Doofus Of The Day #24

Today's Doofus is a particularly special one.

First, let me set the scene.

The location is the town of Port Phillip, in the state of Victoria in Australia.

CAROLINE Shahbaz's clients and colleagues sometimes ask if she is a witch. The St Kilda-based change management consultant admits that she jokingly refers to herself as a white witch.

This, she says, is due to her special powers of intuition, nurtured over many years training in eastern religion, western psychology, astrology and pranic healing.

"You know, I can walk into a room and pick up what the nuance is," she says. "For some people who are not familiar with that, it can be 'wow, how do you know that? Have you got a crystal ball?'

"That's a competency that's difficult to explain, let alone for a lot of people to understand."

"I have a vast, vast array of interests," she says, spelling out her suitability for the job to The Age. "I'm a student of, you know, what life is. How does matter form? Why are we here? You know, philosophical issues."

Her qualifications and experience include a masters of psychology at La Trobe University, a course with the astrologist Stella Starwoman and excursions to ashrams in India. She describes her corporate logo as a "religious emblem of the unity of body, mind and spirit".

Get the picture so far? That's right. Moonbat deluxe.

Meet Doofus.

. . . the other key player in this town hall tale is Port Phillip's chief executive, David Spokes.

Ms Shahbaz confirmed that the two met on a boat cruise, a social-cum-work gathering hosted by Parks Victoria. Soon after in 2004, Ms Shahbaz was weaving her magic on the corporate conscience of Port Phillip.

Council insiders say Mr Spokes gave the bewitching Ms Shahbaz carte blanche to do as she wished with his administration.

Uh-huh. You read correctly.

Doofus hired Moonbat to do what the hell she liked with his entire town administration!!!

Guess what happened?

Four years after Ms Shahbaz was commissioned to weave a spell of success over it, Port Phillip is on its knees, senior staff say.

Bureaucrats once fiercely loyal variously describe the administration as "demoralised", dominated by a "culture of fear" and even "dysfunctional".

Communication at the most senior levels is said to have broken down. Celebrated for almost a decade as a paragon of local government in Victoria, the left-leaning council is a shadow of its former self.

To make matters worse, instigation of the Shahbaz revolution may have been in breach of tendering laws.

But this internal controversy is not the only factor in Port Phillip's embattled current state. The furious row over its handling of the $300 million redevelopment of St Kilda's prized Triangle site is having a seismic impact locally and threatening to end the political lives of at least some of the elected councillors.

Given the Triangle turmoil, the Shahbaz saga could not have come at a worse time. All the more strange is that it was allowed to.

More bewildered than bewitched were the staff who had to cope with the sessions of "ruthless" honesty, integral to the Shahbaz method.

Complaints flowed, including that Ms Shahbaz outed a gay staff member, yelled and swore at senior officers who questioned her, and encouraged junior staff to criticise their bosses in special "challenge events".

By mid-2007 bewilderment had given way to bother. Staff were rebelling. Formal complaints of bullying, intimidation and sexual harassment were lodged against Ms Shahbaz. Lawyers were brought in to interview about 20 staff witnesses. Some staff were counselled.

Council staff have told The Age that over many months, senior officers advised the chief executive that the Shahbaz engagement did not comply with local government laws requiring that any contract worth more than $100,000 go to tender.

Why am I not surprised by all this?

I guess the magic words in the report are, 'the left-leaning council'. I think Moonbat and Doofus would fit right in with the Code Pink idiots who tried witchcraft on the street outside the Marine Corps recruiting station in Berkeley, CA the other day.

Who knows? Maybe we could trade the Berkeley witches to Doofus for their Australian counterpart. We'd get a witch with an interesting accent, at least. He'd get a lot more moonbats to play with - and with any luck, the Berkeley witches might have a close encounter of the digestive kind with one or two of those nice Australian salt-water crocodiles.

(I know, I know . . . that'd be cruel and unusual punishment. Can't give an innocent crocodile a stomach-ache, after all!)

Peter