Once upon a time in Freo – Act I

COMMENT: FREO’S ‘sustainability journey’ is over. The 10-year experiment in socially engineered ‘terraforming’ and feelgood politics has left ratepayers with a debt-ridden council unable to maintain precious assets and provide basic local services.
With a 2020 financial loss of nearly $33 million, rates outstripping inflation and a beleaguered business community still dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic, the City can spruik sustainability all day. The reality for ratepayers is whether the books are in the black, or bad.
Reported by StreetWise on Monday, financial statements presented to the audit risk committee on April 21 confirm a $32.8 million loss in 2020, yet the City records a ‘revised’ $4.7 million profit? (www.streetwisemedia.com.au/fremantle-council-massages-the-books). Council was warned of the significant shortfall nearly 10 years ago, and has tried to conceal it ever since.
As financial experts explain, the loss has been incurred over many years under a Greens-led council that presided over ‘tent city’, an alternative Australia Day and a controversial Kings Square civic building StreetWise understands will be opened before the October local government elections.
The key architect of Fremantle’s financially sustainable ‘journey’ has retired to a powerless seat in the upper house while the CEO overseeing the books in recent years has just resigned.
Greens WA MP Brad Pettitt told StreetWise: “Freo’s on the right track. A sustainable city is one which has more people living and working and recreating in it and Freo’s seen over the last decade renewed investment to enable this. Still lots of work to do but the fundamentals are now in place.”
Two of the key questions in Dr Blagg’s thesis is how a green mayor and his council can shape economic development to create a sustainable future for the city and how does an interactive digital storytelling production enable the sustainability journey to be better communicated? The questions conjure up images of Max Headroom, the computer-generated UK TV personality launched in 1985. The stuttering talking head is a piss-take on media and corporate greed (www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU).

Hitchhikers guide to sustainable Freo

TO understand the sustainability mindset of Dr Pettitt and his supporters, readers should refer to a 2014 thesis paper, ‘Hitching a Ride Towards Sustainability: How Sustainability is Working its Way into Mainstream Local Government’, by Linda Blagg, a colleague of Professor Peter Newman, director of the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/195631223.pdf).
Pettitt’s mentor served on council from 1976 to 1980, wrote the State sustainability strategy and in 2014 received the Order of Australia for his contribution to urban design and sustainable transport.
“In 2009 when a sustainability academic was elected Fremantle’s first green Mayor, it provided a rare opportunity to document a sustainability story unfolding in the present about a subject currently trending world wide, that city mayors are the key change agents for sustainability,” Dr Blagg claims in her documentary on the Newman-Pettitt experiment in which she was a ‘hitchhiker’.
Dr Blagg’s thesis claims while a ‘keen observer’ in 2014 will have found it difficult to find leadership in sustainability, ‘pockets of change’ had emerged locally, “as if humans are slowly waking up from a collective ‘Rip van Winkle’ dream”.
City mayors increasingly are, “trending as the key change agents for a sustainable Earth”, it says, quoting US author Benjamin Barber’s 2013 book, ‘If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities’. Mayors are the hope of humanity: “Political leadership to achieve sustainability is coming from mayors rather than national leaders.”
Dr Blagg said Fremantle’s population had remained static or declined by the time Dr Pettitt, then dean of sustainability at Murdoch University, joined council in 2009: “Fremantle is an example of what happens when a key sustainability pillar – the economy – is neglected.”
She said Fremantle resident and activist Newman introduced a ‘drama’ based on his experience with ‘green anti-development’ attitudes, which ran deep in the port city. Through his work with IPCC, he “saw this conflict playing out globally and thus the way the new mayor and his council dealt with it would be relevant at a global level. He too became an integral part of the research process in his role as guide and mentor to both Pettitt and myself”.
Dr Blagg had already met Dr Pettitt when, “Newman made his proposal”, the CUSP researcher commissioned to make a YouTube film, ‘A Different Way of Thinking’, as part of Dr Pettitt’s 2009 mayoral campaign. In 2020, she joined Dr Pettitt’s Upper House campaign by releasing, ‘Freo’s 10 Year Turn Around’, which draws on her 2014 thesis: “Pettitt was a good subject for documentary – unguarded, transparent, passionate and idealistic. He was articulate about sustainability in terms of ‘the big picture’, he stuttered when he was actively thinking, excited, ‘in the moment’. As strategic head of the City, Pettitt would drive the Fremantle narrative.”

Tales from the script

THE ability of the media to communicate, “a new way of thinking for an Earth under threat is critical”, according to Dr Blagg, whose 2014 thesis highlights media resistance to Brad’s social and economic vision for Fremantle. But bringing the media along for the ride can be difficult. No problem, just dip into revenue and develop your own social media and print platforms, such as council’s ‘Freo Story’, which cost ratepayers nearly $1 million but failed to increase visitor numbers in the port city.
Dr Blagg says the word ‘journey’ suggests ‘the hero/heroine’ who leaves home on a quest to find something the community needs to survive. After many trials and tribulations, they return to save the day, Dr Blagg says, referring to NZ author Markus Milne’s 2006 paper ‘Creating Adventures in Wonderland: The Journey Metaphor and Environmental Sustainability’.
“Local government can potentially fulfil its potential when it has a mayor with a vision prepared to take political risks,” she says, adding sustainability requires a different way of thinking in local government, “a different kind of politics”.
Oddly, though her thesis covers only the first four years of Dr Pettitt’s mayorship, Dr Blagg claims without Pettitt’s leadership style, “Fremantle’s journey towards sustainability may not have been a success”. Premature? She repeated the claim in 2020 during Brad’s State election campaign.
Mayors need to be problem solvers and pragmatists, with allegiance to the city before ideology: “Mayors are usually ‘homies’, part of the neighbourhood, with a significantly larger amount of trust invested in them compared to state and national leaders who are rarely if ever glimpsed.”
Over to you Max.

Coming soon: Once upon a time in Freo – Act II