{"id":171072,"date":"2025-09-26T04:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T18:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/?p=171072"},"modified":"2025-09-25T11:19:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T01:19:16","slug":"committee-for-lorne-gorcapa-chained-by-its-creator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/news\/committee-for-lorne-gorcapa-chained-by-its-creator\/","title":{"rendered":"Committee for Lorne: GORCAPA … Chained by its Creator"},"content":{"rendered":"

GORCAPA … Chained by its Creator<\/strong><\/p>\n

After GORCAPA released its latest iteration of the Point Grey UDF last week, it seems an appropriate moment for the Lorne community\u2014injured, bruised, and trust-blasted\u2014to extend a [carefully pruned] olive branch and a qualified thank-you for the recent steps the Authority has taken towards compromise. \u00a0Now for a further extension of that \u2018pruned branch\u2019.\u00a0 It is also timely to remind our fed-up community of the limitations under which GORCAPA must \u2018labor\u2019 … spelling intended!<\/p>\n

GORCAPA is a \u2018quango\u2019\u2014a q<\/u><\/strong>uasi-a<\/u><\/strong>utonomous n<\/u><\/strong>on-g<\/u><\/strong>overnment o<\/u><\/strong>rganisation\u2014established under The Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act 2020<\/em> … NB: keep an eye open for that \u2018Environs\u2019<\/em> word as it is likely to come back to bite us all, and soon.<\/p>\n

In principle, quangos are staffed by civil servants yet snuggle up outside the civil service.\u00a0 They receive their funding directly from the government that appoints them\u2014without election and without recourse from the public they purport to serve.<\/p>\n

While a quango [think GORCAPA] is generally a power unto itself and is legislatively protected from and effectively unanswerable to the people, it inevitably ends up hide-bound by the very bureaucratic machinery that created it\u2014and to which it intermittently [but scantily] reports.<\/p>\n

Quango machinery is ever opaque: their budgets are either unpublished or impossible to trace, their committee processes are blurred or \u2018in camera\u2019, they love non-disclosure agreements, and their personnel changes occur so frequently [as with GORCAPA] that the \u2018responsible administrator\u2019 is magically moved or moved on … abracadabra<\/em>!\u00a0 \u00a0This constant morphing of staff ensures a corporate memory with as many holes as a Swiss cheese.<\/p>\n

Herein lies the source of Lorne\u2019s frustration\u2014the quango quagmire\u2014which exposes the horror [even evil] of \u2018big government\u2019.<\/p>\n

Politicians and their gargantuan public service have long forgotten about one of life\u2019s guiding \u2018principles\u2019\u2014Occam\u2019s Razor.\u00a0 Named after a 14th-century Franciscan friar and philosopher, William of Ockham [NB: the Surrey village of his birth is spelt differently to his name], Occam\u2019s Razor states that when faced with multiple explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest answer is usually the best.<\/p>\n

Also known as the law of parsimony, Occam\u2019s Razor favours theories, hypotheses, or designs that avoid unnecessary complexity.\u00a0 Medical students are taught to apply Occam\u2019s principle to the art of diagnosis, with the simplest explanation for a constellation of symptoms usually being correct.\u00a0 I used to teach my students not to search for a golden oriole when the birds in your garden are clearly sparrows.\u00a0 Occam\u2019s lesson is an invaluable one.<\/p>\n

To be fair to the Authority, and while it has clearly been ignorant of Occam, it has been dudded at every turn by the blunted razor of competing government regulations.\u00a0 GORCAPA\u2019s confusion, lack of focus, and absent continuity are likely not entirely its own fault.\u00a0 It has been so hide-bound by myriad parliamentary acts and legalities that, even if it wanted to break free, it couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Suffocated by process and micro-box ticking, GORCAPA [like other similar quangos established by bloated governments] has forgotten how to listen to the people they were set up to serve … us!<\/p>\n

It appears GORCAPA\u2019s key performance indicator, first and foremost, is to tick every regulatory box, regardless of its practicality or lack thereof.\u00a0 Many of these KPIs are created:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. without thought to their practical workability,<\/li>\n
  2. in blind oblivion to any competing or contradictory regulations laid down by multiple government departments, and<\/li>\n
  3. without the grunt [or courage] to challenge the juggernaut departments of state or federal governments.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As government agencies have long since lost the art of speaking, one to the other, chaos and paralysis now reign supreme.<\/p>\n

    William of Ockham would turn in his grave if he could see the mess that big governments so commonly make of seemingly simple processes. \u00a0Meanwhile, if George Orwell were seated by his graveside, he might mutter prophetically … \u2018I warned you of this way back in 1984!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

    Point Grey has been bedevilled by cross-departmental edicts, directives, acts, bylaws, statutes, rules, regulations, and limitations imposed by overarching departments.\u00a0 These include The Marine and Coastal Act 2018<\/em>, the Fisheries Act 1995<\/em> [and its several updates], Department of Transport regulations, Parks Victoria, multiple environmental agencies and pressure groups, and the new and strangling bureaucracy fuelled by often irrational climate change theories … the list is endless.\u00a0 Finally, all must be acceptable to the Eastern Maar\u2014a recent 2011 parliamentary Indigenous construct that [oddly] claims traditional<\/em> ownership of the Otway \u2018country\u2019.<\/p>\n

    As our community seethes with discontent, GORCAPA\u2014like ex-Councillor Clive on an Otway hinterland trip\u2014has become almost irretrievably bogged in red tape and powerless to resolve the issue.\u00a0 For more than two decades, two coastal behemoths [first GORCC, then GORCAPA] were tasked with delivering a pretty simple upgrade to a much-loved community asset.\u00a0 Instead, they have taken the antithetical path to that proposed by Occam.<\/p>\n

    The community envisioned a simple project:<\/p>\n