SCENIC Rim Mayor, John Brent, has likened Cr Derek Swanborough to a white ant.
In a letter giving a preliminary judgment of inappropriate conduct against the Tamborine Mountain representative, the Mayor says he relied on three sources in arriving at this.
One of these was an LGAQ handbook which quoted former Local Government Minister, Desley Boyle, ‘rather colourfully’ describing certain types of Councillor behaviour (outside a Council meeting) as ‘white anting’.
The Mayor’s letter goes on: “One of the examples of ‘white anting’ identified by the Minister was: ‘White anting may involve failing to accept the majority issue and destabilising the Council by continuing to debate the issue in the public arena’.’
In other words, any Councillor who dares to raise his voice in public disagreement against a Council of which he is a member is, ipso facto, a white ant.
So what does that make the majority members of a Council who slavishly and seemingly mindlessly follow the edicts of their Mayor and CEO – red ants?
Has it ever occurred to the Council critics of Cr Swanborough that he would never have gained his current public status as a ‘freedom fighter’ if they had not ganged up against him and in effect sent him to Coventry because of his contrary views?
Their hostile reaction to his disclosures was directly responsible for the setting up of the Scenic Rim Rate Payers Association. Yet, like ants being brushed off a picnic table, they refused to recognise this as being representative of majority opposition.
And their hostility became tainted with a quest for revenge. Examples include dubious complaints of Code of Conduct breaches and Conflicts of Interest, and failing to second motions that had all the hallmark of good policy.
The Code of Conduct which has been used in an attempt to discipline Cr Swanborough was an interpretation by the Local Government Association of Queensland and has no statutory basis under the Local Government Act. It is designed simply to give Councils a squeaky clean image free of controversy and dispute.
LGAQ executive director, Greg Hallam, claims it counters the ‘very real damage’ that renegade or dissident councillors can do to the reputation of a council.
But in doing this it discourages contrary debate and encourages government by rubber stamp.
If dissent had been muzzled like this in the past, Australia could have been deprived of the rise of the Curtins and Menzies, or Weinholts and Mullers of politics.
The process also affords an unhealthy protection to local government of a kind that could encourage monopolistic or dictatorial practices antithetic to open, democratic government.
And it encourages the pursuit of vendettas against Councillors unafraid to voice their opposition to what they may see as flawed Council procedures or policies.
The most recent of these in the Scenic Rim Council involved the petty rejection of a request by Cr Swanborough to attend a Sydney conference on planning for community outcomes.
Interestingly it was Boonah Councillor, Kathy Bensted (her own frequent flyer experiences include a Sydney conference), who successfully moved to veto Cr Swanborough’s request on the grounds that funds could be better spent elsewhere.
‘Interestingly’ because it was Cr Bensted’s complaint that led to the Mayor’s preliminary ‘white ant’ judgment against Cr Swanborough.
And this followed well-publicised correspondence in the local media by ‘superlibrary’ protest organiser, Bevan Pressler, Cr Bensted, and Cr Swanborough. This culminated in the Boonah Councillor being hugely embarrassed over her attempts to belittle the response to her request for written submissions on the Beaudesert Centre Revitalisation Project.
Her claim that she received only 10 ‘personal’ letters, was countered by Cr Swanborough’s disclosure that these were part of a file of 162 written responses, which when added to the 26 original submissions brought the total number of written protests to 188.
One could say that this stirred up the ants’ nest because Cr Bensted then complained that Cr Swanborough had acted inappropriately in giving allegedly incorrect figures to Mr Pressler without Council permission.
Presumably if he had given incorrect figures to Mr Pressler, with Council permission, that would have been all right.
But any discrepancy in the figures quoted by Mr Pressler was later corrected by Cr Swanborough when he noted the fact that ‘yes’ only 10 had been personally addressed to Cr Bensted and the remaining 152 had been addressed to Council as a whole.
And Cr Bensted’s complaint conveniently ignores the fact that Mr Pressler’s letter exposed an apparent attempt by Council to hide information that should have been in the public domain.
In other words it was a public interest disclosure.
Is that really white anting?