Petition calls for state to apologise to eight sacked Logan councillors and start compensation negotiations

A petition has been lodged with parliament calling for the state to publicly apologise and start compensation negotiations for eight sacked Logan City Councillors wrongfully charged with fraud.

Ex Logan City Councillors clockwise from top left: former mayor Luke Smith; Russell Lutton; Laurie Smith; Phil Pidgeon; Jennie Breene; Trevina Schwarz; Cherie Dalley and Steve Swenson.

A petition has been launched calling for the state government to publicly apologise and start compensation negotiations for eight Logan City Councillors wrongfully charged with fraud.

Logan man David Kenny, the 2017 Logan City Council Citizen of the Year, launched the petition which is sponsored by the Parliamentary Clerk, Neil Laurie.

The petition calls for Local Government Minister Steven Miles to immediately issue an apology and start compensation negotiations.

Mr Kenny said the eight had endured years of torment and legal wrangling which had culminated in the recent Fitzgerald Inquiry 2.0 into the state’s crime watchdog.

He said along with losing their jobs and livelihoods, the eight had to endure a Queensland Industrial Relations Commission wrongful dismissal case brought by the former CEO Sharon Kelsey.

He said the CCC charged the eight councillors in April 2019, six days before the final hearing of the Kelsey QIRC case, resulting in their dismissal and the dissolution of the rest of the council.

Former Logan mayor Luke Smith and former CEO Sharon Kelsey.

He said the eight were forced to wait until April 2021 to clear their names, when the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped all fraud charges, telling the Brisbane Magistrates Court there was insufficient evidence to continue.

“It is time for these eight councillors to get an apology and compensation from the state and the Local Government Minister for loss of income, damage to reputation and impact on their health and family,” Mr Kenny said.

“The CCC’s case was largely based upon the testimony of former Logan CEO Sharon Kelsey who QIRC Vice-President O’Connor found not to be an impressive witness and said it was difficult to determine ‘whether her response to a question was a matter of reconstruction or recollection’.

“They also had to endure the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee finding that the CCC did not act independently or with impartiality.”

The petition was made public days after the council’s former chief executive Ms Kelsey warned people of the perils of being a whistleblower.

Speaking publicly for the first time since seeking leave to appeal her unfair dismissal case, Ms Kelsey said making a statement under the Public Disclosure Act cost her dearly.

“My legal fees are $3 million and they haven’t finished,” she said.

“Whatever might have happened to a whistleblower – nothing protects them from what happens to their life.

“Just trying to do the right thing is sometimes a very precarious road to travel.

“But once you have formed the view, there’s no going back, you have to report it.

“I believed I had reasonable grounds to challenge the (2018) dismissal decision.

“There is no protection for whistleblowers and so the only way you can right things is to take action yourself.”

A group shot of all the former Logan City councillors headed by mayor Luke Smith.

Logan City Council voted not to extend Ms Kelsey’s $500,000-a-year role beyond her probation and she was dismissed in February 2018, after she had made statements to the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission about practices within the council.

Ms Kelsey said whistleblowers were necessary in Queensland where local government was big business with a number of politically powerful councils having budgets of more than $1 billion a year.

For more than a month after taking up her role as CEO in July 2017, Ms Kelsey said she double checked information she had been told by council officers and staff.

By October, 2017, four months into her new job, she had made the public interest disclosure statement to the council and to the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission.

Four months later she was dismissed.

Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer Kieran Pender said Queensland no longer had a strong whistleblowing culture, nine years after the PID Act was enacted.

He said the experience for most whistleblowers over the past nine years had not been happy and there had only been one case in 30 years of someone receiving compensation under a whistleblowing law in Australia.

Shine Lawyers senior lawyer Samantha Mangwana said for a whistleblower to be protected under the Corporations Act, they had to report their concerns to “an eligible recipient”.

Senior managers of a corporation, including the CEO, members of the board of directors, and those who had 50 per cent financial control of a company were deemed eligible.