Local government, like all government, is there to serve and provide for its constituency. Right?
Well often, that’s not the case. And here’s an example of bureaucracy damaging the livelihood of residents.
Much of what Governments do is dumb, with bad consequences. And this story isn’t as evil as the Federal Government continuing to have our soldiers kill and be killed in Afghanistan, just to brown-nose the US. Don’t worry, I’ll get to that in a later post.
Australia has three levels of government. One too many. Not that too many politicians in Canberra are all that bright (take Steven Conroy, Minister for Censorship, Spending Billions of Wasteful Dollars, Dribbling and Crying for example) or pay particular attention to ethics (you knew I was going to say Peter Slipper, didn’t you)? 
But it seems the further down the chain you go, the dumber the politicians are.
Take our council. Moreton Bay. For years, the Woodford Folk Festival has been making losses and going out of business. So the council bought it! If something can’t make money in private hands, it certainly can’t once the pollies get hold of it. 
Still, I mustn’t come down on them too hard, they did do some great things when Bellthorpe was cut off for a week early in 2011 by the storms that elsewhere claimed lives and destroyed towns. We got off lucky, but were without road access. Council got straight onto it, grading a rough bush track to make a serviceable (although still dangerous) road that I use today in preference to the second-to-be-repaired (after some months) ‘Gap Road’. The main road down the mountain will be another year.
But I digress. The Sunshine Coast Council has decided that five petrol sellers can’t sell petrol any more. That’s right, by Council Decree. Small businesses in Eudlo, Eumundi, Peachester, Conondale and Cooroy have had their livelihoods stripped. In some cases, after selling petrol from footpath bowsers for 50 years. People in those towns will now face up to a 40k trip to fill up.
The decision has been blamed on state legislation which identifies people walking on footpaths with mobile phones or smoking as an unacceptable risk of igniting fuel vapours or spills.
Why, FFS? Apparently the Council commissioned an ‘independent risk assessment’ that said that there was ‘extreme risk’ in continuing to allow footpath bowsers, because of the risk of people smoking or using mobile phones, which could ignite fuel vapours.
The Mayor, Bob Abbot said
This is not something we wanted to do nor do we feel happy about doing it
But at the end of the day, not only is the council obligated to help local businesses comply with this legislation but we also have a community obligation – and that is to ensure that our community is kept safe
The thing is, of course, that these risks have been thoroughly debunked. They don’t exist. Here’s the snopes article, and something a little more scholarly.
Well the ‘expert’ would have read all that, one would think? Apparently not. Need I say more?
Of course the expert would not have read that. ‘Expert’s just grow fat off the public purse, and tell the employer (in this case the government) was they are asked to tell them. It’s just a gravy train.
Over-reactions to tiny risks are increasingly making life unnecessarily frustrating – don’t get me started on electronic devices on planes causing navigational errors. The “better to be safe” response is the inevitable result of the combination of human nature (we instinctively fear tiny risks) and the high cost of insurance against large damages awarded by courts. Those of us comfortable with statistics and probability, and in some cases just basic science, have the wherewithal to reason our way out of those instinctive fears, but few politicians are in that group. Cross-examining lawyers don’t want to know the difference between a probability of 0.1 and 0.0001.
That said, you didn’t mention the other excuse offered for removing curb side bowsers – smoking pedestrians! There could be something in that one … but again, the risk is likely to be extremely low if there have not been any explosions from this cause over the 50 years that these footpath mounted bowsers have operated, and there used to be a lot more bowsers around like this and more pedestrians of whom more smoked than these days. See how easy it is to over-react before thinking through the probabilities!