Brian Burke

Back a few years we had a report in our local newspaper about a visit to the shire CEO by Brian Burke and Julian Grill. This visit did happen. It is a matter of record, a question was asked in Council by Councillor Bob Wyburn.

The question we should be asking ourselves today isn’t about whether Brian Burke came into town to do a bit of business, because we know he did. What we all need to do now is to flesh out a few subsequent scenarios, using our own wit and wisdom, and any scraps of anecdotal information we may have gleaned from the media over recent years. 

Possible Scenario

CEO – "Sorry Brian that land hasn’t been identified in the LNRSPP"

Brian – "OK then, sorry to have troubled you, we’ll forget all about it then."

Brian returns to the corporation he is paid to “fix deals” for and says “nothing doing” the AMRSC isn’t prepared to weasel any adjustment to the state planning policy. The land you invested in can’t be developed how you want.

Corporation – "That’s a shame, we’ll have to forget all about it then and just bear the losses."

You think that’s likely? Me neither.

We are talking about Brian Burke here, fixer extraordinaire and a man without equal among the men who do such things.

I can’t begin to tell you how high up, and how low down, people who “fix deals” are prepared to operate. They will do anything for money. And white collar crime is endemic within WA, and within property development. Read the transcript for the Landgate case that occurred in 2009. There was nothing very clever about what they were doing it revolved around snopake and photocopies.

But closer to home look at how the Hamelin Bay 1362 subdivision was approved, community and council were over-ruled.

The WAPC intervened over Hamelin Bay. Ask why?

 The Minister intervened over the approval for the Karridale Tavern. Ask why?

It is not a trivial question to ask why the results of community consultation are not often what the community perceive as to be in their best interests.

The non-resident ratepayers will spend time and money lobbying for what they want in some very high and very low places, it’s their job. They can spend all day every day doing it. They can persist and endure long after the community action groups have exhausted their capacity to resist and their funds to do company searches and FOI requests.

The corporations do not need to be concerned, they have Brian Burke on their side, and Richard Pawluk, and Marc Halsall, all pressing the flesh and maintaining relationships, adjusting and calibrating requirements until they reach an accommodation that suits the shire and the developer.

What chance does the resident community have?

I think today we have a better chance than ever before, if we all get connected and share nicely ;-)