Gympie councillor Bob Fredman shreds Qld council’s complaint system

A regional councillor has delivered a scathing rebuke of the state’s council complaints system, refusing to have any involvement in the decision to find four of his peers breached the rules.

Gympie councillor Bob Fredman has delivered a scathing rebuke of the council complaints process, refusing to have a hand in deciding whether four other councillors breached the rules.

Mr Fredman shredded the process at Wednesday’s council meeting, saying there were serious shortfalls in the system and he was in an impossible decision as a result.

“I cannot work with this process which I believe is fundamentally flawed,” Mr Fredman said.

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He said he had raised his concerns during a confidential council session in October.

A complaint against Mayor Glen Hartwig had been on the agenda but was delayed after more than half the councillors declared conflicts of interest and left the room.

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Gympie councillors were forced to deal with five complaints about four separate councillors at Wednesday’s ordinary meeting, some dating back to 2020.

In November councillors narrowly supported an investigation’s findings of “sufficient evidence” that Mayor Glen Hartwig had engaged in inappropriate conduct with a 3-2 vote.

The details of the breach remain unknown.

Mr Hartwig was not further punished.

Mr Fredman, who voted against finding Mr Hartwig in breach of the rules, said at Wednesday’s meeting he “cannot judge fellow councillors the way the system requires me to … my conscience dictates therefore I do not participate”.

He declared this as a conflict of interest and left the room.

Mr Fredman was soon joined by a revolving door of departures as the council debated and then voted on five separate complaints made against four councillors.

Jess Milne, Warren Polley, Jess Milne and Bruce Devereaux all left the meeting at different times owing to conflicts of interest.

Questions about the state’s councillor complaint system were raised in October 2022, when more than half of Gympie’s elected officials declared conflicts of interest regarding an allegation about Mayor Glen Hartwig and left the room, leaving the council unable to vote.

Councillors accepted the investigation findings for four of the five complaints.

Two councillors will be required to apologise for the breaches.

Two other councillors will be subject to no further punishment for their matters.

Details of the complaints remain unknown.

At a press conference following the meeting Mr Hartwig said some of the complaints dated back to 2020.

“Most of the complaints were quite old,” Mr Hartwig said.

“There had been a failure by our management to actually deal with these a couple of years ago.”

Asked about Mr Fredman’s savaging of the system, Mr Hartwig said judging fellow councillors was a difficult task.

Mayor Glen Hartwig said some of the complaints on Wednesday’s agenda were years old.

“What he has highlighted … there are some interesting aspects to the way local government is regulated,” Mr Hartwig said.

“No system is perfect.

“ … The pendulum has probably swung one way … that’s how our democratic systems work.

“I think what we’ll see in the coming years is the pendulum come back to something a little bit more moderate.”

The complaints system has come under scrutiny in the past year following extensive criticism from councillors.

A state parliamentary inquiry into the Office of the Independent Assessor which handles complaints against councillors made 40 recommendations on how the system could be improved.