Gold Coast City Council: Councillor legal bills proposal sensationally withdrawn

A controversial push for Gold Coast councillors to have their legal costs covered for investigations of misconduct and corruption, including when they leave office has been dumped. HERE’S WHY

MAYOR Tom Tate has been forced to dump a controverisl push for councillors to have their legal costs covered for investigations of misconduct and corruption, including when they leave office.

The Bulletin has obtained an email trail which shows the Mayor, after the recent Local Government conference in Cairns, was keen to see changes. He told his colleagues he was aware the views of other councillors and mayors in Queensland were “similar to mine and the call for reform is extremely clear and strong”.

But in a sensational move, he has withdrawn his plan, which was to be detailed in a mayoral minute at Tuesday’s full council meeting.

Mayor Tom Tate. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

In the emails to fellow Gold Coast councillors last week, Mr Tate said that since the start of the Office of Independent Assessor in December 2018 there had been 183 complaints made against councillors with only six where those allegations were sustained.

In the four years prior to the OIA starting, there were 14 councillor complaints with only two of those sustained.

Mr Tate himself has previously been investigated by the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) in 2020 and OIA in 2019.

No criminal charges were ever laid against him in the CCC case.

The latter OIA case dealt with allegations he breached local government standards of behaviour by saying, “I don’t know what they’re dreaming or what they’re smoking” when referring to public claims that there were black swans in a local lake.

The case was dismissed less than one month later.

The motion was withdrawn.

“As all councillors understand, and the data exemplifies, the changes in the legislation have ushered in an unfortunate era of mass complaints against councillors with the evidence proving that the vast majority cannot be proven and dare I say are quite trivial,” he wrote last week.

Mr Tate added that the current complaints regimen was costing significant time and money, and had unreasonably damaged reputations creating an environment where good candidates would not stand for office.

He said it was essential for councillors to have access to legal advice to defend their reputation and clear their name whether it was the OIA or the Crime and Corruption Commission “who we have seen has been guilty of significant overreach in the past”.

The coverage should occur whether council’s insurers chose to indemnify council or the costs over the particular policy, he said.

The current system across the state supported councillors defending allegations against them and it needed to be clarified because it was unreasonable to expect the CEO or delegated officer make a decision on a case-by-case basis, Mr Tate wrote.

The Mayor had asked councillors support recommendations which would see all legal costs covered in OIA and CCC investigations, including when they leave office where allegations relate to their service.

But in a follow-up email he announced he was withdrawing the email, despite describing it as being straightforward and providing councillors with certainty.

“I have received several questions conflating this straightforward issue with other issues that were never enlivened by the Mayoral Minute I proposed,” he wrote.

“I do not wish to waste a significant amount of everyone’s time on Tuesday, so the matter is withdrawn.”

On Sunday the mayor declined to comment on the matter.

“That item is no longer coming before full council on Tuesday so there is no need to provide comments,” he said.

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