Abysmal Gympie council staff survey puts councillors on notice | Opinion

The ongoing internal crisis at Gympie Regional Council should be making more than a few councillors’ seats uncomfortable as the clock starts ticking towards the 2024 elections.

If you’re watching deliveries in and out of Gympie this week, don’t be surprised to if you see a trailer load of ice delivered to the council’s doors.

It’s needed following the absolute torching this week delivered by way of the worst staff survey on record.

“All time low” is a phrase people generally want to hear around interest rates, sales prices, or limbo competitions.

Not morale.

Yet is was this phrase used by acting CEO David Lewis to describe the survey, with the only real glimmer of hope being the staff’s opinion was so bad there was literally nowhere else for it to go but up.

The council’s internal issues are not a new problem.

Rumours were rife ahead of the March 2020 election about staff unhappiness, unproven at the time because a decades-worth of staff surveys had been locked away in the darkest depths of the council’s basement and apparently marked “forbidden”.

Gympie’s councillors should be feeling uncomfortable following the latest staff survey, which showed that an already struggling internal culture has only gotten significantly worse in the two years since the election, despite fixing it being a key part of several platforms.

They were only dragged into the sunlight following a Right to Information fight with The Gympie Times.

With the image now clear and confirmed, the mandate to the new council was obvious: fix this mess.

So how on earth has it been made worse?

It’s like discovering a forest fire in danger of raging out of control and calling in the waterbombing aircraft only to have them crash and add to the conflagration.

It’s impossible to look at the survey results and not reach a conclusion that doesn’t involve the word “crisis”.

Finding its highlights is the exact opposite of a Where’s Wally book – there’s no challenge.

There will no doubt be discussion that the council’s internal troubles started before Mayor Glen Hartwig and acting CEO David Lewis took the organisation’s reins, but at the end of the day the buck stops with them.

One can’t miss the few slivers of green adrift in an ocean of red.

There’ll no doubt be gnashing of teeth and attempts to rationalise the result in some corners of the community, whether by arguing the “rot” set in years ago or that councillors have no say in staff matters.

Fun mental exercises to play, but at the end of the day the buck stops with those in the elected seats and executive team right now.

Always.

With the 2024 council elections now less than two years away that fire raging away within the halls of the council is edging closer.