Adelaide City Council faction without a leader
Adelaide City Council Deputy Lord Mayor Houssam Abiad played a key role in the formation of Team Adelaide — but they say he isn’t their leader, writes Celeste Villani.
- Deputy Lord Mayor linked to failed builder
- Adelaide City Council accepts Houssam Abiad register of interest
When Houssam Abiad, Adelaide City Council’s Deputy Lord Mayor, was growing up in war-torn Lebanon, politics was a “dirty word”.
He was living through a civil war with his family before he returned to his place of birth, Adelaide, in 1995, aged 19.
“Politics was a dirty word in Lebanon; I never wanted to be involved,” Cr Abiad recalls.
“Politics there was signing a death wish. Then you arrive in a place like Australia and you soon realise how much change you can effect to improve the lives of people – that has been incredible.”
The man behind revelations last week that he had links to the director of failed builder D & C Homes was first elected to council in 2010. He has since become one of the council’s most well-known and respected members, largely via his website and being among “the most accessible” councillors.
“My job over the past eight years in council has been a mediating job,” Cr Abiad says.
“Everyone will tell you I find the consensus, find the middle ground. I’m always the person who tries to connect and forge a way forward between two groups of people who potentially may not agree on anything.
“A perfect example of that has been all the motions I have brought in this term that have been unanimously supported.”
Go to any council meeting and you will see Cr Abiad, a property developer, is a stickler for statistics.
He is known for his comprehensive e-newsletter to constituents after each sitting.
He records who votes for and against each motion with and without notice. Of the 77 brought to council, 31 have been moved by his majority faction, Team Adelaide.
Cr Abiad has been credited with playing a key role in the formation of the group that includes Alexander Hyde, Simon Hou, Mary Couros, Arman Abrahimzadeh and Franz Knoll – all first-time Adelaide City councillors.
His aim is to help the “new kids on the block” find their feet. However, he says he is not the team’s leader, and all of his faction agree.
The faction campaigned together – along with other unsuccessful candidates – and their aim is to try to “rebuild confidence in local government and, in particular, the City of Adelaide”.
Cr Jessy Khera is an independent, while councillors Anne Moran, Robert Simms, Phil Martin and Helen Donovan usually vote together.
“I don’t believe there are factions. I believe there are people who subscribe to a specific school of thought and philosophy, and these people happen to be on council together,” Cr Abiad says.
“Leaders create leaders, they don’t create followers.
“The thing that got Team Adelaide going is the need for change; you can’t on your own do anything.
“I can tell you now there are a group of people out there that want to see Team Adelaide T-shirts.”
Since the November election, only 14 of the 77 motions brought to council have been lost.
Those were put forward by councillors Martin, Simms, Moran and Khera.
They include in-ground traffic lights for people looking at their mobile phones and banning corflutes, both suggested by Cr Simms.
“The 14 knocked back, I would argue, if you go to a public survey, the majority of the public would not support them,” Cr Abiad says.
Following a heated dispute between himself and Cr Martin that prompted Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor to call a five-minute break, tensions between the groups escalated, but appear to have eased recently.
Despite this, Cr Abiad once called long-term councillors “dinosaurs”, saying the council needed new blood to bring about change.
Cr Moran says when Cr Abiad was given the opportunity to chair committees through changes in standing orders last month, it was a display of power.
“Oh, shit yeah, we have never done that … it was a massive power play,” she says. “If you set up a team, then there is going to be a leader, and he is it.”
Cr Moran’s comments come after The Advertiser last week revealed Cr Abiad’s close ties with a co-director of failed D & C Homes in another company, DAB Wholesales. It was a relationship that did not appear on his council register of interests.
He said he tried to update the register with a Post-it note that went missing, with the council saying there was a “genuine attempt” to do so.
Cr Abiad said this was due to an oversight, and he would like to see the method for updating the register improved and made digital.
That prompted councillors Moran and Simms to put forward a motion, that will go before council for the third time, about starting a mandatory register where elected members disclose dealings with developers. It is expected to be put to council later this month.
Cr Simms believes the council is starting to work better together. But he disputed there was no Team Adelaide leader.
“He’s the most powerful deputy mayor in the country, following changes to standing orders, so I can understand why people assume he’s the leader of Team Adelaide,” Cr Simms said. However, the council’s majority faction disagrees.
Cr Couros reiterates there is no group leader and no secrecy behind the group.
“I am not a politician, I have never campaigned – that’s why I reached out to Houssam for help before I made the decision (to run for council),” she says.
“We are all here for different reasons; we are not driven by one person and we all have our own voices.”
Cr Hou says although they are in the same team, they have different views and do not vote one way.
“From the very beginning to now, we have never ever been asked to vote and support any specific motion,” he says.
“We have never been asked to vote ‘Yes’ for something.”
Cr Hyde says Team Adelaide is helping bring much-needed change to the CBD and North Adelaide.
“Our ideas don’t come out of left field and they are not decided behind closed doors,” he says. “We are not making decisions in an ivory tower here, we are doing what our ratepayers want of us.”
Cr Abrahimzadeh says change is needed and Team Adelaide can achieve that.
“As a capital city council, we can either make or break things,” he says.
Although becoming Lord Mayor is not on the cards for Cr Abiad, politics is not such a dirty word anymore.
“I always felt that you don’t choose politics or community representation, it chooses you,” he says.
“If I am the right person, at the right time, I’ll always be there to serve. We don’t care about the kudos at all, I care about the outcome … that is all that matters.”