“Manage Council like a business” says Peta Pinson in her mayoral campaign.
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The Council is not a business. The role of governments, whether Federal, State or Local, is to provide services for the public good, while the role of businesses is to generate profits to individuals or shareholders.
Pinson says “ratepayers are the investors/shareholders providing capital to run the organisation”; if this were so then the “customers” are not the community but the “shareholders” who will most often be businesses favoured by the “Board of Directors”.
This betrays a basic misunderstanding of the roles of government and business. Not everything that is profitable is of value to the public good and not everything of value to the public good is profitable. We don’t want governments to be run as businesses any more than businesses run like the government.
The fallacy of governments run as businesses has been rife in governments since the 1980s, and we have seen many examples of its failure (housing, energy supply). Too often, when profits are under pressure, the needs for public good (Council libraries, parks, roads, sewerage) is pushed into second place.
Michael Eddie, Port Macquarie