BEYOND BELIEF: Melbourne City Council Cocks Up // It's Not the Spin, It's the Sin

Melbourne City Council watchdog Anthony van der Craats and the Herald Sun are reporting that the Council are spending $4 million a year on maintaining its image.

They point to the appointment of Hayden Cock as a full-time PR spin-doctor earning nearly $5000 a week as an example of misplaced priorities.

The OC understands that some Councillors, especially Deputy Lord Mayor Gary Singer has been angry at media coverage of his activities and believes some new spin will help.

This is a fantasy.

Singer has definitely been sledged, and the OC thinks some of it has been unfair. But just some of it.

No spin doctor, no matter how much you pay him or her can solve the PR problem of Councillors spending money on travelling overseas or voting themselve new lurks or perks or whatever. How do you spin it? What telephones calls can you make to get a journo to drop such an easy story? These overseas trips are a joke, everyone knows it. They achieve nothing. They are pushed by the Council senior management to encourage the Councillors to be as much out of their hair as possible. That's the reason they happen and Garry and his fellow Councillors better wake up to it.

When they dole out money for artworks that offend people because they're anti-semitic or leftist or anti-Christian or whatever then - yes, surprise, surprise - they are going to get criticised.

Neil Mitchell, the Herald Sun and now the blogosphere are going to rough them up for these stupid actions. It's really very simple. Stop worrying about spin and start worrying about how to avoid those stupid acts that require spinning in the first place.

Singer's private business dealings have been attacked and I still wonder how that's relevant to his Council duties but again no spin-doctor could have neutralised that story. No doubt the Council tried to do so, but what can you say? He slow-paid some suppliers, big deal. The only people who remember the story are freaks like me anyway. Compared with the corrupt law firm Madgwicks run by Graeme Levy, who lives like a thieving king on Orrong Road Toorak. Ka-ching.

And Singer's boss, John So has done a good job. I wonder if there's been a Lord Mayor in Melbourne's history who has brought people together better. He has grown in the job practically every day he's been there and has managed to avoid almost all distracting bad publicity by being a very careful, focused leader who is very attuned to what the public want. He barely needs any spinning at all because he rarely puts a foot wrong.

WHAT MUST BE DONE
· No more overseas travel, except by the Lord Mayor. He's very careful not to travel excessively and I don't recall has ever been criticised for an unjustified trip. Leave the Ambassadoring work to someone with the title and the status and the business credentials to do it. And keep even that to a minimum because most of it is crap anyway.

· Stop wasting money on dud projects. Council watchdog van der Craats thunders on about this more expertly than I can but it's clear there's plenty of problems. A notorious $7 million "turning circle" for boats in the Yarra that has never worked. Putting yellow sand everywhere in the Garden State's capital city. Funding shameful artworks that should never see the light of day. Just stop them and avoid the wrath.

· Reconsider spending $4 million annually on spin and presentation and put it into a new project that people will marvel at. It's a lot of money. Let Gary Singer open it and get the credit. This will be a much more cost-effective thing than a five grand a week spin-doctor. If the spin-doctor's patient doesn't want to get better, then how can you expect the spin to improve anyway?

· Open up the show, put all the decisions and processes online which has two benefits. One, ratepayers can see how their money is being spent. Two, the very act of doing so imposes its own discipline because every decision-maker knows they'll be called to account. Remember, this isn't really a Councillor issue, it's more to do with explaining to the Council's senior management that they are accountable. One of the least accountable, long-time Council bureaucrat Alison Lyons has recently departed, a sign hopefully that things are on the up.

· A realistic appraisal of what the high-prised Hayden Cock can do. Even on his massive wage, he cannot turn a very smelly skunk into a snow leopard cub.

Game on.