Life may be like a box of chocolates, but according to one Perth councillor, running a local government is like eating a bag of liquorice.
City of South Perth Councillor Tim Houweling made the unusual comparison during a debate at the council's April 28 meeting about the risks facing the city.
The council voted 7-2 to hold a risks workshop, but not before Cr Houweling attempted to persuade his colleagues to adopt findings from a previous RiskWest workshop and direct the city's chief executive to develop strategies to address the issues raised. His motion was defeated 3-6.
Cr Houweling expressed frustration that the city had not made progress on governance issues despite significant room for improvement.
“To kick the can down the road and to expect that at some euphoric moment in the future we will have a further opportunity to do something which is so much better than what we may have done in the past is, in my view, utopia that simply doesn’t exist,” he said.
The councillor drew a parallel between managing risk and dealing with the effects of consuming an entire bag of liquorice.
“If you’ve eaten a whole bag of liquorice, you can eat a few charcoal tablets and it might help you,” he said. “Because of eating too much liquorice … I’m going to have some charcoal and hopefully it’ll fix it. And there is charcoal that we’ve got to be able to eat. It might not taste very nice, but we’ve got to be prepared to do it.”
Mayor Greg Milner countered that neither the council nor the administration had seen a report from RiskWest about the city's risks.
Mr Milner noted that the city's audit, risk, and improvement committee had voted 6-1 in favour of another workshop.
“The relevant workshop on February 23 was only attended by five out of nine councillors,” he said. “Almost half the council was unable to participate in that single workshop. I don’t see how council can possibly adopt something that it hasn’t actually seen. I don’t understand why we’re even considering adopting a strategic risk review that as far as I’m aware hasn’t actually been considered by councillors at a workshop and I don’t know what it actually says.”
Councillor Jacqueline Raison said she had not had an opportunity to raise what she saw as risks and wanted all council members to convene together.
Councillor Kathy Lees added that she believed the workshop was only intended to explain the processes behind risk management and did not realise it was meant to identify future risks.
