Wingecarribee Shire Council public inquiry: claims of threats, bullying, ambush
The public inquiry heard the behaviour of the councillors stymied an experienced local government employee as witnesses told of threats, ambush, bullying and intimidation by “increasingly arrogant” councillors.
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The public inquiry into Wingecarribee Shire Council heard the behaviour of the councillors stymied an experienced local government employee as witnesses told of threats, ambush, bullying and intimidation by “increasingly arrogant” councillors.
As the public inquiry hearings into the dysfunctional council continued at Moss Vale Civic Centre last Friday, more allegations of unprofessional conduct of councillors were aired.
Former Group Manager Organisational Development at Wingecarribee Shire Council, John Burgess, told the inquiry the councillors’ behaviour was unmatched by anything he has seen in his 40 years of local government experience.
“I have never seen behaviour like that,” he said.
Mr Burgess said council meetings became “very caustic” when suspended Mayor Duncan Gair was re-elected to the seat in 2020. He said concerns had been raised about bullying and destructive behaviour in meetings, but it escalated during the last two years.
From January 2020 onwards, Mr Burgess said Wingecarribee Shire Council General Manager, Ann Prendergast, made official complaints that councillors had been bullying her and other staff.
He said suspended Councillor Ian Scandrett, former Councillor Garry Turland, and former Councillor Ken Halstead were responsible for most of the disrespectful comments across the chamber.
According to Mr Burgess, the general manager and deputy managers “became threatened, whether it was in meetings or by texts, or by direct phone calls” by councillors. He said it was not a safe workplace during the council meetings, although he opined that only a minor part of the council was “toxic”.
Mr Burgess told the inquiry he received a number of “comments about councillor interference” from a number of senior staff asking how to manage the issue.
Despite the directive from the general manager for councillors not to engage with staff, he said councillors continued to act outside their purview.
“The role of seeking information on occasions transgressed into trying to influence staff in potentially (sic) recommendations and reports to council, and that seemed to be common in the planning area,” he said.
Christine Rowell-Miller, longtime member of the Bundanoon Community Association and the Southern Villages Association, agreed staff were being approached by councillors who disregarded the professional demarcations.
She said she knew staff were being pressured by councillors to interact directly and handle tasks outside of their role to avoid conflict.
“There was so much frustration and misunderstandings and pressure in that environment that staff didn’t know where to go because they should go to their boss, but the councillor is an important person,” she said.
Ms Rowell-Miller said that contact was “a very difficult thing” for staff members who felt pulled in two directions. She said she heard many complaints from community members “about the disrespect that seemed to be inherent in all of the councillors toward council.”
Ms Rowell-Miller said the public were “disappointed and at times embarrassed” by council meetings, where the councillors would interrupt each other and raise irrelevant issues when the community were waiting for the delivery of important information.
“That kind of juvenile dialogue in a meeting of council is shocking,” she said.
“People used to get frustrated that it seemed that time was being wasted.”
Ms Rowell-Miller told of a comment by a community member, who approached a councillor after a meeting and said: “this is the biggest joke I have ever attended and I’m insulted that you think that this is enough for you all to behave like this.”
She said the comment encapsulated the feeling of the community that the “increasingly arrogant and disrespectful” councillors were too busy squabbling to serve the people.
According to Ms Rowell-Miller, the dysfunctional behaviour led to a lot of creative problem solving in the community who had to “try to find a way around it to get what you need because you can’t get what you need through normal processes”.
The invested community member said she knew many residents who disengaged from local issues because they thought “I’m not dealing with that council”.
It’s an impulse Sandra Jones understands after her own fraught interaction with council as a volunteer for the Wingecarribee Animal Shelter.
Ms Jones said bullying was rife during council meetings and noted personal threats were levelled and one councillor threatened to sue another during the public sessions she attended.
“I found for some councillors, their attitude towards the community was unprofessional at the least,” she said.
“There was certainly an adversarial feeling between some councillors and members of the public.”
According to Ms Jones, she herself was a victim of the bullying behaviour during a council briefing in July 2019 about the animal shelter.
She said volunteers like herself had been told they could ask the councillors questions about the shelter, but they weren’t “terribly impressed” to find they were facing the councillors’ backs and there was no opportunity for discussion.
Instead of asking what volunteers did, Ms Jones said suspended Councillor Peter Nelson told her they should be raising funds to build a new animal shelter.
“I thought former Councillor Nelson was particularly antagonistic and I didn‘t know the reason why,” she said.
“The feeling that I had was that volunteers, and certainly at the animal shelter, are not respected or were not respected … that we were considered a nuisance,” she said.
Ms Jones said the meeting felt like a deliberate “set up” and an “ambush”. She said it was not the first time she’d seen passionate members of the public treated badly by the councillors.
Deputy Chair of Wingecarribee Net Zero (WinZero), Clive West, told the inquiry he’d also been blindsided by bullying councillors during a council meeting in May 2019 – which he described as “like walking into a swimming pool of sharks”.
He gave a presentation on behalf of the Berrima Residents Association, which objected to a planning proposal in a protected area that had apparently been a “compromise” with the landowners by Deputy General Manager Corporate Strategy and Development Services, Mark Pepping.
After Mr West’s presentation, he said Mr Pepping “just really lost his temper and I think slammed the desk and said ‘This is outrageous. If something is not done about this, I’m leaving the council.’”
Mr West said he reminded the council that “when the council‘s own heritage advisor and a large public outcry was opposed, if you proceed with a recommendation for approval, you run the risk of the perception of corruption.”
The next day, he said he received a “very personal” email from suspended Mayor Gair on behalf of the councillors which threatened legal action.
“I felt very intimidated,” he said.
“There were a number of councillors who directly said: ‘how dare you come in here and say that’. It was quite accusatory.”
Despite a public apology, Mr West said he was barred from attending a meeting about the Environment Levy after the mayor refused to be in the same room.
WinZero Secretary Derek White told the inquiry the animosity between councillors negatively affected the council. He said there was a lack of transparency from the councillors, who elected to deal with a number of important projects out of the public eye.
“A lot of the more contentious matters were dealt with in closed sessions,” he said.
“The community saw the surface but there was a lot of paddling under the water we didn’t see.”
Mr White said the council dysfunction meant the elected representatives had failed to act on climate change, despite a climate emergency declaration in February 2020.
“I am absolutely amazed that someone declares an emergency and here it is two years later and we haven’t seen one iota of evidence that things are happening on that front,” he said.
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