Natalie Suleyman - putting the "scum" in Sunshine.

A rogues gallery on the front page of the Advocate.

Natalie Suleyman - putting the "shit" in Shitenham

There's a fair group of people who see the systemmic dysfunction and blurred boundaries between levels of government and demand that Brimbank Council be sacked.

In the meantime, the State Government, whose political party CAUSED the mess is throwing more money at the problem at more expense to Brimbank.

Cost to people of Brimbank

State government solution
Senior Public Servant Salary + Investigator Salary + Mayoral Allowance + 10XCouncillor allowances + 3 Motor Vehicles + 13 laptops + 13 blackberries + user charges for 13.

Sack Brimbank Council
Administrator salary + Motor Vehicle + 1 laptop + 1 Blackberry + 1 user charge for each. Save all Mayor and Councillor related expenses. Yee gads, ratepayers could come out marginally ahead!

So why is Brumby hellbent on keeping Brimbank Councillors in place. It doesn't appear to be in the best interest of Brimbank.

From the Brimbank draft budget:

9. The Mayoral allowance be set at $77,268 per annum and Councillor allowances be set at $24,000 per annum, plus an amount equivalent to the Superannuation Guarantee.

Plus a car, a laptop(x11), a phone(x11), all usage fees(x11) and babysitting fees or any other thing you can get your mates to pass, as required.

How much were your rates? Not bad pay for a part time time job, hey?

This is a big issue. How can they get that much money for a part-time job. How can the MPs they work for support this corrupt practice?

Isn't the Mayoral salary supposed to reflect a full-time job? If they are pair for a full-time job, and the MPs they work for know this, aren't they rorting public money?

Who worked for who? I want to know the MPs they were working for so we can start asking the questions?

That cover is just "BRILLIANT" says it all........

I prefer the original.. it's more condemning

Just got my Brimbank Leader. I didn't think I could possibly think anything worse of Ken Capar, but now I do.

The Leader's revelation that Ken Capar drove for 8 years while unlicensed shows a fine contempt for the rule of law in Australia.

Add to that his sterling personal qualities of alleged drunken solicitation, nuisance and theft, his episodes of incitement to hate the citizens of Sunshie DURING COUNCIL MEETINGS, his penchant for porn and pirate movies and violent abhorrent video and you have fine example of the future of the Victorian Labor leadership.

I thought he was just too dumb to understand his responsibilities as a Councillor, now I know he was worse, he considered himself above, beyond the rule of law, and completely unaccountable to anyone.

And this person of such high moral fibre had in his possession all of names, addresses, contact details, birthdates, etc.

"Brumby says talks with Crown boss James Packer were private"
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25476423-661,00.html

Michael Warner and Geraldine Mitchell

May 14, 2009 12:00am

PREMIER John Brumby has admitted he held private talks with Crown casino boss James Packer before his government caved in and granted it more tables.

But Mr Brumby yesterday refused to detail the discussions, claiming the talks were private, not public.

The casino has been granted another 150 gaming tables - announced while all eyes were on Tuesday's federal Budget.

Just hours before Tuesday's federal Budget, Mr Brumby announced a boost to Crown's lucrative blackjack, roulette and poker tables. Casino critic the Rev Tim Costello said it was the latest in a long line of questionable dealings between Crown and Labor since it took power in 1999.

"Steve Bracks met James Packer less than two weeks after winning that election. Ever since then, they seem to have given Crown almost everything they wanted," Mr Costello said.

"This is yet another secret and insidious deal that didn't even go through the Minister's (Tony Robinson) gaming advisory panel."

The Herald Sun says to John Brumby the public does have a right to know about their PRIVATE discussions


The behaviour patterns on this one and on the Brimbank Council affair are so so similar.

John Brumby gets elected Premier and meets secretly with Hakki Suleyman.

Brimbank Council business is interfered with by the Suleyman faction with support from others.

WELL JOHN THE PEOPLE OF BRIMBANK ALSO HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW AND WANT TO KNOW NOW WHAT WAS DISCUSSED AND AGREED. ITS PUBLIC BUSINESS WHEN DEALS LIKE THESE GET DONE _ NOT PRIVATE.

The Questions that need Answering are about

1. the secret John Brumby and Hakki Suleyman meeting and

2. the secret John Brumby and James Packer meeting.

The same principles and questions apply to both meetings.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25475901-24218,00.html

PREMIER John Brumby says what he and Crown casino owner James Packer discussed at the Albert Park Grand Prix is no one else's business.

Wrong. Mr Premier, it's everyone's business if you were talking to Mr Packer about the deal to give Crown an extra 150 gaming tables.

Did James Packer roll the dice on the deal in a VIP tent at this year's GP and did the Premier grab the cash?

This is just one of the questions the Herald Sun is asking, but Mr Brumby seems as nervous about answering as a punter watching the pokie wheels spin.

Yes, we would, Mr Premier. We expect you to tell us if you stitched up a deal to give the casino 100 extra blackjack and roulette tables and another 50 for poker.

You also seem to be secretive about whether you dealt your Cabinet colleagues in, or were they sitting around the wrong table?

Lots of unanswered questions here and the main game is at the casino.

While Mr Brumby probably thinks he should grab as much as he can during the recession, he should remember it's really coming from the pockets of those who can least afford it, the strugglers who lose it.

Looks like it will bomb out for John in the upper house.

Isn't it terrible when your secret dirty deals are held up to public scrutiny?

What's the world coming to?

By about now John Brumby must be asking himself why his advice from Seitz, Languiller and co that 'all is OK with Brimbank since the Suleyman faction were removed' was not placating the natives. I'm presuming they gave the premier these assurances, because no other self-serving group would have told him such garbage.

If the Suleyman's had been defeated in 2005, maybe, just maybe all this might have been avoided. Unfortunately, with the help of politicians in putting together pamphlets and using the Parliamentary mailing system to pay for mailouts for UNENDORSED Labor candidates and their dummies, the faction were returned with new strength. End result - rampant despotism.

Brumby must sack Brimbank Council at a minimum. Install an 'acceptable' neutral figure as administrator for a period until the 2016 local government elections.

In addition, the change to eligibility of Electorate officers to be Councillors (and might I add, full time 'volunteers' be implemented with effect from the 2012 local government election cycle.

That the principal abusers of their posts named in the Ombudsmand report be prosecuted, with convictions recorded where evidence supports it. Even if sentences are light, these people will never again be able to hold public office.

That the Victorian and Australian governments set about making restitution to the people of Brimbank by providing community development (eg Sunvale PS) to improve the amenity of a suburb so long used and abused by Labor. This is justifiable spending based on every index of disadvantage available.

As numerous posts in this forum have warned, it was easier, cheaper and far less damaging to Labor to take action on residents INITIAL concerns. Now, we, the residents, want satisfaction not spin.

http://tiny.cc/ikI9B

Hindsight. Yes even Telmo wished he had this.

Remember this?

Why is this Hakki individual so powerful?
What does he have over people?
Has he ever had another job?
Has he ever done anything other than for his own cronies in the community?
Why did he never stand for election?

WHO THE HELL IS HE???????????????????????

http://inside.org.au/karl-marx-and-the-branch-stackers/

ONCE UPON A TIME, when the Australian Labor Party was a democratic socialist party, it often took seriously Karl Marx’s dictum that “philosophers have interpreted the world long enough: the time has come to change it.” Labor’s Victorian branch needs to listen to Dr Marx once again.

The progeny of Victorian Labor factionalism is branch-stacking in order to gain preselection for safe seats. It typically works like this: factional warlords, sometimes local councillors, connect up with leaders of ethnic communities to recruit members, known as “stacks,” into Labor branches, where they turn up to vote as directed and are rarely seen again. Often, the ethnic leaders or their family members are then rewarded with jobs in the electorate offices of Labor politicians. What this exploitative practice tells us about a party supposedly committed to fairness and social equity is obvious.

Brimbank and environs are heaven-made for branch stackers. As well as being Victoria’s second largest municipality, with an annual budget of $133 million, it is the most multicultural, with no fewer than fifty-three culturally diverse communities. Over 50 per cent of its 174,000 residents speak a language other than English.

Because of his powers, the Ombudsman’s report is notably thorough and illuminating, but anyone who has not been asleep for the past few decades has known about the factional toxicity and the odious practice of ethnic branch stacking. Labor members were alerted to many of the problems in 1998 when lawyer Mark Dreyfus, now a federal MP, conducted a review of the party’s organisation.

Unlike Dr Marx, Victorian Labor power brokers have only nibbled at the problem, introducing relatively minor rule changes that mean the stackers now have to be a bit more cunning.

Sam David is one big pile of DROSS so flick him now.

His new maaaate Tran Siu is just as big pile of DROSS who needs a spell in the sin bin.

Troy Anatovski is another pile of DROSS so flick him now.

And the new Council is also highly dysfunctional as it cannot brak its factional ties and alliances.

Decisions are being made behind closed doors by factional leaders and the Council administration and outside the public domain where close scrutiny can occur.

Bill Scales already cannot control these processes and outcomes.

The ALP's "Brimbank Strategy" has failed spectacularly already. Dressed up by spin doctors as "decisive action" it is failing spectacularly to deliver any change in governance at all.

The biggest governance change may come from the CEO's proposed changes to powers and responsibilities which themselves lessen the opportunities to practice democracy in Brimbank and increase the risk of even higher levels of corruption at Council.

The passage of a new Council budget in early June right under Bill Scales' eyes - a budget that is filled with political and poor financial judgements and decisions rather than those based on real community needs - will be an inditement of the ALP's lack of leadership on the Brimbank Council Farce it has overseen and supported for the past decade.

For the sake of the community the ALP Leadership must now review its "Brimbank Strategy" to appoint an Investigator to supervise the sweeping under the carpet of the bad news before proceeding to mmove back to "Council business as usual" at the end of Scales' term.

The "Brimbank Strategy 2" must be a sacking of the Brimbank Council and the appointment of an Administrator for up to 10 years to rid the area of the corrupt political factional influences that have infiltrated the Council administration and are still today affecting major decision making.

The Administrator needs to be supported by an Advisory Group of residents and ratepayers from the 5 Wards who can provide advice on local needs and issues. For example Harvester Ward could be represented by community groups such the the Ardeer Play Group, Sunshine Mothers Group and SunRRA.

If the ALP does nothing about its current "Brimbank Strategy" it will eventually bring down the Brumby Government as the slow domino effect rolls through. The outcomes of the failed "Brimbank Strategy" will ultimately reduce the ALP to a political ruck in the wilderness for over a decade.

Capar contempt wrote:
Just got my Brimbank Leader. I didn't think I could possibly think anything worse of Ken Capar, but now I do.

The Leader's revelation that Ken Capar drove for 8 years while unlicensed shows a fine contempt for the rule of law in Australia.

Add to that his sterling personal qualities of alleged drunken solicitation, nuisance and theft, his episodes of incitement to hate the citizens of Sunshie DURING COUNCIL MEETINGS, his penchant for porn and pirate movies and violent abhorrent video and you have fine example of the future of the Victorian Labor leadership.

I thought he was just too dumb to understand his responsibilities as a Councillor, now I know he was worse, he considered himself above, beyond the rule of law, and completely unaccountable to anyone.

And this person of such high moral fibre had in his possession all of names, addresses, contact details, birthdates, etc.

Everybody on the electoral roll in Brimbank should make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner over the unlawful use of their personal information!! A community class action.

I agree........we need some serious compensation for the community that has sufferred with them and their snouts at the trough