Refusal to answer questions about Bundy Now news website gains negative publicity

Bundaberg council‘s ‘nothing to see here’ approach to its controversial ratepayer funded news site in the face of ongoing transparency and cost questions is ensuring the service designed to promote ’only the good’ is now doing the opposite.

It’d be disingenuous to believe the question “what does running Bundy Now cost the council?” happily excludes wages and advertising.

Time and time again however, ratepayers are told the operating cost is $5000, which cannot include wages unless the council has become a charity.

As it turns out, there is another figure.

In December 2019, less than a year after Bundy Now launched, former council communications leader Michael Gorey published an article on Linkedin claiming the cost with wages “is about $60,000 per year”.

The article was a copy of a speech Mr Gorey said he gave at a national local government IT conference in Coffs Harbour.

Why have ratepayers not been given this figure too?

It’s hardly fair Victoria or New South Wales council workers hear this number, but the Bundaberg ratepayers footing the bills don’t.

Instead, the council continually points to the $5000 figure, or the $1.4m communications budget - and then bristles when people accuse them of spending millions on Bundy Now.

In what will be no surprise to anyone following this saga, questions about this $60,000 claim went unanswered by the council.

It is far from the first time it has refused to respond to questions about Bundy Now.

There’s little doubt it will be the last, either.

It appears to be happy with the idea of an ongoing silence, either unaware or unconcerned it has all the appearances of a petulant child trying to make a problem go away by way of the silent treatment.

But while it’s keeping quiet, everyone else - including Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher - is talking about it.

The chatter isn’t good, either.