Complaints Review Long Overdue

April 21, 2016

by Dafyd Martindale

The announcement by Deputy Premier Jackie Trad that the State Government will review how complaints about mayors and councillors are managed is welcome, and long overdue.

During the last term of the South Burnett Regional Council, a raft of complaints about Councillor conduct were filed by people associated with South Burnett Council Watch, the South Burnett Free Press and S-BRAG.

What’s not widely known is that these frivolous complaints probably cost South Burnett ratepayers about $100,000, roughly equivalent to a half per cent rate rise.

This happened because the current complaints system has deep flaws.

One of the biggest flaws – and there are a lot, in our view – is that there is no penalty against a complainant if their complaint is thrown out for being frivolous, vexatious and groundless.

Instead, the cost of every complaint is borne by the Council the complaint was lodged against (for which read: the ratepayers) regardless of the outcome.

And the Council CEO is the meat in the sandwich.

If the CEO – an employee of Council – dismisses the complaint, he or she will be accused of bowing to political pressure to keep their job or being part of a “cover-up”.

So Council CEOs have a strong inducement to step back from any complaint and simply forward it on to the Department Of Local Government for assessment.

And as this Department runs up on average $9000 in costs for every complaint it looks into, it doesn’t take very long for complaints to create a big tab for ratepayers.

In the end, what did all the complaints against South Burnett councillors turn up?

Deputy Mayor – now Mayor – Keith Campbell, attended a meeting (not a Council meeting) about the sale of a portion of Adermann Park to St John’s Lutheran School as a member of the school’s church committee. He was given a refresher course in how to avoid giving the public a perception of conflict of interest, even when there was none (the land was sold to the school by the State Government, not Council).

Councillor – now Deputy Mayor – Kathy Duff was given a reprimand letter in 2014 for not communicating with the licence holder of Murgon RSL’s WWII cannon when it was going to be moved from the Burnett War Museum to Murgon RSL Club. At the time, the War Museum no longer owned the cannon and Cr Duff had communicated with the organisation that did.

And former councillor Damien Tessmann, who paraphrased in an open Council meeting an email he’d received from the Adermann family in order to preserve their privacy, but had earlier copied the entire email to all his fellow Councillors so they already knew its contents, was fined $1000 and made to apologise for “misleading Council”.

Cr Tessmann claimed had been denied procedural fairness, and we agree. The finding that he had misled councillors, when they already had the information in front of them, was ludicrous.

But as there is no avenue for appeal or review of the Department’s findings – another fatal flaw in the system – the decision could not be reversed.

Yes, we wholeheartedly agree that Queensland needs independent avenues of complaint when our elected officials behave inappropriately, unethically or corruptly.

This is a safeguard in our democratic system and a very necessary one.

But we also need natural justice in the process, a right of appeal, and the option to penalise people who lodge repeated frivolous complaints.

Council CEOs should not be left to hang out to dry, either.

Ratepayers don’t just need to be protected from corrupt officials.

Sometimes they need protection from members of the public, too.