Town Hall’s management’s mind set has ‘blended and blanded’ its strategic positing ‘managerially’ well away from the mindsets that typically define purposeful cultural institutions’ reason for being. 

It turns out that calling all this out for being Machiavellian manoeuvring, it might not be too short of the mark. Here again, and sadly, it is a circumstance where the fraction represents the distortions evident in the whole. 

By way of an example, when Town Hall’s ‘management’ says that the QVMAG’s “economic, environmental and social impact” and that its “activities and programs are intended to attract new audiences to the museum and to the region, particularly those communities who have previously been under-represented” this represents more the ‘purposefulness’ of a theme park with ‘entertainment’ as its brief. 

A ‘musingplsace’ with a pursuit of knowledge and better understandings that underpins its ‘purposefulness’ would not characterise itself in this way. Why does the QVMAG and Town Hall say this now? Upon what ‘expert advice’ is the GM/CEO relying upon? 

Poignantly, when we quote the Roman satirist, Juvenal, and the translation of his remarks to do with ‘bread and circuses’ what he was talking about was how Roman Empire builders depended upon limiting the desires of the Roman populace. Politically they were fed bread freely and given circuses to quell their intellect’s search for meaning. That it is talked about again, and right now in Tasmania, it should tell us something. 

Town Hall’s ‘management’, and accordingly the QVMAG’s too, claimed in response to previous questioning that it is a legitimate institution sanctioned by some obscure and as yet unidentified Federal Govt legislation/regulation. What Federal institution might that be? 

Given that the city’s ratepayers underwrite the institution’s recurrent budget along with the State Government and the State’s taxpayers, the institution’s apparent disregard for demonstrating its accountability, and fulsomely is quite unacceptable not to mention inappropriate – delinquent, recalcitrant and self-serving even. 

The QVMAG’s current staff only hold their positions as an outcome of well over a century of ‘generous community investment’ reflected in the institution’s iconic collections. By extension investments via the ‘public purse’ over that time has provided the formidable infrastructure they now have access to. For the most part that investment has been made for the purpose of generating new knowledge and better understandings – albeit an institution operating as a Council cost centre with relatively generous recurrent budgets. 

Essentially the institution’s brief once was to engage in the facilitation of research and the publishing of research outcomes – via exhibitions and other means. This is something that it was doing in a 20th C context but since the turn of the 21st C this has given way to displaying curiosities in an entertaining manner – and sadly so. 

Serially and somewhat surreally over the past two decades the ‘cost centre mindset’ has incrementally turned the QVMAG, as an institution, into a hollow representation of what it once was, and what it could be yet, in pursuit of some bizarre economically rational outcome. Typically, when this happens, the outcome is neither economic or rational – and it is written. 

 By way of example and to put it bluntly, there is not a single standout theory that can explain say Singapore's economic success. Singapore is an exemplar of an economy that combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial and the economic realities that we actually exist within are complex. Albeit that the city of Launceston is not in the same ‘economic frame’ as Singapore, its economic realities are complex and largely beyond the comprehension of upwardly mobile bureaucrats with an even bigger salary package front of mind. 

Back to the QVMAG, the institution’s apparent inability to report to Council in a timely way, and fulsomely, demonstrates an apparent disregard for the institution’s embedded histories, its Community of Ownership and Interest(COI), its donors and benefactors, the city’s ratepayers and Tasmania’s taxpayers without whose support the institution could not function and pay its staff, build upon its collections and facilitate research. Some mindful respect given to this would be welcomed. 

About a year ago now it was determined that all this, perceived then as the status quo, was unsustainable. A year on and the status quo persists and arguably in a diminishing way. With other priorities winning community attention the QVMAG disconnectedness is at serious risk of losing its credibility and support and all the investment in the institution – past and present– may dissipate like so much smoke in a windstorm. If it were to happen it would be more than saddening – a tragedy in fact. 

Last year, Launceston was promised that it could soon see major changes at the country's biggest regional museum and art gallery, which calls the city home. A Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) was muted but such an outcome would come with obligations that are not being met currently. Quite possibly QVMAG staff and Town Hall managerialism’s feet have gone cold as the consequences kick in. 

It is inexplicable as to why nominations and expressions of interest for QVMAG CLG company membership were not advertised months ago. In fact it is very concerning given all that it might well imply. 

Remembering Winston Churchill, he said that “ to improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.” It is a significant quote that bureaucracy tends to lend a deaf ear to albeit that a CLG would be a significant step away from the unsustainable status quo.  

Whatever, a CLG would be a good outcome in that it would mean that the QVMAG, as an institution would/could become a credible musingplace again if ‘the company’ had an appropriate membership – say 100 COI people – who: 

• ... In turn appointed a ‘governing body’; and that 

• ...In turn appointed a qualified executive management team; and that 

• ...In turn appointed qualifies staff; and 

• ...As a matter of course, and in an ongoing way, its ‘governance’ determines and defines the institution’s ‘purposefulness’ in a transparent and accountable way – albeit mindful of funding agencies, sponsors, and other networked supporters’ aspirations. 

Creating a CLG is not rocket science, but change can be worrisome. If the consequences of change ‘frightens the horses’ and that this may explain why no discernible progress has been made towards realising it already this too is worrisome. The disinclination to move forward is palpable and by now unacceptable. 

If the State Government and other agencies were to turn away from the QVMAG given the position Town Hall and inattentive Councillors have placed the institution in, it should not surprise anyone. Some years ago, the Minister for the Arts set some Key Performance Indicators that apparently future funding relied upon. All the indicators suggest that the KPIs have not been met and the QVMAG’s COI wonders how this can be and just how long is that euphemistic ‘piece of string’. 

So, the agenda item 8.1.4 where it is stated yet again that “the city of Launceston is committed to undertaking the recommendation and the requisite actions to effect the transition are ongoing” upon reflection on previous, and ongoing, and as yet unrealised commitments, taken together, are nothing short of the class of disingenuous BIGbrotherish bureaucratic doublespeak George Orwell warned the world of in his book “1984” – published June 8 1949.

Ray Norman

Artist, Metalsmith, Networker,  Independent Researcher, Launcestonian, 

Cultural Theorist, Cultural Geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories. 

OPEN LETTER TO LAUNCESTON'S CITIZENS AND RATEPAYERS

To whom it may concern, 

The question below I submitted to the mayor and councillors, and I believe that it has been inappropriately answered by management. Given that it addressed a strategic and policy matter, management is clearly exceeding its authority in making the assertions offered in response to the question unless of course the councillors have delegated that authority to management. 

 If councillors have in fact done so, no evidence has been provided to establish that as being the fact. Indeed, if that authority has in fact been delegated it is inappropriate that it might be the case. 

If it is the case, then it signals that all councillors – and all without dissent – have abdicated their governance role, the role they were elected to fulfil in all good faith by the municipality’s citizens and ratepayers. That would be a serious matter that Council’s constituency and the Minister of Local Government needs to be advised of – and sooner rather than later. 

Maintaining a register of Delegated Authorities, in compliance with SECTION 64(2) of the Local Government Act 1993 (Tas) albeit a legislative requirement, is nothing short of Machiavellian bureaucratic humbug in this instance if the ‘delegation’ is buried there.

 Concerningly, management asserts that Council already has a “number of appropriately qualified personnel” but how many of them have: 

• ... Completed an appropriate and accredited master’s degree; and then 

• ... Gained industry experience, and  

• ... Then passed a three-part assessment, and as a consequence;

• ... How many are now registered with the local Architect Registration Board like all 330 qualified practicing architects in Tasmania?

 

All 330 were required to do all the above in order that they might practice as an ‘indemnified architect’. 

Interestingly, in The Examiner – May 27, 2023, … see below – there are two items that point to a series of bureaucratic failings that an experienced and competent City Architect would have been able to help avoid, thus saving the city’s constituency a great deal while maximising the opportunities open to them. 

Clearly, the response that management has provide here is self-serving and clearly it is offered in support of the status quo. Metaphorically, the response is somewhat the equivalent to asserting that a hospital can function “appropriately” with nurses and administrators but without doctors. Likewise, doctors and administrators could not possibly deliver all that needs to be delivered without nursing staff and that is entirely the point. 

Charles Darwin discovered that to ‘survive’ those who collaborate and innovate survived the best and then go on to be the most effective, the most fit. In the end, they are those who prevail – and as often as not against considerable odds. 

In bureaucratic terms, “appropriate” is typically used to sanction the questionable in much the same way as “inappropriate” has become the new ‘bureaucratic illegal’. It turns out that surveillance, censorship, and propaganda are the tools of authoritarianism. Likewise, information, organization and leverage are the tools available to citizens to empower themselves. It also turns out that the Internet provides the ‘appropriate’ infrastructure to strengthen authoritarianism. However, this new technology, plus the social media it supports, also offers ‘a balance factor’ when it empowers ratepayers, voters, the press, and others much to the annoyance of those wedded to the status quo. 

Moreover, if the Council’s “appropriately qualified personnel” are “involved in strategic planning that incorporates place making, heritage and culture considerations” and are not a registered architects they may do so but not as a qualified architect. This in no way intended to diminish the service and advice that they can and do offer. 

it is just the case that it is questionable that their advice would necessarily satisfy the purpose and intent of SECTION 65 of the Local Govt Act 1993. 

Furthermore, management’s assertion that “the engagement of a City Architect is not being considered at this point” lacks veracity given that it is a strategic ‘governance determination’ made by ‘management’ that demonstrably has not been endorsed by the city’s Councillors yet.

Ray Norman

Artist, Metalsmith, Networker,  Independent Researcher, Launcestonian, Cultural Theorist, Cultural Geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories. 

THE 12th ITERATION OF worldSILLYweek IN LAUNCESTON IS LOOMING

FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE

BE AWARE AND BEWARE

BUT DO NOT BE ALARMED

THE EXCESSES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS EXPOSED

 

TO VISIT CLICK HERE 

ONE STORY ... CFMEU Vic-Tas

OMG .... PART 1: City of Geelong council has a proud history of bullying and intimidating workers. When they quickly realised they couldn't do this with Union officials, they were quick to call police. Once police confirmed Official's legal right to be there, management continued to refuse. Eventually, common sense prevailed and multiple OH&S breaches were identified. Due to our visit, management stopped work, then the next day proceeded to stand down and discriminate against the Health and safety representative. This is a gross breach of the OH&S act, and will not go unanswered.

PART 1: City of Geelong council has a proud history of bullying and intimidating workers. When they quickly realised they couldn't do this with Union officials, they were quick to call police. Once police confirmed Official's legal right to be there, management continued to refuse. Eventually, common sense prevailed and multiple OH&S breaches were identified. Due to our visit, management stopped work, then the next day proceeded to stand down and discriminate against the Health and safety representative. This is agross breach of the OH&S act, and will not go unanswer

56 FREDERICK ST. ... BEWARE, BE ALERT, BE AFRAID!

PLEASE CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE

IN THE EXAMINER: Councillors considered the future of a property on Frederick Street, owned by the City of Launceston council, at a workshop in early May.

56 Frederick Street was a childcare facility on a property just over 900 metres squared.

Built in 1836, the house is on the Tasmanian Heritage Register and is of historical significance because it may possibly be the oldest existing kindergarten or infant school in Australia.

The house is valued at around $650,000 by CoreLogic's Property value site.

Plaque on side of the building. Picture by Paul Scambler

At the May 18 council meeting, councillors highlighted the importance of the Fredrick street building.

"This is a building the council has owned for approximately 130 years," councillor Tim Walker said.

"This is a building of some importance not just to the people who have gone there, but for generations before us for different reasons."

City of Launceston acting mayor Matthew Garwood said the council's assets played an important part of the community.

"Council officers are exploring the potential of a public expressions of interest process for the future use of 56 Frederick Street," he said.

"It's expected that a recommendation will be brought to a council meeting once the process is explored."

NB: This keeps happening and always it seems that some developer or other is in the wings looking for a bargain. Whenever, a community group comes along looking to meet a community aspiration every stone is put in the road after some bureaucratic huffing and puffing – supposedly empathetic huffing band puffing.

For good reason such community groups are just as antithetic to bureaucratic self imposed problems as are the bureaucrats to their constituency's aspirations – and everyone loses big time. Somehow the plot has been lost by someone somewhere along the way. Who changed the meaning of PUBLIC SERVANT?

It seems that the more you pay a public servant – the ratepayers et al – the less likely they are to 'serve' and the more likely they are to conveniently dictate rules and deem things to be 'the truth'. Scholars who focus their attention on civics will, if asked, provide you with multiple examples of such behaviours.

As it is said in the Yiddish English lexicon "enough already"!

INNOVATIONS IN HOUSING #1

35 IDEAS EXPLORED HERE

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Up to eight per cent of the sand in concrete and mortar used to make a single-storey house could be replaced with shredded used disposable nappies without significantly diminishing their strength, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

The authors suggest that disposable nappy waste could be used as a construction material for low-cost housing in low- and middle-income countries.

Disposable nappies are usually manufactured from wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon, and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene. The majority are disposed of in landfill or by incineration.

Siswanti Zuraida and colleagues prepared concrete and mortar samples by combining washed, dried, and shredded disposable nappy waste with cement, sand, gravel, and water. These samples were then cured for 28 days.

The authors tested six samples containing different proportions of nappy waste to measure how much pressure they could withstand without breaking. They then calculated the maximum proportion of sand that could be replaced with disposable nappies in a range of building materials that would be needed to construct a house with a floor plan area of 36 square metres that complies with Indonesian building standards.

The authors found that disposable nappy waste could replace up to ten per cent of the sand needed for concrete used to form columns and beams in a three-storey house. This proportion increased to 27 per cent of sand needed for concrete columns and beams in a single-storey house.

Up to 40 per cent of the sand needed for mortar in partition walls can be replaced with disposable nappies, compared to nine per cent of the sand in mortar for doors and garden paving. Together, up to eight per cent of the sand in all of the concrete and mortar building materials required to build a single-storey house with a floor plan of 36 square metres can be replaced with disposable nappy waste —equivalent to 1.7 cubic metres of waste.

The authors note that wider implementation of their findings would require the involvement of stakeholders in government and waste treatment in developing processes for the large-scale collection, sanitising, and shredding of nappy waste.

Additionally, building regulations would need to be modified to allow the use of nappy waste as a construction material.

For more information, visit: www.scimex.org

Related stories:

Murdoch University’s sustainable concrete set to shake up building industry

Kimberly-Clark launches Australian-first nappy recycling trial

WHY LAUNCESTON NEEDS A CITY ARCHITECT

LINKS [1] - [2] - [3] - [4]

Launceston like everywhere else in Australia is seeing increasing numbers of people suffering housing stress. To think about these people generically as 'THE HOMELESS' is one dimensional and misleading. Bureaucratic 'planners' shrug their shoulders telling all prone to listen to them – investors, fellow managerials, the political class and the purveyors of lowest common denominator McBurbia – that the solution is not their problem.

Well in one sense it is very much 'their problem' given that they are relaxed and comfortable in their homes in McBurbia. Most have never made or 'built' all that much – if anything at all. Many would struggle to know which end of a hammer to hold. Yet they proffer their opinions about what can be built where, how and why it should be. Sweet music to investors looking to make a FASTbuck ... AND ... bugger those who are actually looking make a place for themselves to call home. 

These bureaucratic 'planners' can only imagine a home as an 'investment' and are typically antithetic to the fact that a 'home' is a human right. It turns out that as humans we are driven by just 4 imperatives:

1... To have access to oxygen, food and water in sufficient quantities to sustain life; and

2 ... To identify within the group/tribe/community; and

3 ... To procreate genetically and ideologically; and

4 ... To secure safe shelter ... a home where we are welcomed and feel safe.

In every way these things should underpin underpin civic decision making but the system has become rathe warped by a 5th imperative ... Investor's want to make increasing amounts of money at the expense of 'the under class and the nobodies'.  

To quote Robert Fuller "Who are the nobodies? Those with less power. At the moment. .... "Who are the somebodies? Those with more power. At the moment. ... Power is signified by rank. Rank in a particular setting. ... Somebodies hold higher rank than nobodies. In that setting. For that moment. ... "A somebody in one setting can be a nobody in another, and vice versa. A somebody now might be a nobody a moment later, and vice versa. ... "Abuse of power inherent in rank is rankism. When somebodies use the power of their position in one setting to exercise power in another, that's rankism. When somebodies use the power of their position to put a permanent hold on their power, that, too, is rankism.

So what has any of this to do with Launceston needing a City Architect?

Well 'managerialism' all too often comes with self-assessed flawlessness that makes them 'somebodies' who deem all functionaries as 'nobodies' despite their total lack of expertise in this or that. If one is an 'architect' you are as likely as not to find yourself way, way, down the food chain unless of course you need the income and have nowhere else to go. Such 'architects' a very hard to find. Currently, Tasmania has 330 qualified practicing architects.

Simply put, a professionally competent architect has five years professional education, a minimum of two years practical experience, has successfully completed the Architectural practice Examination and is included on a Register of Architects.

Importantly, architects are conduits of creativity who allow themselves to think big, while working within, and sometimes pushing the boundaries of, the construction industry, planning departments and governments' political aspirations. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a manager who would have the wherewithal to say design and oversight the building of say Sydney's Opera House but there is a conga line of 'managers' standing and waiting to be the 'somebody' that pulls a 'nobody architect' into line at their will.

It is said that the 'proper way', the managerial way, is that straight and narrow pathway from wherever you happen to be, all the way to the open and waiting gate to the world of the lowest common denominator and abject mediocrity. 

• 
  
• Mediocrity is a disease.and it knows nothing of more value than itself. However, talent instantly recognises genius wherever, and whenever it exhibits itself.

Architects are professional problem solvers as well as being designers and makers. All too often the 'managerial class' make/generate problems on the side of their self-service. Thus, problem solvers are their least favourite people. The 'managerial class' also make the claim that if you can manage, say a sewerage farm, well enough you can manage anything. However, consider the risks in appointing such a 'manager' and then the prospect of their making a mistake and then finding yourself wading around in sewerage. Domain knowledge is domain knowledge.

By-and-large 'an architect' is disinclined to be a 'ranked underling' to a problem generator. Collaborating with all kinds of 'problem solvers' is no stretch at all as being in a team there will always be compromises. Provided that the balance is good, what is lost in compromise is gained manyfold by collaboration and politeness is always the poison that kills great collaborative innovation.

As Steve Jobs knew full well that his methodology to develop integrated products, actually meant that the 'development process' had to be integrated and collaborative in order to deliver the innovative outcomes that he was famously associated with.... Apple, Pixar, NeXT. Jobs is a champion in that 'think different paradigm'.    

1. Architects are highly educated critical thinkers and then trained to think cooperatively and collaboratively. Typically they are quite antithetic to the upper echelons of a hierarchical system. Thus, bureaucracies and bureaucratic planners are similarly antithetic towards architects in a 'civic placemaking role' since, as credentialed professionals, architects typically expect the acknowledgement of their backgrounding and experience. Bureaucratic 'rankism' is not good at that sort of thing.

2. IN CONCLUSION

3. Local governance in the City of Launceston's civic foundations are failing its constituency. Town Hall has evolved into a revenue collection agency that, on the available evidence, exists for the benefit of the unelected bureaucracy and those in the community who are inclined to curry favour with them.

4. When it comes to 'planning' ratepayers and citizens lack a professional voice willing to work with them on the project of 'placemaking'. An architect would be welcomed by them but conversely roundly spurned by the managerial apparatchiks as they are ever likely to be challenged and held to account in their company.

5. A City Architect needs to be appointed by the city's 'elected 12' and she/he needs to report directly to them given that it they who are entrusted to give effect to the city's placemaking. It's an idea that the 'ranked management' would/will scream blue bloody murder about but as some brave person once said in a like situation ... 'I'm holding two fingers up, is that allowed?

6. All jokes aside, in order to find a sense of balance in 'the city's' placemaking and cultural landscaping, the city needs to appoint a City Architect just as soon as the Councillors find the wherewithal do so. Managerialism is the tail that is wagging the dog at Town Hall and a truely independent professionally qualified architect would be equipped to call out ineptitude and shonky self-service for what it is.

7. Indeed, as an early task a City Architect might well be commissioned to explore appropriate 'design solutions' for the housing of people in housing distress. A subtext to that might well be 'please let's avoid the McBurbia the Tasmanian State Govt appears to favour'.
   

8. We might all join with Junot Diaz when he says,“What I am trying to cultivate is not blind optimism… but radical hope.