The difficulty experienced by whisteblowers attempting to bring to light their concerns about mental health services is another example of the poverty of Tasmania’s public sphere. (Mental health sex abuse shocks)
Hag reckons the public sphere in Tasmania has never been as bleak.
This is a deeply divided island in which Masters and Overseers – including a media which is too often too Magpie-like – do not take kindly to questioning and oppositional views, let alone whistle-blowing.
Not for these the fierce debate which refines an issue and in which the philosophical underpinning is properly exposed and examined.
Here’s the way to deal with Difficult Buggers:
Response Number One: Denial of oxygen. The issue doesn’t exist, ignore it.
Response Number Two: It’s not going away … threaten it. Toe the line or you don’t work in Tasmania. Issue a veiled legal threat; verbal initially, then written.
Response Number Three: Still around … invite the Dissenting One to a private briefing … this involves releasing selected private information which locks the Dissenter into confidentiality.
Response Number Four: Ostracise. Send the Dissenting One to the gulag, withdrew all contracts and contacts …
General Response: Allow free rein to the Rumour Mill. She/He is: Eccentric, unco-operative, unwell, lost the plot, drinking too much, using drugs, relationship/marriage is in trouble etc, etc, etc
nudger
April 15, 2005 at 06:03
Excellent post and further confirmation of why the ABC, which while it is utterly impecunious, is so important to a broad range of information getting out into the community.
At least those who pull its tiny purse strings are not potentially beholden to big business in this state.
Which is why the main locally produced, ahem, current affairs programs must not only be independent, but be seen to be independent and not restricted by other current affairs, if you get the drift. 😉
pat synge
April 16, 2005 at 12:53
Tasmanian Times should refrain from publishing such a biased, dishonest and misleading diatribe.
The Hag is obviously a deluded paranoid conspiracy theorist (and probably an alcoholic).
Not at all welcome in New Tasmania!
Pat Synge
http://www.buyselltrade.com.au
tasmania’s free classified advertising website
David Obendorf
April 19, 2005 at 03:16
As an individual who has personally experienced The Hag’s Responses One, Two, Three and Four….I can only await Response Five!
Forgive me, but this sounds like Hans Christen Anderson writ LARGE.
The relationship between swindlers in charge of spending the public purse and the strutting ego-position of publicly-elected Ministers (our Emperors). If a community elects vulnerable, gullible Ministers, little wonder bureau-rats play merry hell with them.
Ministers do not have the surity & confidence to mean business and the swindlers know this.
It is exactly this type of mediocracy and indifferent governance that actually creates this constant stream of reactive crises of governments in this State.
One cliché is ‘the tail wagging the dog’ …….but it is more than that, it’s a breakdown in the traditional relationship between the policy-setting oversight of Ministers-responsible and the professional operation of the bureaucracies.
Internally, intuitively, deep-down Ministers know there is something rotten in their ‘State of Denmark’ and it’s not just a few rotten apples in the barrel! If the culture is rotten, then there will be long-standing systemic problems.
In cases of systemic failures in an Agency, I believe Ministers lose confidence in the senior management structures of their Department(s)…. but the irony is they must, under the Westminster System of government support that mediocracy. To me, this is total craziness – the stuff of naked Emperors!
For a Minister to admit he or she has no trust or confidence in the bureaucracy sends a message to the political Opposition that the Minister is seen as weak and vulnerable for attacking.
By effectively covering for and saying publicly that the Minister has confidence in ‘the management team’ in his Department that Minister is effectively saying ‘it’s business as usual’ as long as the shit-bucket doesn’t drop on me!
And there in lies the rub……bullying, repression and silencing works within the organisation to silence dissent and speaking out about serious matters of public interest and ‘Pontius Pilot’ Ministers would really rather not know what is really happening because of the flak it creates in their political & personal lives.
And, you know…it was ever thus!
In our State over successive governments, I believe that Ministers-of-the-Crown don’t genuinely trust their Bureaucracy Management and they, in turn certainly have a very ‘Yes, Minister’ relationship with their Minister.
“Tell the Minister on ‘a needs to know basis’ and then only if there is publicity and a media expose.”
Ministers like the quiet, happy, good news story life. They would be content with that!
Yes, Minister!