Revolving Door Problems?

The term “revolving door problem” is applied to the issue of poachers who turn gamekeepers, and vice versa. This usually relates to people employed by private corporations who then go to work for regulatory bodies or public institutions, and maybe even flip back out into the private sector from time to time. Some even have the chance to act as a free-lance consultant while holding a salaried role within a public institution.

Say, for example, working with the WAPC to define the requirements for a “liveable neighbourhood” and then working for a developer to push plans for a liveable neighbourhood through Council.

Are we all comfortable with that?

Or do some of us see how it just might create a bias towards possibly framing the requirements in a way that the development corporation would like them, rather than how the members of the community, who haven’t been asked at all, would actually like to live?

Does this really matter?

It certainly seemed to matter in the case of ENRON, and Lehmann Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and many other examples. All major financial frauds involve some failure of implementation of adequate controls. In some cases this is more blatant than in others, but somewhere along the line the regulator has cut a little slack for the corporation, to the detriment of the society as a whole.

ENRON had a corporate motto – “Ask Why?”

But obviously not enough of their employees actually did ask why? Or possibly when they received an answer written in weasel they were too shy, or too lacking in confidence, or too bullied, or too whatever, to demand a more sensible answer.

But it was an excellent motto, Ask Why?

We should all be encouraged to ask why?

And in the case of statutory planning we are entitled to ask why there is apparently no quarantine period for urban planning professionals wishing to move between public and private sector?

This is important, not because we are accusing anyone of wrongdoing, or we lack the capacity to trust, but because we know that intellectual property and insider knowledge are business assets that must be ring fenced. If decisions are to be made fairly and in accordance with the spirit of the legislative framework then there cannot be any doubt about who the decision makers are representing.

Without the clear boundaries that should exist between public and private interests in land development there is a presumption that the “little people” will lose out to the corporate bullies. We need to have confidence that when our shire planning staff make recommendations they are clearly working for us. 

Currently we have no confidence that the plans being approved for Karridale will benefit anyone but the two development corporations involved.

Ask Why?