We need to talk about ethics

Every society and every community needs codes to live by. They are required because we share space, resources and intimacy and because we want the opportunity to live meaningful and participatory lives.

At the same time, we come to know that there are some people who – for their own reasons or flaws – cast shadows over our lives.

The codes exist to make good on our reasonable expectation that ethical attributes like honesty, integrity, fairness and respect will be honoured by people, whether they are friends, neighbours, community leaders or even strangers.

After all, such attributes are the foundation of community well-being and for bringing out the best in us.

It is in this context that I have been mulling over a two-page article, ‘Gloster’s Way: Get in first’, published in Noosa News recently. It was an interview with long-time Noosa activist and erstwhile business consultant Dr Michael Gloster. Its central thesis seemed to be about his proclaimed centrality and influence in our community.

Dr Gloster, whose main role these days is as president of Noosa Parks Association (NPA), where he is by far the dominant figure, has had an effect on many Noosa people in many ways over many years. By his own admission, he has made “a few enemies along the way”.

In the article he was quoted as saying about NPA’s close relationship with Noosa Council:

“Part of the myth that we’re too close is we’ve been so successful in 57 years in shaping council policy.

“Every time you do that, you create enemies, so the common thread among the enemies is we must have ‘had an inside run’.

“So what are we meant to do? Back off like the B-graders?”

A thesis which explains a lot about Noosa today

I know many people and groups who claim to have been negatively affected by Dr Gloster’s influence in local affairs – I am one of them – and, after reading the Noosa News article by journalist Alan Lander, I wanted to understand where the man was coming from.

So what better way than to study his PhD thesis (Gloster, M J, 1999): ‘A Grounded Socio-Ecological Theory for Managing Active Adaptation of Stalemated Social Systems and Localised Vortical Environments’, Southern Cross University, Lismore).

It is a dense and puzzling read for a novice in socio-ecological theory and I was first struck by how, to my untrained eyes, it seemed to use reductionist schemata to represent the complexity of human interaction.

As I read the document, I found that its articulations seemed to rely on reducing people in a community or an organisation to a formula. Dr Gloster’s research for the thesis adopted the technique of ‘participatory action research’, where the researcher gets involved in what is being studied while at the same time endeavouring to objectively analyse the subject under scrutiny. In itself, this is a controversial methodology as participant observers can themselves influence what they are researching. My view is that this seemed to occur with Dr Gloster.

The thesis centred on two case studies – one of which examined the Queensland Department of Main Roads (for which Dr Gloster had worked as a consultant) and the other studied the people of Noosa.

Here are some Noosa-related sections from the thesis. I have highlighted the sections I find contentious and disturbing:

“From the early 1980s I have been immersed in an action research engagement designed to guide the future of the community of Noosa toward economic and ecological sustainability. <…> Armed with a new working hypothesis that Noosa was a stalemated social system proceeding inexorably toward a maladaptive future, and that the methodology, methods, and tools proposed by Emery (1973, 1977) for managing active adaptation of open social systems in turbulent environments were an insufficient set when dealing with stalemated social systems, I set about searching for a way, any way, of provoking Noosa out of stalemate, and toward active adaptation. [page1]

“In Noosa, I was able to persuade the Mayor to convene a search conference of representatives of all key community stakeholder and interest groups to design a desirable and feasible future for Noosa, and the role that a proposed new Council supported group, Enterprise Noosa, could play in co-producing this future. This provided me with a first opportunity to design and manage a search conference with a phase specifically addressing stalemate contained within it. The results were interesting indeed. Following the conceptual briefing on Stalemated systems, syndicate groups simply refused to tackle subsequent tasks of the search conference process in a serious manner. There was little fight, but considerable flight. [Page 54]

And later….

“This was done by working through existing community organisations, and at times facilitating a changing of the guard of these organisations.

“The key forums…..were infiltrated and changed from within. Local chambers of commerce, progress associations and tourism associations were used as forums to facilitate the realisation of new opportunities that the new legal dictates presented, and to facilitate the acceptance of these.

“The key forums of the conservation and lifestyle protection subculture, the residents associations, local area protection groups, and the conservation and environment groups were similarly infiltrated and used to alert the more progressive elements to the new realities and opportunities.

“The nett result was that significant sections of both the development subculture and the conservation and lifestyle protection subculture started to soften their positions, and to see the new opportunities.

“At the same time, there was resistance within both subcultures. The strain that this process on the existing institutional structures in Noosa was quite considerable. Not a single community institution, whether it be the chambers of commerce, the tourist association, or conservation organisations, escaped the traumas of internal power struggles, leadership challenges and the like.”[Page 85]

An understanding of what happened to Noosa

By his own admission, Dr Gloster’s action research caused “considerable strains”. Those of us in Noosa who have been involved in “community groups with internal power struggles and leadership challenges” will understand just how traumatic the impact might have been on individuals and groups “infiltrated” by this research.

The description given about Dr Gloster’s research methods, coupled with his comment in the recent ‘Get in First’ article in Noosa News about being “so successful in 57 years in shaping council policy”, made me take my thinking to how we as a community want to conduct our public discourse and decision making processes.

My lived experience in Noosa makes me believe that we have developed a toxic culture of community governance in which environmental values have been used as cover for an agenda to control the future of the Shire.

From my observations, the impact of “infiltrated and changed from within”, “internal power struggles” and “leadership challenges” on many people’s lives have been widely ignored in our community. The casualties seem to be accepted as the price that must be paid for the environmental objectives people deeply care about.

The need to understand dynamics of our community

I believe ‘middle Noosa’ needs to wake up to this and understand the demoralising effects and corrosive community politics. I also believe ‘middle Noosa’ needs to be told about the nature of the relationship between Dr Gloster and Noosa Council.

In a recent letter to the editor of Noosa Today, Keith Jackson wrote: “It would be heartening if Mayor Tony Wellington could reassure the people of Noosa Shire that Dr Gloster does not have an “inside run” in Council decision-making, that he does not wield influence beyond that available to every other person in the Shire and that the task of “policy shaping” is a duty of elected Councillors not unelected persons operating in the shadows.”

I found it telling that the Mayor did not respond to this invitation.

We need to remove the toxicity in the Noosa community. We need to develop a cohesive not a fractious community and become so much better in addressing the many challenges ahead.

As the challenges change and intensify, our community institutions have a choice between controlling and exclusive behaviour or open and inclusive behaviour.

Finding consensus is always difficult. But applying better ethical standards is essential and I sincerely believe that as a community we must all seek to operate with sincerity, rationality and compassion.