ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr reigns in an unaccountable utopia

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr at a same-sex marriage rally last year. Picture: Getty Images

How is this for an outburst? “I hate journalists,” ACT government Chief Minister Andrew Barr told an audience of communication specialists last week. “I’m over dealing with the mainstream media as a form of communication with the people of Canberra,” he announced, adding he had cancelled his subscription to The Canberra Times – a Fairfax-owned newspaper - due to its “conservative outlook”. Neither was the local ABC television bulletin suitable, said Barr, claiming the average age of viewers was in the mid-60s.

As to what Barr thinks he could achieve by bringing in a plethora of communication specialists to deliver Canberrans his vision, goodness knows. Perhaps like many a tin-pot dictator, he would dispense with a free press in favour of a tightly controlled state media. I don’t supposed it occurred to him that many communication specialists are former journalists, the same people he detests.

Barr’s government already employs 92.54 full-time equivalent communications staff. Just to put that in perspective, its constituents number approximately 400,000, about a third the size of Brisbane City Council’s. It has a Legislative Assembly comprising 25 members, the lowliest of whom is paid $160,373 per year. For some unknown reason it needs seven ministers, whose base wage is $272,634. Barr himself is paid $336,783, but admittedly he does it tough given this compares poorly to that of his state counterparts.

His administration epitomises minority utopia. Barr is the first openly gay state/territory leader. At the entrance to Canberra’s house of government is a statue of former ALP immigration minister Al Grassby, “The father of multiculturalism”, who in reality was sponsored by the Calabrian mafia’s Australian cell. Women make up the majority of the Legislative Assembly, and the minority government is a Labor/Greens coalition. Perhaps forgetting their limited bailiwick, the ACT legislators put up virtuous and useless motions proposing to bring detainees from Manus Island and Nauru to Canberra.

Barr’s hostility to the media has little to do with getting his message out, and a lot to do with scrutiny of his governance, particularly his administration’s relationship with the militant Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. Last month the ACT Auditor-General found the government’s land swap deal with the CFMEU-linked Dickson Tradies Club was to the ACT’s detriment of $2.4 - $2.6 million.

Last year a former ACT Labor chief minister, Jon Stanhope, called for the territory’s proposed Independent Commission Against Corruption to examine the party’s relationship with the Tradies clubs, claiming “at least half, if not more, of the Labor members of the ACT Legislative Assembly owe their preselection to the CFMEU.” The audit also found the process “did not achieve an open, transparent and contestable sale,” although no evidence was found of political impropriety. Breathtakingly, ACT Planning Minister Mick Gentleman claimed on this basis “this report puts the matter to bed.”

It appears Gentleman is not the only one in the Barr ministry to display such indifference to his responsibilities. In January, a Productivity Commission report revealed the ACT, compared with other jurisdictions, had the highest rate of indigenous child care and protection reports. In commenting on the rising number of these reports, the Minister for Disability, Children and Youth, Rachel Stephen-Smith, speculated this was due to “racism”. When she was asked by The Canberra Times whether these same reports reflected a different substantiation rate compared to those relating to non-indigenous children, she did not respond. Does she need reminding of what her portfolio entails?

But if there is only one thing that demonstrates the government’s farcical nature, it has to be the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Despite its cottages and its inmates’ rights to conjugal visits, it is otherwise known as a prison. Opened in 2008 with a traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremony (of course), it was hailed by then Chief Minister Stanhope as “the most human-rights-compliant, rehabilitation-focused prison in the world”.

As reported in January, human rights compliance is expensive, as evident by the fact the ACT prison system is the most costly in Australia. A Productivity Commission report revealed the government spent $436 per inmate per day in 2016-17, the national average being $286. This could in part be explained by the prison’s sumptuous and exotic menu. In fact the meals were so human rights-compliant that by 2014 an obesity crisis forced the authorities to restrict dessert from nightly to four nights a week.

The sugar highs are not the biggest problem. Nearly 30 per cent of the prison’s inmates in 2016 admitted to using heroin while incarcerated. In April 2017 it was reported that “four escapes, two deaths and violent bashing” had occurred in the previous 12 months, along with the accidental release of an inmate. Has it occurred to the government that perhaps the hard-core violent prisoner element should be treated as hard-core violent prisoners?

The government’s response is comical, provided you aren’t the mug paying for this. Last month Greens MLA and Minister for Corrections Shane Rattenbury proudly announced he had legislated for a United Nations subcommittee – should it elect to do so - to inspect the prison following the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in December. Seriously? This is on top of the oversight mechanisms conducted by the ACT Human Rights Commission, the Ombudsman, the Public Advocate, and the Official Visitors program. But it does not end there. Just yesterday Rattenbury announced the appointment of the territory’s inaugural Inspector of Correctional Services, claiming it showed the government’s commitment to the prison’s “transformational change”. At this rate there will soon be more correctional bureaucrats than there are prisoners.

In June last year the government announced an $83.4m deficit, but that has not stopped the government from spending extravagantly. Last year Barr, who is also the Treasurer, committed government resources to furthering the “yes” vote in the same sex marriage plebiscite, despite public objection. Buses and flagpoles were used as symbols for the case, as well as a “rainbow” roundabout. Were you wondering if Barr, in the interests of equality, provided resources for the “no” campaign? Silly you for asking. This month the government’s Office of LGBTIQ Affairs donated $3800 for a rainbow bus to take revellers to Sydney’s Mardi Gras. Of course that is pittance compared to the $800,000 spent fruitlessly defending the federal government’s challenge to the territory’s same sex marriage laws of 2013. Even a first-year law student could have told the ACT government this legislation would not survive High Court scrutiny.

The irony of this is Barr’s description of The Canberra Times - which has done much to hold the government accountable – as a “joke”. That a left of centre newspaper is described so says much about Barr, who has announced that he now gets his news from Crikey and The Saturday Paper. If Barr does not check his dismissive attitude, he may well find that even Canberra’s bien-pensants tire of his arrogance and petulance.

Incidentally, as for government communication specialists, was anyone else reminded of the Golgafrincham “B” Ark in Douglas Adams’s book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? This spaceship was built as a ruse by intelligent people to rid a fictional planet of all those employed in useless occupations. If we designed something similar, no doubt the ACT government would qualiy as priority passengers. On that note, would anyone actually notice their absence?