Burnside Council to seek urgent meeting with Local Government Minister after it ‘loses confidence’ in Lance Bagster

AN independent report has found evidence an Adelaide councillor engaged in a “horrendous” campaign against senior staff. Now the council wants the State Government to step in.

Burnside Council will seek a meeting with the Local Government Minister over the behaviour of one of its members.

• Burnside councillor Lance Bagster ‘poses safety risk’
• How did it get so bad at Burnside Council?

BURNSIDE Council has “no confidence” in Councillor Lance Bagster as an elected member after the release of an independent report detailing the “significant risks” he poses to the workplace.

The council on Wednesday night convened a special meeting to discuss the findings of independent mediator Theressa Hines’s 465-page report into the relationship between Mr Bagster and chief executive Paul Deb.

The meeting was held in private, but elected members agreed to publicly release Ms Hines’s report following an hour-long debate.

In the report, Ms Hines said she was presented with a “voluminous” amount of evidence that showed Mr Bagster had engaged in a “horrendous” campaign against Mr Deb and senior staff, including “systemic ongoing bullying, harassing, and stalking”.

Burnside councillor Lance Bagster.

She said Mr Bagster’s behaviour — which she claimed dated back to 2015 — exposed staff and elected members to “significant risks” and the council to possible breaches of workplace safety laws.

“It makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to understand how the organisation can continue to accommodate Councillor Bagster in this role,” Ms Hines’s report stated.

Minutes of the meeting, seen by the Eastern Courier Messenger, show councillors accepted Ms Hines’s findings and voted to declare they had “no confidence in Mr Bagster to continue in his position as an elected member”.

The vote was not unanimous — councillors Peter Ford, Anne Monceaux and Graham Bills opposed the motion.

The council also voted to seek meetings with Local Government Minister Geoff Brock and Industrial Relations Minister John Rau to discuss the report.

Burnside’s acting chief executive Martin Cooper said the council needed Mr Brock’s “urgent assistance” to deal with the situation.

“Under the Local Government Act, one of the mechanism for removal of an elected member from their position is with the intervention of the Governor,” Mr Cooper said.

Local Government Association chief executive Matt Pinnegar said his organisation supported the council’s effort to resolve the “serious and intractable issue”.

Ms Hines was commissioned by the council to mediate a feud between Mr Bagster and Mr Deb, as well as provide recommendations for how to manage the relationships in the future.

Mr Bagster has been contacted for comment.

He last week told the Eastern Courier Messenger that he rejected Ms Hines’s findings as “unfair and unjust” and said he felt the claims against him were part of a campaign by the council to destroy his reputation.