Another aspect of governance that affects us quite significantly is the public ‘service’ bureaucracy.

While we do not have a lot of government offices in The Grove we do have key groups of employees who are government workers:

[ul]school teachers and staff
police
council workers (parks roads library)
rail staff
main roads workers
some health workers[/ul]

These people are in our community but in a very real sense not of our community. They are finally answerable to bureaucractic policies and procedures and Ministers and their behaviour and public statements and involvement are very tightly controlled indeed within these systems. As professionals they have signed strict contracts and their jobs are on the line if they don’t obey department rules. They cannot ‘just relax and talk and be part of the local community’.

For example all local professionals making a substantial input into The Grove (example: teachers health workers council workers…) are eligible to join Transition The Grove as members. We have had any number of professionals offer us the information that they are not able to join such a local organisation because their work restricts it. Unofficially they give their blessing and get involved but they are restricted officially.

Getting any sort of media statement at all out of Queensland Health for example requires challenging negotiations with their Media section and layers of approvals before the most tightly controlled and restricted releases are allowed. It ties up extraordinary amounts of professional time and effort. What is the immense paranoia about talking to local people about services and staff in their own area?

These people operate major centres in our area (schools police station health centre library) and provide services in our area but in an almost absolute sense they define the service and what they provide. The community gets at most a limited opportunity to have a say in what is provided or how it is run. The best examples by far of opportunity for community input are the school P&Cs but at present there is very little wider community interaction from the schools such as on-going adult education community classes or use of facilities. The QLD Passenger Community Reference Group for the Ferny Grove line works very well as a genuine consultation and feedback and response group. The North West Community Health Centre Community Consultative Committee is still struggling to find an effective way of consultation feedback and response. Liaison with the Police through Neighbourhood Watch is fair. The Arana Library looks after its own staff-initiated activities excellently but there is room for more community cooperation when it comes to facilitating activities by locals through the library.

There is not a strong sense apparent of respect for the local community and seeking out the needs of the local community and a desire to listen to and work with the local community cooperatively and creatively to make the local area a richer better place. (Although I am most impressed with our local head of Police in this respect). The various centres are more places in The Grove where there are a large amount of government-funded quality facilities on big areas of land with very little accessibility to locals except in tightly defined circumstances (for example children at school during school hours).

We are particularly aware of it because we moved here after our children were grown up so did not get to be part of a local school community. It is painfully obvious how closed these communities are. We have friends with children at Ferny Grove SHS and through them we get information about when concerts are on and tickets and have been to some. They are absolutely terrific but very few people outside parents in the immediate school community get to go. Meanwhile outside in the wider local community there is virtually nothing at all like this happening.