Councillors behaving bizarrely: Some of SA’s biggest local government controversies
It’s no secret that grassroots politics hosts some wild and wacky personalities. These are the council culprits behind some of the biggest ratepayer-funded controversies.
SA News
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With Adelaide City Council taxpayers alone forking out more than $130,000 to investigate elected members, it’s no secret that South Australia’s councillors can court controversy.
With 68 individual councils and hundreds of personalities among them, the grassroots political game lends itself to some of the state’s wildest public figures.
These are some of the biggest and most bizarre councillors’ antics over the past 12 months.
Paul Deb
Former Burnside Council chief executive Paul Deb took a $252,232 unfair dismissal case to the Supreme Court – and was slapped down in a matter of minutes.
A court heard the sacked council chief made salacious remarks about the mayor, stored improper images in his work account and branded one councillor a “dumb f**k”.
Chief Justice Chris Kourakis found Burnside Council was justified in sacking Mr Deb for making disparaging comments about several newly elected councillors during a management team meeting, including describing one as a “dumb f…”.
The court found Mr Deb also kept intimate photographs of himself and the former partner of another Burnside Council employee on a work email drive, and told senior staff he had a mental image of Mayor Anne Monceaux in the shower with her husband rubbing her back.
Chief Justice Kourakis dismissed Mr Deb’s claim during a five-minute hearing before ordering him to pay the council’s legal costs, estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Julian Carbone
Last year, newly-married former Burnside councillor Julian Carbone was forced to resign after allegedly sending an inappropriate message to the Instagram account of a 17-year-old girl.
The teenager complained about long-serving elected member Julian Carbone after she posted pictures of herself in a bikini on her Instagram account.
Cr Carbone responded with a direct message from his Instagram account saying “lots of bikini photos — but it’s so damn cold at the moment hey”.
When the story of the alleged message broke, the 41-year-old Liberal Party member went on the offensive – demanding to know the 17-year-old’s name and address so his lawyers could take defamation action over a formal complaint she lodged against him with the help of an adult.
It was a strategy that backfired spectacularly, with Mr Carbone resigning after two terms on the council over the past 20 years, following an official, $11,000 investigation that found he had breached its code of conduct by messaging the teenager.
Phillip Martin
Newly-elected Adelaide City Council deputy lord mayor Phillip Martin has been no stranger to controversy during his time in public office.
Mr Martin, the council’s representative for North Adelaide, was named as one of the main individuals allegedly responsible for a toxic work culture last August.
Staff told an investigator they felt they had been bullied, harassed and harangued during questioning at meetings and email exchanges with some councillors, particularly Mr Martin.
In early 2022, Mr Martin was found to have breached the Local Government Act three times in a two-page election flyer and, in 2021, “disrespected” then-Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor and senior management during meetings.
Following his recent appointment as deputy lord mayor, Mr Martin said he had “already discussed” operational changes with Lord Mayor Dr Jane Lomax-Smith.
Grace Bawden
Opera singer Grace Bawden found herself under investigation after being appointed to Salisbury Council, with an opponent claiming she used a dated image in election materials.
Cr Bawden, who starred on the 2008 season of TV talent show Australia’s Got Talent, was accused of using a six-year-old photo in her bid for council.
Under the Local Government Act, profile photographs submitted by a candidate must be taken within the last 12 months and endorsed on the back.
The investigation is ongoing.
In 2021, Cr Bawden defended her social worker mother, Matilda Bawden, after she was banned from offering Covid-19 health advice.
Matilda Bawden, a failed council candidate, implied the City of Salisbury had been infiltrated by people she accused of being Nazis during debate over the council’s proposed “smart cities” plan.
Last month, Cr Bawden showed online support for the conspiracy theory group “No Smart Cities Action Group (NOSCAG)” – which likens smart cities to Orwellian Big Brother – but told The Advertiser she had no knowledge of protesters’ intentions to storm council chambers.
Severina Burner
Salisbury councillor Severina Burner was slammed by a resident after comparing “smart cities” to concentration camps and calling the “storming” of a council meeting “justified”.
Ms Burner shared a post on social media saying smart cities were comparable to “a concentration camp with pretty interactive lights”.
Salisbury resident Sandy Holloway, whose father liberated a concentration camp at the end of World War II, called for Cr Burner, to “resign immediately” over the post.
In seven-minute speech against smart cities, Ms Burner also cited a debunked conspiracy that billionaire Elon Musk had created four microchips which became sentient and used artificial intelligence to kill nine of his employees.
Cr Burner declined to comment when approached by The Advertiser.
Anne Moran
After more than two decades on the Adelaide City Council, polarising politician Anne Moran faced her fair share of controversies during her time in public office.
Last year, hundreds of leaked emails sent by Moran, a former schoolteacher, revealed that she had called elected members “a joke”, “a loser”, an “insufferable fool” and “self-deluded”.
She described councillors within a voting bloc dubbed Team Adelaide as a “horrible little person” and for being “like a broken record spouting venom”.
In 2020, Moran was found by the State Ombudsman to have leaked confidential information about a proposed bid by the state for the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
She also incurred some ridicule this year when she complained that a story on councillor Arman Abrahimzadeh was unfair and one should also be done on her and other candidates.
The story was published for Father’s Day and was about his first meeting with his father since his father had murdered Abrahimzadeh’s mother.
After a final term seemingly defined by arguments and complaints, Moran called time on the council last year.
Scott Sims
Last year, Norwood Payneham & St Peters councillor Scott Sims was forced to publicly apologise after twice breaching the council’s code of conduct during exchanges with a resident and his mayor.
Mayor Robert Bria lodged a complaint against Cr Sims after he interrupted him three times during a council meeting, saying “that’s bulls--t, your worship”, “that’s bulls--t” and “you’re bullying”.
A separate complaint was lodged by eastern suburbs resident Dehane Fletcher in February over comments posted on Facebook by Cr Sims.
In his complaint, Mr Fletcher said he was offended when Cr Sims said his concerns were “bulls--t” and accused him of “trolling”.
Voting to censure Cr Sims, elected members were informed in council minutes that he had cost the council $76,000 in legal fees since his election in 2018.
Kevin Knight
In a stunning 15-minute social media outburst last year, former Tea Tree Gully Mayor Kevin Knight slammed his own council, chief executive, councillors and the local government investigative body.
In total, Mr Knight had been found to have committed 35 breaches of the council’s code of conduct – at a rate of one every six-and-a-half weeks – during his latest tenure as mayor, with claims of sexually inappropriate behaviour.
In a publicly posted Facebook video, Mr Knight openly discussed confidential details of code of conduct complaints made against him and denied any wrongdoing.
Mr Knight was also found to have breached the council’s code of conduct by refusing to return his mayoral robe and chain, instead lending them to the family of a former mayor for her funeral.
Claire Boan
Earlier this year, Port Adelaide Enfield Mayor Claire Boan levelled a spectacular lashing against members of a community Facebook group, accusing them of toxic behaviour and bullying over a decision to scrap the Semaphore New Year’s fireworks.
In a post shared to the ‘You know you’re from Port Adelaide/Le Fevre Peninsula when …’ group’s 29,000 members, Ms Boan said she was exiting the group over commenters “(crapping) on council”.
Ms Boan said she “couldn’t exit quietly” and wanted to stand up for others who were “too scared to write anything with the fear of being bullied on there” – but the group doubled down, saying rate payers had “every right to express concerns about the council’s actions on social media”.
Last year, Ms Boan appeared on anti-vax podcast ‘Prison Colony Resistance’, saying she “didn’t know how she survived” after experiencing side-effects from the Covid vaccine.
Colin Byles
Former Northern Areas Council chief executive Colin Byles is seeking up to $400,000 in damages after being sacked over a Covid restrictions letter.
Councillors voted to terminate Mr Byles’s contract last year, over an ombudsman investigation that found he fabricated a letter to a medical clinic about the council’s handling of Covid restrictions in the Mid North.
It was the second time in 12 months Mr Byles had been found to have altered official council documentation, after he doctored a survey among council employees to remove an answer that suggested female staff had been treated in a “disrespectful way”.
Lodging unfair dismissal proceedings in the District Court, Mr Byles’ lawyer Greg Griffin said his client was subject to “quite significant bullying and unfair treatment by the council.”
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