Mayor Mullet’s Mendacity Laid Bare – Millions of Dollars Flee Townsville As National Arts Patrons Walk

And the cause of the exodus – the Nous Consulting Group Council restructuring Report – has been forensically and clinically demolished – by its own words. The Townsville City Council has hastily brought forward to Monday the first Arts and Culture Advisory Committee (ACAC) meeting, which had not been due until later this year. This follows a blistering and damning dismemberment of the deeply flawed Nous Report which was send to the council during the week, .And millions in national patronage dollars and art works continues evaporate.

And was it a case of Late Night Les behind some mysterious emails from our deputy mayor during the week? Seems Stanley Street wasn’t the only one to have a sinking feeling  …

But first …

TEL’s Sock Puppet Poppet CEO Finally Backs A Winner?

In the usual absence of any other good news emanating from the vicinity of Patricia O’Callaghan, allow The ‘Pie to report on her apparent good fortune at a time of year when matters of ‘turfing’ shift from the fate of TCC workers and turn to the racetrack.

Our ever-grinning gal hasn’t reached the owners’ corner of the Birdcage at Flemington quite yet, but was she was smiling a little a little more animatedly   than normal at Cluden last weekend? The ‘Pie will hazard a guess that she is the ‘Ms P.N O’Callaghan’ listed as one of the nine owners of the 2-year-old filly and Cluden maiden winner All Girls Rock, who got across the line in her first outing.

Interesting to note that listed among the other owners are one Mrs. J. Hill – holy poo, Batman could it be? – and there’s also a Mrs. J.N.Hayes in there, who may or may not have some connection to occasional Mullet Whisperer PR ace Dolan Hayes.

Bentley was fascinated by this festival of fascinators, but he feels there may be a professional lesson for Ms P.N. O’Callaghan in her horsey hobby.

But hang on a sec … perhaps there’s something in this for Townsville ratepayers. All Girls Rock, who cost the syndicate just $9000, earned a winner’s cheque of a tasty $19,200 for the one outing. So maybe the council could take the annual $750,000 it allocates to TEL and instead invest in a few hayburners. The odds of a decent result would be much better.

But Ms O’Callaghan just keeps on smiling …

… and it really is infectious to be around such a happy face … everybody is affected …

NB Just for the record, here are all the owners of All Girls Rock.

Mrs M E Anning

Mrs K M Rawlinson

Mrs K J Baker

Miss E Bebb

Mrs J Hill

Ms P N O’callaghan (sic)

Mrs N J Hayes

Ms M L Scott

Mrs S M Leslie

Go, Gals.

You’d be Surprised Who Talks To The Magpie

But you won’t be, ‘cos he ain’t snitching, but it appears not all our councillors are in the Goth camp, run by Jenny, the Mayor of Mordor. The ‘Pie was given a surprise heads-up this week about a letter sent to Mayor Mullet, CEO Adele The Impaler Young and all councillors which detailed the flaws in the council’s disastrous approach to managing our art galleries. It’s a million dollar disaster, and based on irrefutably biased reasoning … faux facts designed to fit the end conclusion.

The tip he was flabbergasted to get from Walker Street led The ‘Pie to talk with one Dr Jonathan McBurnie, who among many scholarly honours, includes his current position as Director of the Umbrella Gallery.

Following lengthy discussion Dr McBurnie agreed to give The Magpie a copy of his 10-page, blow-by-blow analysis of the Nous report.

It is serious compelling reading, but is couched in everyday, understandable language which serves to increase its impact. It is a masterly, well-mannered but deadly carve-up of bearucratic hucksterism, as good as The ‘Pie has seen or heard in his career covering the best barristers in all manner of court cases. And most if not all Dr McBurnie’s conclusions are irrefutable. The plain but precise language also lessens the chance of councillors looking dumbly ‘at a whole bunch of words’.

A recurring theme Dr McBurnie exposes is that the Nous Report is written based on the ‘Alice In Wonderland’ theory of using such weasel words that it can be made to mean what anybody wants it to mean.

Shortly after The ‘Pie received the excoriating document, Dr McBurnie advised that the inaugural meeting of the TCC Arts and Culture Advisory Committee had suddenly been brought forward to this Monday, Oct 31. No particular reason was offered for this unusual rescheduling.

The Magpie believes Dr McBurnie’s document is of the utmost significance to not just the arts, but to the wider community so arbitrarily affected in real terms (of tourism and economics). So much so, he intended to publish it in full today as an extra post. But given the new meeting time when Gallery Services will discussed, The ‘Pie will save for an extra blog later in the week. Unless The Bulletin suddenly decides on Sunday to run it in full on Monday … don’t hold your breath.

Here are a few samples of Dr McBurnie’s dissection, with the assertions in the Nous Report in italics and underlined.

‘TCC is the product of Queensland’s Council amalgamation that occurred eight years ago … and … Significant consolidation of activities were not undertaken at this time... 

McBurnie:

This statement, while true in terms of Townsville and Thuringowa Councils, does not apply to Gallery. Services, which was consolidated during the merging of councils in 2008. The dual Director roles of Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and Pinnacles Gallery were identified, upon the councils merging, to be duplication, and one role was therefore created for both institutions. This statement is therefore false in the context of Gallery Services.

 ‘Too little focus on the changing needs and preferences of its residents’

McBurnie:

Untrue in the case of Gallery Services, whose KPI and reporting demonstrates through increasing community engagement, participation, attendance, donations and cultural gifts. The forthcoming 2015-16 Gallery Services Annual Report attests to further increases in numbers with a staggering 285,522 visitors recorded. This singular achievement (as there are many qualitative achievements underpinning this success) attests to the success of Gallery Services focussing on the needs of its residents – in addition to realising unprecedented levels of engagement in a regional gallery context.

 ‘TCC can improve services for residents and relieve financial pressure through targeted improvement projects. The current size, structure and culture of management is a barrier to effective service delivery and financial sustainability ’ (NB The Magpie notes: This is an astounding, unsupported assertion when directed at Gallery Services, which Dr McBurnie turns right around in its absurdity.)

McBurnie:

This may be true in other wings of TCC, but in terms of Gallery Services, whom are clearly operating at a far higher capacity than other wings of council, it would be advisable to analyse their structure and methods and adopt them throughout council, rather than reduce this capacity. The Gallery Services team have been steadily increasing their outputs in recent years, despite being a relatively small team. This suggests that TCC would do well to come to a better understanding of Gallery Services’ own structure, culture, size and incorporate some of these strategies into larger council structure.

‘Improvement projects are aligned to three key areas for council service delivery – Responsive and efficient – Community focused – Economic growth’

McBurnie:

Instead of making a point of just how effectively Gallery Services already embodies these suggestions, citing once again their annual reports, I suggest asking where there is any evidence to the contrary. If such evidence does exist, TCC should, and must, provide it, in order to better inform a prominent community that demands transparency.

….

And one last sample that draws blood with a polite but pointed response …

‘TCC should take a leadership role in Townsville’s development through strategic alliances with appropriate institutions’

McBurnie:

This statement aligns so readily with the now-redundant role of Manager of Gallery Services as to invoke a cynical form of irony. Obviously this summarizes TCC’s actions regarding leadership, and not Gallery Services specifically, once again reiterating that the report barely addresses Gallery Services’ excellent performance, and that such performance should be used as a benchmark for other wings of the TCC.

There’s much, much more where that came from, and the full text will be published here after Monday’s meeting, and will include any announced outcomes from those discussions. But don’t expect too much, the councillors on the committee are the lightest of lightweights, and besides, there is only one decision in Walker Street right now. Be interesting to see if Mayor Mullet clumps into the discussions.

Personally, such is the over-arching mindset of a wholly politically motivated mayor, The ‘Pie doubts she will even read the summary. Likewise, The Impaler, whose agenda was set in concrete long before she arrived in Townsville.

Someone Been A Norty Boy Then?

Has young Master Leslie Walker been smacked for speaking out of turn? Has Ma Mullet delivered a resounding clip around the lughole to the lad whose mates call Messagebank because he doesn’t answer his phone?

Well, that may be the case. Media bods around town are scratching their heads about a flurry of emails last Thursday evening. It all started with this one soon after that road cave-in in Stanley Street last Thursday afternoon.

From:   Les Walker (Councillor) <email hidden; JavaScript is required>

Subject: Re: Incident in Stanley St this afternoon

Date:   27 October 2016 7:13:45 PM AEST

Hello (TCC media unit),

Thank you, it sounds like we are luck to find it this way rather than a cave in and a serious accident. Great discovery and outcome so far. Fingers crossed!

Kind regards,

Cr Les Walker

No biggy as far as it goes. But the message of good luck rather than good management – talking about what might’ve happened, that things were good ‘so far’ and ‘fingers crossed’ is generally so far from the anodyne and advised pronouncements of any councillor let alone Mr. Walker to make more than one journo wonder what was going on. The ‘Pie just put it down to an ill-conceived attempt by the ambitious Les to get his name out there and seem on top of the 24/7 news cycle (oh, stoppit, already, my sides ache).

But just over three hours later, the media list of 50 or so received this:

From:   Les Walker (Councillor) <email hidden; JavaScript is required>

Subject: Recall: Incident in Stanley St this afternoon

Date:   27 October 2016 10:33:05 PM AEST

          To: TCC Media Unit

Les Walker (Councillor) would like to recall the message, “Incident in Stanley St this afternoon “.

Why, one immediately wondered? Those of us versed in the arcane art of media speak suddenly got a piscine whiff. Speculation ran wild down the MagpieFone. Has Les been on the turps when he wrote the initial email, but a few sobering scotchs later, realized it might not have been the wisest move? Or had Mayor Mullet got wind of what The Man Who Would Be King had done, and gave him a none too gentle cease-and-desist directive? Maybe waste of space Mark Molachino alerted her to the invasion of his infrastructure turf?

Well, we all had a bit of a chuckle and exchanged some comments that would have had any listening lawyers rubbing their hands together, and thought that was that. But then, 12 minutes later …

From:   Les Walker (Councillor) <email hidden; JavaScript is required>

Subject: Recall: Incident in Stanley St this afternoon

Date:   27 October 2016 10:41:42 PM AEST

          To: TCC Media unit

          Cc: Media list

Les Walker (Councillor) would like to recall the message, “Incident in Stanley St this afternoon “.

Doubling down on that sort of message clearly indicates that some sort of excrement had hitting the rotating rotors. So now there was a definite whiff of desperation around the place, but happily for Les, there it ended. Nothing would appear in the Bulletin, although Les may well have spent a restless night hoping for a great outcome, fingers crossed.

All good … but then came Saturday’s bloody Magpie blog. Damn!

(And just so you know, certain recipient details have been edited out of the emails, to avoid any idle speculation … we wouldn’t want any of that now, would we heh heh heh?)

Epidemic Of Idiocy

If you were under the impression, what with black armband history, Invasion Day, and urban land rights claims, that Australia has exclusive rights to academic idiocy (university sub-species acadils and boofademics) and aboriginal industry self-seekers, think again.

Canada is giving us a run for our academic dollar, as the foaming lunacy of this poor sad mutt demonstrates.

Regular commentator Grumpy spotted this one with the restrained observation ‘ This is just plain silly.’

And from The ‘Pie?

Absolutely no – f**king – comment.

Tit For Tate?

Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate – a developer by trade and a politician by opportunity – has been continually on the warpath against the Gold Coast Bulletin and is now claiming a big scalp … his arch-antagonist editor Cath Webber.

In this article in the Guardian, media writer Amanda Meade reported: ‘Tate wrote: “Print media need to understand that the other communications mediums are out there and competing – social media is being a great leveler [sic] with its direct communication approach – no filtering, no bias, no agenda pushing by a privileged few editors.”

When he doesn’t like a story he takes to Facebook to encourage readers and advertisers to boycott the paper. But now Tate has stepped things up. He has claimed responsibility for the departure of Gold Coast Bulletin editor, Cath Webber, last week. Sources (said) Webber, who has been editing the paper since July 2013, was removed suddenly on Thursday after being summoned to Sydney’s Holt Street headquarters earlier in the week. On Friday the Bully announced it had appointed a new editor, Scott Thompson, and Webber had “been offered a senior editorial role in Sydney”.

News Ltd naturally say that Tate’s opinions did not influence the decision, – oh, deary me, no, heavens to Betsy – but gave no further explanation, saying such internal rearrangements are no one’s concern outside the company.

OK, but it does raise a few questions and prompts a few observations. Like, what do you have to do to get fair treatment an due recognition from News Ltd? Webber was alone among regional editors who actually lifted circulation, ran a high morale team in the news room and was peripatetic generally on the coast. And ‘senior editorial appointment’ is News-speak for being shuffled sideways, like dud columnist Sharri Markson when she was booted from the litigation-plagued Media column on The Australian. Maybe Tate’s vendetta backfired on him in terms of the GCB’s circulation … the reading public loves a stoush (said The Magpie).

And Tate seems to be planning a comedy career. ‘No filtering, no bias, no agenda pushing by a privileged few editors’? He is obviously just visiting the planet- from cyberspace.

News Ltd and Tate deserve each other. Very different to the canoodling love-in between Mayor Mullet and Ben Bogan here in the ‘Ville.

Finally, A Couple Of Things To Ponder

Enough already with the recreational grief thing! … OK, very sad that four people died at Dreamworld, yes questions must be asked, reasons and blame apportioned, and relatives interviewed … but how much more of the demeaning spectacle of teary blubbering from people who didn’t even know the deceased? It’s called ‘recreational grief’ and fills a gap in otherwise empty lives. But not mine. Please

This from the excellent Wide World of Words.

The British think tank Civitas published a report this week under the title Conspicuous Compassion. Its author, Patrick West, argues that public outpourings of grief, such as those after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and following a number of recent child murders, show that society has not become more caring or altruistic, but more selfish.

He asserts that what seem to be public signs of caring — such as wearing coloured ribbons, signing Internet petitions, and carrying banners saying “Not In My Name” — are part of a culture of ostentatious caring which is about feeling good, not doing good; of projecting one’s ego and thereby showing others what a deeply caring individual you are, not actually doing anything that makes a difference.

Quite.

But full points to the walloper on the second day. His summing up of a complex days work was in plain-speak, understandable, compassionate but precise. A rarity for a blue bag!

He would never had got a job in the British navy way back when, according this little archived gem

.

As regular readers know, The ‘Pie does not discuss personal family matters of people in the public eye, but he feels compelled to intrude this one time, leaving you with a very …err … private moment from the Piper household.

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