A Glimspse into the 30 Sep 2014 Council Meeting

From one of our members’ reflection of yesterday’s Council Meeting, which was also shared with the Mayor and other Monash Councillors:

Dear Geoff

 I have not been to Council Meetings for several months. Last’s night’s episode was entertaining and amusing to see a growing new Pythonesque and high context leadership culture emerging. To help build community engagement and rapport, I share openly with you insights of my reflections about last night’s meeting:

I am certainly bemused to learn that there is a new leadership dimension that can potentially added to the GLOBE first order leadership factors – a Mickey Mouse leadership feature. Well done Councillors for giving this new and cute insight into the study of leadership. MC means more than Monash Council now, it also stands for Mickey-Mouse Club – it is so cute and Kitty Cat.

 I didn’t realise the last term’s Councillors were sleeping together and hence sleep walking when exercising their Council’s duties. It is amazing to see such wonderful talents and gender equity and bonding among long running Councillors – the new ones do make a mess – don’t they?  Also good to see one Councillor is coming out and perhaps take multiculturalism to the next level of gender equity through this high context expression of sleep walking. By the way, when will gay equity be the next advocacy priority?  I am all for it.

 Wow I never see workplace bullying and associated attention seeking disorders so well expressed implicitly and vividly as a mental choreography of gang raping one of your peers.  I salute you for this high craft. This masculine leadership culture is also and surely becoming a fine art of good acting of well orchestrated dialogue tactics, unlike its many clumsy attempts in the past. Which Acting school did some of the folks go to ? – good choice.  Must say and appreciate that  good acting is good entertainment for the gallery audience, especially when it was a long meeting.

 I am very amused by one Councillor’s understanding of good governance – can someone point to him where to get the proper definition information that really explain what good governance means.  I am so glad that we have a Councillor who showed his good A class knowledge of good governance when he explained why he cannot support the majority’s exception decision to give more grants to applicants who did not received what they wanted.  I am sure you folks are kidding the gallery audience when one Councillor said Council supports exception decision making in order to have “good news” reporting in the Waverley Leader? I hope so…..?

 Hmm, decision making – hum still needs working on.  I am not sure whether directive, analytic, conceptual or behaviour styles can be used to describe the collective group-think decision making culture. There is a need for more balance between rational and emotional decision making – too much on the melodrama emotional side – perhaps make organisational decision making training as everyone’s next professional development priority? Some of the decision making gibberish was rather boring – I made 7 origami and occasionally keeping watching the timer-clock and do a countdown for the bleep-bleep to keep awake, and even completed a work report. On a more serious note, where are the best value arguments and the supporting KPI to validate legislated best value accountability of everyone’s decision making – I hope everyone is not sleep walking again?

 Interesting to witness Napthine Government bashing is getting more frequent, more louder and more explicit towards state election time. I thought Local Government is constitutionally a delegated unit of the State Government – I must be wrong if there are obvious open political party conflict interplays among Councillors during meetings? If we ever have a change in government, I wonder what Andrew licking would like during Council meetings? I am curious to discover.

I am sure you had good intent when expressing your views about the LG electoral review.  We must understand modern advocacy these days is not about doing for the community, but doing with the community. Electing future Councillors are very much ratepayers’ stuff, not Councillors – maybe a good idea for community engagement improvement is to engage and ask your constituents’ viewpoints on that review, rather than expressing your individual’s views and coalescing with other Councillors’ views to say it represent the community’s viewpoint. Can’t see the difference between this sort of Monash and Kim Jong Un ‘s government style? PS: I have some North Korean friends, who will be very upset by the discriminating remark about their national culture if they heard what was said last night – maybe best use Kim Jong Un name instead of discriminating at a nation’s level (ie you can exercise derogatory at an individual level) – but better to be appropriately culturally responsive (and literate) when you open your mouth publicly next time.

 Last night’s meeting was long, and glad you spice up the new MC Councillors’ culture that is so Pythonesque and side-splitting for the gallery audience, that maybe it is worth missing my favourite NCIS and Arrow TV episodes last night?

 My admiration for the staff who had to keep  serious straight and attentive faces last night. I like the new time-keeper role in Council meeting – maybe you can use the jelly-bean jar theory and get Councillors to pay a gold coin every-time they exceed their time-limit. This way we can use the money to cut future budgets and hence rates one day –tell you what –  that would be really, really nice.

 

Your engaging community constituent