Liverpool Council to take Minns government to court over looming suspension

Ratepayers are set to fund a costly legal battle over Liverpool Council’s pending suspension and the postponement of the September local government election after mayor Ned Mannoun foreshadowed a court challenge.

The Office of Local Government on Thursday released a damning 50-page investigation detailing broad allegations of potential corruption, nepotistic hiring policies, elected representatives interfering in planning matters and widespread dysfunction across the council.

Liverpool mayor Ned Mannoun has foreshadowed a court challenge to the council’s suspension.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig said he had given the council seven days to show cause before an administrator was appointed while a public inquiry probed the revelations.

In a draft agenda of an extraordinary general meeting to be held today, Mannoun wrote that council would delegate acting chief executive Jason Breton to respond to the minister’s letter and the proposed action, and “commence injunction proceedings on the NSW government”.

Speaking to the Herald, Mannoun confirmed the council would seek legal remedy, saying delaying the September election would cost ratepayers around $1 million, according to initial advice provided to the council.

“We are going to make sure we protect ratepayers’ money from this completely unprecedented overreach by the Labor government,” he said, saying the cost of engaging lawyers to seek the injunction would be “peanuts” in comparison.

The mayor accused the government of intentionally delaying the suspension and public inquiry for 16 months as a means of interfering in the election.

In an email to council staff on Friday, Breton questioned the investigator’s process, saying the report had reversed the onus of proof and denied natural justice to those who were named in the report.

“Untested allegations presented ‘as evidence’ not only reverse the onus of proof, but deny ‘natural justice’, including but not limited to, the right for the person who is subject of the concern to be informed of all the allegations in relation to their behaviour and provided with an opportunity to respond,” he wrote.

Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

“This did not occur.”

Speaking at a Mandaean New Year community event at the Casula Powerhouse on Saturday, Mannoun told the crowd in Arabic that the suspension and deferral of the election was a direct attack on democracy, preventing voters from having their say on who would be their elected representatives.

On Thursday, a defiant Mannoun said he welcomed the prospect of a public inquiry into the council, claiming the “purely political” report had been handed down by a “Labor minister in a Labor government”.

Hoenig announced the departmental probe in late April, after former NSW Liberal minister John Ajaka became the council’s 10th permanent or acting CEO to be sacked in eight years.

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