Councillor Misconduct Framework Review

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Published: Tuesday, 28 February 2023 15:08

 

The release of the Review was briefly covered in the final issue last year. It provided some very compelling summer reading.

The findings of the Review of the Councillor Misconduct Framework found that the OLG in the eighteen months from 1 April 2020 to 30 September 2021, finalised 56 misconduct complaints, which did not proceed to investigation, in an average period of 75 days.

That’s 75 days to decide to do nothing.

And they finalised 16 misconduct investigations resulting in 11 councillor disciplinary orders and five performance improvement orders, with an average timeframe of 418 days.

That’s 418 days to do something. FFS, to be polite.

The OLG needs a rocket up them. We have characterised them regularly as sleeping on the job (as far back as the February 2011 issue), as sloth-like, or glacier-like in their movement and even as a black hole, from which nothing gets out but where everything gets sucked in.

We are still in NCAT on appeal to get our hands on the reasoning behind a clumsy error of fact by a former CEO of OLG, when he was being bombarded with those facts, in the investigation of a complaint against a councillor at Wagga Wagga - still being covered up by the OLG.

Here is our 2 February response to the recommendations of the Review. It includes a proposal that there be provided something equivalent to section 210 Freedom from victimisation from the Industrial Relations Act 1996, to protect employees who may have made code of conduct complaints.

We need someone, and a government, to do something to reconstruct OLG into a responsive and active regulator which can do things quickly and transparently. Like a bad hand at poker, sometimes it’s better to throw the lot in and start again.