TRAUMA TOWN PART 10: Councils and corruption, it rhymes if you say it quickly 3 times. Well, it doesn’t, but the point is, if you make something complex, you can see what you want in it.
Councils are good at that.
Since I have been in planning, some form of ICAC illuminated corruption involving planners has been current. Personally, I found building surveyors better at corruption. They had honed their methods, they have a tradition, outdoor collection, small notes or gratuities, project based, and they delivered. The rumours and stories. Think about how cheap a building approval could be, $500 and few schooners in the back of the Four in Hand in Paddington. That would get housing approvals moving.
In my early council jobs, it was like watching Don Corleone walk through the market and know which stalls to take his morning apple from. When they privatised those guys in 1998, something old died. Try bribe a building surveyor now, they will give you a planning portal number, tell you to wait in line and ask for more information. That’s real corruption.
Planners have no such tradition, when they get hungry, they go for bigger fruit, have a weird sense of virtue about themselves and seem to fall harder. Pride cometh.
I look to my own council corruption experiences. So much of what was just normal work practice, is wrong now. Taking stuff from work, getting too jolly at the work social – all reportable now. So much of the closed shop vibe of councils feels corrupt. Corruption seemed to precede me around my early council jobs. A monkey’s motive is always impulse and pure.
The first council job where I had some decision-making power was at the old South Sydney Council, which was the focus of an early ICAC investigation into corrupt town planning and building practices. The main allegation was that a council planner pushed work to his twin brother, who was an architect.
The council twin was in the naughty corner, and the private sector twin never got to put the DA in that his twin lined up for him.
The applicant, who I met because I ended up assessing the DA for the site of corruption, was a dickhead who desperately needed the services of the twins. I approved an AV Jennings project home on a prominent corner in Alexandria. Over the years, I got to know those twins, and they would have done a better job.
Then I did a few DAs at Randwick just after its 1995 ICAC investigation, which I am going to call for my generation the high point of planner ICAC scandals, so far. It could be a miniseries, “The wrong side of Bunnerong Road”.
The chapters of this ICAC investigation read like a viable ABC sitcom, The Waterside Avenue Matter, Dealings Between Messina and Nicolas Gardos, my favourite, Councillor Matthews’ Vanity Unit and concluding with Fairness and accountability in the Planning System.
I arrived at the council just after this report was delivered; the whole planning department was a mess. Money was not changing hands, but I saw confused planners approve a block of units in a rail corridor. All those real estate agents and local players were still hanging around the councillors and council in general; it takes an election cycle to throw off those sorts of ticks. They looked just like the NIMBY groups that do the same to Green and Labor councils now.
The ICAC was always there. They ruined my life as a council planner. Every time someone wanted to buy you a coffee on site, you had to look around for the cameras. Endless training courses and then having to fill in pecuniary interest registers, etc.
My last council, Waverley, was OK. They had a pecuniary interest policy; you could keep anything up to a value of $50 if it was declared in the register. Kemenys on Bondi Road (the nearest bottle shop to the council chambers) throughout my time at Waverley had Piper-Heidsieck on at $49.99 forever.
But please put those pecuniary interest registers away, because the big hand goes out to council traditionalists out there. The most elegant place for council business, an undeclared free lunch, the Serengeti to the council lion.
And while there were a few, the site visit to any pub was always a don’t bother to pack lunch day (it’s hard to refuse a pre-cooked schnitzel). The best was the tiered seafood banquet at the old Jordans Restaurant in Darling Harbour, two planners, the likeable practice leader sucking up to his boss out from Hong Kong, who wanted to be sure the team was not going too soft.
I knew the local guy; it was one of his KPIs to pump a certain amount of largesse into the City each year. He made out I was doing him a favour. Sometimes it is just great to sit down, eat seafood, drink good wine, talk about cities with interesting people, and have someone else pick up the tab. I buy meals for people. Sometimes what felt corrupt had some culture and practice in it too.
I watched the old Canterbury Council eat its ethic councillors in the 2010s. Those middle ring councils were moving. Canterbury Road was progressing, and you could get stuff approved there like nowhere else in Sydney. Progress felt good. In the industry, they were known as benevolent wogtocracies. What happened at the old Canterbury Council, a pro development council brought in a planner to do some pro development things.
Leading the complaint seemed to be an old school recruitment agency that was annoyed it didn’t get its pick. That now smells like Pink Lady stuff. I suppose an anti-development council has never bought in an anti-development planner to do some anti-development things? We don’t think that’s corruption because nothing happens and no one benefits. And people who are anti-development are just more virtuous and honest than those striving to build something.
