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THE VACUUM OF ACCOUNTABILITY
There is little compensation for loosing your home and/or loved ones to a bushfire caused by others. This is especially so when the lack of interest in holding the right people accountable for their contributions to the most significant disaster in Commonwealth history since the election of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe will go a long way to making this worse. Several of the affected councils continue to oppose the standard practice of firebreaks and other preventative measures due to pressure from specific interests. These are not always the ever reviled “greenies”. In several cases the source of this grossly criminal negligence has been council Aldermen and Mayors who have turned their back on their obligations to the citizens residing in their local government area as defined by Commonwealth Law.
These “victims of unaccountable decision making” had the right to a process where by every act of government, law, constitution, and sovereign required their direct and regular consent. A right scribed, by cunning bastards now forgotten to history, in our law books. The problem for these self serving bastards we have now is that accountability begins at the top and they fear the prospect of prison for their actions to the point of shouting down anyone who suggests it as a trouble maker.
The Brumby government, having decisively allowed water and electricity services to be privatized contributed to their neglect. Wooden power poles that burn, metal ones that fall down through lack of maintenance, water supplies that stop flowing when the electricity cuts out and don’t have a back up generator to keep the arteries flowing, even the decision to bypass all the affected inland communities and pipe water to the cities drained rural reservoirs and left their communities thirsty during the bushfires. The Brumby government isn’t the sole offender, though its contribution is substantial.
Local governments and ordinary people contributed to this act of terrorism. Councils should have known better, and should have done better. They had responsibilities that require enlisting the entire local population to clear firebreaks using what ever resources are available. Every community should have had a mile wide firebreak protecting them. Not one did.
Suggestions that the clearing of bush and the imposition of necessary fire breaks amounted to “spoiling the view” from the veranda’s of those who could afford a “Federation-styled” residence are unacceptable. While we can only hope they got what they deserved for building at the top of whatever natural gully full of uncleared firewood they lived above, they took others with them. That’s murder.
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TRUST ISSUES
It is rather disturbing to find that no one can be trusted with any level of authority or access. You have just purchased a two thousand dollar Laptop, and you leave it in your apartment and stroll down the shops, pausing to say hi! to the Maintanence guy mowing your lawn outside the flat and his assistant. On your way back home, you notice the Maintanence guy's assistant (head down and driving fast) shuffling off in a hurry followed quickly by the Maintanence guy.
You come home to find the Laptop frozen and pull the battery to reboot. Starting up you find that someone with a key has entered your flat, accessed your Laptop, and they have placed a password in your laptop keeping you out of the Computer. The only guy with a key to these flats was the maintanence guy who passed you on the way in.
At a certain point you realize you have damaged the evidence of fingerprints because you spent the day handling the computer trying to work out why the thing wont let you in.