The Correspondence
TF-23-1204 – Message for Dr Buch from the Premier (attached): Gmail – TF_23_12404 – Message for Dr Buch
In response to my short plea to save The Gabba Community from the pain of losing a primary school and a park, the Premier of Queensland has sent me a two page letter which is filled with the PR fallacies, and avoiding being honest with the local public.
The Premier’s argument for getting rid of a primary school and a park is bizarre and illustrate the weak thinking of the governance we must suffer under:
1. “…the Stadium Taskforce Report found that The Gabba was a ‘tired’ venue, which would come to the end of its useful life by 2030.”
2. “The Queensland Government recently announced it will build a new, state-of-the-art EBSS just 1.6 kilometres from its current site, which can adequately accommodate future population growth.”
3. “The Gabba was selected over other existing venues is that it will seamlessly connect pedestrians with transport via a new pedestrian bridge to the new Cross River Rail train and Brisbane Metro stations.”
Of the three reasons, No. 2. might be an olive branch to relieve some of the pain, but still 1.6. kilometres is some further distance from its current and central location, and there is no honest recognition in the failure of Queensland heritage legislation for what heritage is really about for the local community and not for the convenience of the government.
No 1. reason raises questions about building standards in Queensland and government regulation and contracting of major projects, if, as alleged, the current stadium is at “the end of its useful life by 2030.” Someone in government is not being honest.
No. 3. reason infers that the Government has only the heart and a very small mindedness for Major Projects: Cross River Rail train and Brisbane Metro stations. In its ability for comprehensive government it has failed dismally, and has no intelligence for the job that the local community expects and demands.
The Thinking
Today, governance, across levels and branding, is in a very low type of thinking. It could be argued that, historically, the political decision-making has always been at that low level. I could argue that there were occasional higher standards from politicians, but the point is more profound. Our community expectations and demands are set by the intellectual history. Governance is set by the idealism from the history. Past, but occasionally, Ministers of the Crown have resigned for what we might consider misdemeanors. The expectations of the community maybe, in our historical context, idealism. But the ideals are what we measure the historical reality by. The problem is that fewer in the community understands the basis of their disappointed expectations from governance. The education is not common; even so, there is the understanding that something is not correct. Localism is an expression of this problem: the inability to see the global and regional in the local setting of ideas and in the thinking of the local place.
Furthermore, our image-obsessed and, also, A.I.-obsessed historical climate, and for some decades, has brought us to a place where there is considerable cognitive failure in the population — persons can become easily hoodwinked on issues of importance to their own lives, such as to be lulled into a false sense of comfort. I am not talking about conspiracies, and, in fact, the conspiratorial rhetoric is part of the misreading. Rhetoric is the problem, in the way the ancient Roman and Greek philosophers criticised its abuse. The thinking on A.I. is a larger part of the problem.
The human brain is far more, and qualitatively, complex, in that cognition includes, not merely acts of judgement, but also passion/emotional states. Even as mind, the thought process is not possibility reproduced as acts of comprehensive judgment. Mind maybe said to be an illusion, but it is an existential illusion at best. Say you — self, person, human being — does not exist, and who will believe you, except for the same foolish hypo-skeptics or cynics? In which case, we have good reasons to be skeptical, or even cynical, of a machine claiming it exist as a reproduction of you: self, person, human being. Methodologically, the hypo-skepticism of cynics is different to the skepticism of the common person. We do not wish nor believe we can be replaced by the machine.
The Politics
Understanding the politics, today, is understanding how machine learning has become a dominant way of thinking for power. It works against personable and human evaluations. This is not a conspiracy but a way of thinking over the last four centuries, and more, and since Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Thus what modern governments do in major projects is merely calculate, and ignore wider, and philosophic, ways of thinking, but with some high regard to individual or collective egoism. Modern politics, generally, operates in the same way of thinking. The leader thinks obsessively on the numbers and calculates the judgement, as thought as a pathway to “success”. The exception is the actualised thinking in the way of parliamentary idealism. Today, the population has been overrun by the erosion of that parliamentary idealism.
Therefore, what is happening with the thinking of the Premier of Queensland is very sad, and should be pitied. The Premier is a logician trapped in her own logic. The planning and decision-making for the 2032 Olympic Games has been trapped in a sealed but fallacious logic. And the Queensland Government fails to understand. Nevertheless, the Local Community is angry and for good reasons, and for reasons better than the Premier’s logic. The Community demand and expects that governance (Federal and State Government, and Council) respect their desire for suburban sustainable living: local and easily accessed places of education, larger green spaces, relief from population hypo-density, and affordable housing which can be modest homes for low or no income earners. This is the far better logic. It is global philosophy lived regionally and locally in better places.
Featured Image: Two of Dr Neville Buch business logos (ABN 86703686642)
Neville Buch
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