Commonwealth Parliamentary Association feedback

In his report on the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Conference in Kenya, the Deputy Speaker, Lisle Snell (Norfolk Islander 9/10) related a number of points from the conference as being relevant to Norfolk Island.

While many of these issues have been flagged locally ad nauseam, nothing apparently focuses the mind like a CPA conference half a world away.

The points taken from the conference by Mr. Snell are worthy of comment.

Firstly, in what looks like and attempt to justify Norfolk Island‟s plan to fix its waste management problem on the cheap with a homemade pit burner, we are told that Jersey (Channel Island) is not happy with its $100 million incinerator.

To put this in context, Jersey has a population of over 87,000, and its incinerator is a waste to energy facility that will provide electricity to 10,000 homes. Jersey‟s incinerator complies with EEC emission control standards, something which no pit burner does. There are orders of magnitude of difference here, in both the problem and the solution and while someone may have advised the NIG to use a Pit Burner in lieu of a proper incinerator, it most certainly wasn‟t the expert consultants (URS) hired by NIG for that purpose. URS examined a range of options for waste disposal, were paid around $60,000 for their work and provided a substantial report. 

Any serious effort to improve our WM practices, to keep our air and our beaches clean, won‟t be fixed with a pit burner.

We were also told that, “Nepotism is a concern, but unavoidable in small countries, and need not be a concern provided proper policy is followed”

Nepotism, defined as favoritism granted to relatives or friends with no regard to merit, is clearly avoidable. Proper observance of merit selection can prevent the reality of nepotism if not the perception of it. 

As for “proper policy”, the NI Administration needs considerable work to meet this millenniums public sector best practice standards in Human Resource policy.

Incidentally, Kenya‟s Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga, who formally closed the CPA conference is well practiced in the art of nepotism and cronyism. (google: Odinga, nepotism)

It‟s hard to decide if the next point should make us feel better or worse. “Small Governments suffer the same accusations of doing well, they must be corrupt, going bad, they must be incompetent”. The implication here is that politics is a thankless task, and it‟s probably true, but if politicians spent less time using taxpayers money for junkets to exotic locations, and more time attending to the business of government, they wouldn‟t need to sit around the pool in Africa or Bermuda or Jamaica (sites of previous CPA conferences) sucking on umbrella laden cocktails moaning about their public image.

Finally, CPA tells us to “Make all government contracts and results of building process public”. What a good idea. It appears that at last we can we look forward to a new era of transparency beginning with the posting of airline and fuel supply contracts on the web ASAP. 

Thank you CPA, best $20,000 we ever spent.