Is Anyone Listening?
Here comes another Good News - Bad News tale. Over the Christmas holiday season, I have received heaps of response to my last article in Business News.
This article announced that the State Planning Commission's study documents on WA to the year 2029 are available for public comment until early February.
The good news is that so many people care enough about the future of this State to give me a call. Very encouraging stuff.
I keep telling the various planning bureaucrats that you people out there do want to have a say in your future. They keep saying: "We do not see any evidence of it! Where are they when we ask for public comment ?"
And that is the bad news : we do not get our thoughts and iideas, our hopes and our fears, our likes and our dislikes, back to the people who need to hear them. Back to the people actually making the decisions.
Not much point in telling me about them! All I can do is repeat the same old line over and over again without any real proof of backup.
I shall keep on doing so, but we all know the classic dismissal response from people who do not want to hear what is being said: "we know you are concerned but we believe the majority of people support our view".
So don't tell me that you are concerned at the view of our future that is presented in the documents - tell the State Planning Commission, tell your local councillors, tell your State politician, tell your Federal politician.
And don't just tell them - make as loud a noise as possible while remaining polite and law abiding.
Jump up and down if you disagree with what they are going to make happen. They might not want to hear your suggestion for a more human oriented and less car oriented capital city than their proposal, or that the southwest should not expand in the way they say it must,
When you make statements that differ to their conclusions based on different values and assumptions, they may hear what you say but may not be really listening to what you are saying.
They may too easily dismiss your comments as ignorant, or too narrow, or too simplistic, or too naive, or too .....
So say your views clearly, concisely, and in many different ways. Phone, fax, write. Use different words.
This will increase your chance of being understood. This will increase your chance of having an impact on changing their view. This may well change their decisions, about our future.
Please do not despair to the point of giving up ! Even you, Colin.
As George Bernard Shaw said several decades ago : Progress without change is impossible. If you cannot change your mind, you cannot change anything.
I see evidence daily that the times are changing and the bureaucrat planners and decision makers are beginning to listen. So speak to them! Before February.
Business News 4 Jan 1996
printer friendly version | Tell a Friend