Mackay councillors claim mayor has conflict of interest during Cr Sheedy investigation vote

A motion to decide on whether a councillor breached conduct will be decided without the mayor.

Cr Peter Sheedy was found to have potentially breached conduct by the OIA. Photo: Fergus Gregg

The mayor will not be present during a council vote to decide on whether a fellow member of Mackay council engaged in a breach of conduct.

Two emails sent by Cr Peter Sheedy were investigated by the council’s watchdog, the Office of Independent Assessor OIA, and as a result, found that one of those emails sent on October 10 last year featured a breach of conduct.

The email contents were referenced, but not released in the investigation summary publicly released by Mackay Regional Council.

If council finds that Cr Sheedy had engaged in a conduct breach, Mr Sheedy would be fined 25 per cent of the costs of the investigations and will then have to attend training to address his wrong doing.

Belinda Hassan speaking at an ordinary meeting of Mackay Regional Council, April 24, 2024. Picture: Contributed

Cr Sheedy engaged legal representation during the investigation and was cooperative, according to council documents.

Speaking to this masthead, Mr Sheedy said it was “disappointing to have a misconduct complaint arising from a straightforward question which wasn’t really answered”.

“Very different to the commercial world but I am learning from the experience.”

Mayor Greg Williamson made a potential conflict declaration during the April ordinary council meeting, which arose as a result of his raising the alleged breach with the OIA, a requirement once it had been passed to him.

Mackay Regional Council Mayor Greg Williamson argued his conflict of interest was an act of duty. Picture: Heidi Petith

Cr Williamson argued there was no reason for him to leave the room as he was merely passing the complaint on.

“My conflict was an act of duty that I have as the mayor,” he said.

“I don’t believe that a reasonable person would perceive that there’s a bias in this because this was a legislative requirement for me to do.”

Cr Alison Jones said it wasn’t worth putting any councillor up to the pub test reiterating that members of council should “if in doubt, step out”.

“There’s been a number of occasions where I have stepped out regardless of how fine-line it is to be in a conflict or not purely because of the perception which quite often in the community is the reality,” she said.

Councillors Marty Bella, Belinda Hassan and Karen May voted in favour of the mayor being present during the vote, against the majority.

Mackay Regional Council arranged for deliberations to be confidential, with councillors unanimously voting to table it until further information from the report was provided to them.