Bob Fredman says farewell to Gympie council after 46 years

Outgoing Mary Valley councillor and former chief engineer Bob Fredman has ended his Gympie council career with a colourful speech paying tribute to ‘karma’ and the pleasure of seeing certain people experience it.

Retiring Mary Valley councillor and former council chief engineer Bob Fredman has bid goodbye to public service after more than 40 years in a colourful speech, saying those who had been “nasty” to him ended up with just desserts.

Retiring Mary Valley councillor and former chief engineer Bob Fredman bid farewell to public service on Wednesday, delivering a colourful speech at the last Gympie council meeting after more than 46 years service.

Mr Fredman, who has been a fixture in Gympie regional councils since the early 1970s, announced in early 2024 he would not re-contest his Division 8 seat on March 16, but would instead retire to pursue his passion for antiques and fine wine.

In a speech at the council’s final meeting before polling day, Mr Fredman took those gathered on a tour of some of the more memorable moments of his career, starting with the fallout from his controversial sacking in 2016.

Mr Fredman said his six years as a councillor (he was elected at the Division 8 by-election in 2018) had been challenging, “starting with having to work with people who had been very nasty to me a couple of years earlier”.

“Anyway, I didn’t have to worry about that for too long,” he said.

“They got the karma that was coming to them.”

Retiring councillor Bob Fredman has been a fixture at Gympie’s councils since the early 1970s, first as a staff member (including serving as head of engineering) and then as a councillor after his controversial sacking in 2016.

He then rattled through the may battles “with bureaucrats” where he “lost plenty of times”.

“Like when the Friends of Kandanga won a grant to put disabled toilets and other improvements in the Kandanga Information Centre,” he said.

“So we used their grant to demolish their building. I used to think that this could only happen in America.”

Then there was the Mary St trees he wanted “pruned”.

“What staff did was prune the two best trees down to the ground. Some of the Mary Street traders wanted to ringbark the manager responsible, but fortunately he left soon after.”

A desire for minor maintenance at Amamoor Hall ended with about 100 steel pipes under it leaving it looking “like an echidna lying on its back”, while efforts to solve the flying fox furore at Commissioners Gully went similarly awry.

“An environmental person told me to think of them as little flying koalas,” he said.

“I realised then that the local residents had no hope.”

Outgoing councillor Bob Fredman said he was happy to leave the job “on my own terms”.

His biggest battle had nothing to do with the council, though.

“I got a Covid injection so I could get around the division without being barred from anywhere,” Mr Fredman said.

“Sure I didn’t get Covid but instead I got a big dose of shingles and I’ve still got the after effects two years and seven months later.

“People may not realise how much that’s slowed me down.
“I can’t remember being this forgetful a couple of years ago.”

There were other hurdles too, including four CEOs in four years (“and we didn’t get a bulk discount”), the small problem of ratepayers believing councillors were “responsible for everything” when in reality they were “accountable for nothing”.

“I learnt that accountability is deemed ‘operational’ and is therefore nothing to do with us,” Mr Fredman said.

At the final tally though he was “satisfied with what I’ve achieved” and anyone who wanted to meet him in the future could do so “at table six at the Village Green cafe at Amamoor”.

“I’m departing this time on my own terms, which means a lot to me. “