Comment by Sharon Webb

THERE’S A saying dating back centuries: ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ Corrections Minister Elise Archer should have remembered this when she organised December’s public meeting to consult locals at Westbury Town Hall. According to members of WRAP, Westbury Region Against the Prison, the meeting was initiated on Minister Archer’s first visit to Westbury, at the Green Door Café. ‘We would only talk to her if she guaranteed she would return to Westbury for a public meeting,’ said WRAP president Linda Poulton. ‘She said she would, so we sat down to talk.’ WRAP contacted the minister’s office many times about a date for the promised meeting, offering to find a location, book it and set it up.

But eventually, when the date was announced, the Minister spurned WRAP’s help. Management 101 dictates that good leaders maintain control by involving people/followers/ employees in decision-making processes. But Elise Archer, presumably in an effort to maintain control, did not involve her opponents. She kept WRAP outside the organisation of the meeting, timing it when many people were still at work or travelling from work and limiting the meeting time to one hour only. Employing Kingston-based consultants Impact Solutions International to run the meeting may also have been a mistake. Impact Solutions advertise as specialising in transforming conflict. ‘People call us when they don’t know who else to call’. It didn’t work with Westbury.

People walked into the hall to see chairs organised in the round rather than facing the stage. Ultimately this left Minister Archer in the middle of a circle of hostility. WRAP members and others against the prison had no investment in the public meeting. They arrived with aggressively-worded signs and banners, they disrupted with shouting and yelling. Impact Solutions CEO Mary Dwyer and director Chris Rees as facilitators were ineffectual in keeping order, behaving as if it were the Battery Point School for Seniors. They were nice but seemed unaware that Westbury residents believed their lifestyles and livelihoods were at stake.

After the meeting, one resident commented that on seeing the circle arrangement, he expected a round of ‘Kumbaya’. This left Elise Archer the opportunity to move into the space vacated by putative chairs Dwyer and Rees. It wasn’t a good switch. And for a woman who has hung out successfully in the female hostile Tasmanian Liberal Party to become Attorney General and Corrections Minister, it wasn’t smart. Just as it wasn’t ideal to walk in to the meeting with Director of Prisons, Ian Thomas. Fair enough, he could have answered prison questions if called upon, but he wasn’t. But this tall, shiny-headed man in full uniform, complete with shiny brass buttons and epaulettes, was intimidating. It looked like the Minister had arrived with the cops.

Elise Archer must know she is inclined to be blunt and brittle on her way to achieving her goals. She isn’t the only person with these traits but she needed to appear sympathetic, to get Westbury residents on side. Instead she was defensive, snappy and impatient. Minister Archer took charge when things were not going as she liked, barking out replies to questions and dismissing people without valid points. It didn’t help the hostility issue, it made it worse. In the end, the Minister left with a computer full of Westbury residents’ comments and questions. Nothing she hadn’t heard before. Nothing residents hadn’t said before. But with everyone feeling just a bit worse about the whole prison situation. Stalemate. sharon.webb@ meandervalleygazette.com