Spin, Spin and more Spin

I am getting dizzy with all the spin.

Meeting Minutes should not be Spin

I along with other community members, including a few that for some reason seem to think that corporate giants the likes of Alcoa, BHP Billiton, Tiwest, Wesfarmers, Coogee Chemicals, Cockburn Cement, BP etc that make up Kwinana Industry are not big enough to protect themselves - I digress... 

Anyway we were invited by Kwinana Industry to attend a meeting to discuss a/ How industry can fund health programs in the community and b/ How industry can improve community member representation at CIF's. The background of these issues are:

1/ Soon after we started raising concerns that excess health problems in Kwinana could be related to pollution from Kwinana industry, industry started to fund (and attend) dinners and get togethers for our local GP's.  Then industry started to fund GP's projects, you know; $10,000 here, $10,000 there for example. While some may think there is nothing wrong with that, others may be more curious. Some in the community had complained that this might be seen as a conflict of interest for our GP's, while some voiced concern that this may even been perceived as a form of corruption.

2/ Kwinana Industry holds a bi-monthly meeting with the community and authorities, called the Community Industries Forum - CIF, which is basically meant to be an exchange of information session. Community member attendance at these meetings has been poor, and continues to decline.

The minutes for this meeting were recently released, and after reading these minutes I was left wondering if this was actually the same meeting I had attended because the minutes certainly did not appear representative of the list of things I had raised, or indeed issues that I had heard others raise.

Surely I can be forgiven for briefly wondering if these minutes and the Kwinana Council minutes discussed in the blog post: Is Kwinana becoming a Dictatorship? were related... but seriously that is not likely to be possible, is it?

A few other examples of the missing items of these minutes are:

I questioned Kwinana industry over its use of the claim that lifestyle problems are solely responsible for the excess of health problems in Kwinana. I pointed out that industry knew as well as I did that there was no scientific evidence to suggest that this was the case, and indeed the Health Department WA own health survey stated that report; 'could not determine the cause of excess health problems in the Kwinana community'. No mention of this discussion/debate appeared in the minutes despite the fact that the points above in regards to our GP's and industry funding were discussed, absolutely no mention of this discussion appeared in the minutes.

Another community member raised a point at the same meeting, that the reason some of the community did not attend the meetings was "because Kwinana industry all too often lied to the community". I then suggested that it may have something to do with industry stooges. Again there was no mention in the minutes of these discussions having taking place .

There are more examples of Kwinana industries treatment of the meeting minutes with spin, spin and more spin, but I'm sure you get the picture.

Is this just another prime example of Kwinana industries attempt to influence by selectively failing to record any items in minutes that they think might tarnish its image, and adding favourable spin to the items they do record?