What’s in a survey?

“It is reasonable to presume that 88 per cent of the respondents ought to be at least human. Prime facie, about 40 per cent of the content is so similar it is either AI generated or someone had a few samples or templates that directed a group of respondents in their submission writing.”
– South Ward Cr Marija Vujcic

THE City’s finance committee tonight voted to accept the Fremantle Markets business plan based on a suspect ‘public’ survey in which most of the submissions were from the operator’s tenants – and possibly A.I.
The City received a total of 387 public submissions consisting of 135 submissions to the City’s MySay portal and 252 written submissions via email or post. Of the 135 MySay responses, the FPOL agenda item confirms in submission 144 attached here: “The following statement was received as 108 identical individual submissions from Fremantle Markets traders.”
Of the 252 written responses, many are identical and use similar language submitted within minutes of each other.
The City says a total of 340 submissions or 88 per cent supported the City extending the Fremantle Markets Pty Ltd lease of the heritage-listed building another 20 years.
Nearly a third of these (108) were from nameless stallholders from unknown locations (residences) who appear to have filled in the same survey ‘template’, word for word.
Most notable is the number of repeat submissions also attached here of several submissions with exactly the same ‘compelling reasons’ from one to nine supporting FMPL’s lease extension.
The repetition is obvious when a search of each submission identified the same key words and phrases such as, ‘without further delays’ and ‘as soon as possible’.
South Ward Cr Marija Vujcic questioned the validity of the survey data and conflict of interest in accepting submission from stallholders with a vested interest shared by their landlord FMPL, whose CEO attended tonight’s meeting having threatened to move and take stallholders with it unless the lease is extended (http://bitly.ws/RrWu).
“We are being asked to vote on the officer’s conclusion drawn from that data to continue with FMPL and another 20 year lease without going to tender,” Cr Vujcic said, having moved unsuccessfully to defer the matter until the survey data could be ‘unpacked’.
“Is the data valid, is the data reliable? Does the data give us confidence in the measurement of the submissions made.”
Cr Vuycic said the data does not distinguish between ratepayers and residents and people from neighbouring localities, the eastern States or overseas: “The perceived bias and error in the non-disclosure of a location renders the 88 per cent data null and void.”
She said: “It is reasonable to presume that 88 per cent of the respondents ought to be at least human. Prime facie, about 40 per cent of the content is so similar it is either AI generated or someone had a few samples or templates that directed a group of respondents in their submission writing.”
Shocking and obscene is how Fremantle Society president John Dowson described the City’s public submission process on the StreetWise Facebook page.
“What matters is the quality of the submissions. The Business Plan was deeply flawed and not improved in any way following excellent submissions.”
He said many of the submissions supporting the plan have the appearance of being generated by artificial intelligence, “the same points made but in different order”.
Cr Vujcic added: “FMPL and stallholders are conflicted, which disqualifies the Murdochs and the markets stallholders from being respondents. Both FMPL and stallholders stand to directly benefit from the extension of the lease. The 108 responses from FMPL and stallholders are null and void.”
Mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge appeared not to put much weight on the survey it instigated in rambling contribution: “Whether this is a pertinent issue or not is not so significant for me in terms of the markets, which should be a destination for people across WA, visitors, tourists everyone else. I think the point of conflict of interest is if let’s just say if stalls all submitted that they didn’t, they perhaps supported the other side of the case, I suspect that argument would not be made right now.
“The fact that they do support the business case I think is being used in a way that would not be used if they wanted something different. It would be interesting to see that data, but it certainly would not change how I vote on this issue.”
Asked whether the City could provide a breakdown and analysis of submissions, CEO Glen Dougall said deferring the item would delay a decision until after the October local government elections.
“Yes, we can provide the locations where it has been provided through the responses, absolutely,” he said. “We have removed data from the responses to protect people’s identity, but where they have not provided locations, not everyone would have done that though, that is very difficult to achieve.”
Cr Vujcic replied: “Then that’s going to be a major problem.”
Additional Fremantle Markets stories at streetwisemedia.com.au.