Gold Coast City Council: why corruption watchdog says it had to act

Corruption watchdog chief Alan MacSporran has defended the ongoing inquiry into Gold Coast City Council.

CORRUPTION watchdog chief Alan MacSporran has defended the ongoing inquiry into Gold Coast City Council and expressed “disappointment” with its critics including a State MP.

Senior Coast LNP MP Ray Stevens in a speech in State Parliament strongly defended the council, saying it had become a “whipping boy” for state Labor governments and the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) after three inquiries.

Alan Macsporran at the PCCC. Pic Annette Dew.

Mr Stevens urged the CCC to only ever revisit another inquiry on “hard corroborated evidence” but Mr MacSporran, QC, took him to task in an update to the parliamentary CCC committee.

Labor MP and deputy committee chair Charis Mullen had questioned Mr MacSporran about Mr Stevens saying Coast councillors and the mayor had no case to answer.

“I just wanted to understand whether the CCC has in fact concluded their investigations into this matter to give the member confidence to have made that statement in Parliament,” Ms Mullen said.

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Mr MacSporran told the committee: “No, we haven’t and I’ve said publicly earlier at my press conference in respect to Logan last Friday, I made that very point that there are ongoing investigations into respect to both the Gold Coast and Moreton.

“That’s in the public arena. We have concluded certain investigations into allegations made, we have published results of those of which were that they have not been substantiated.”

Chair Tim Nicholls at the open committee meeting cautioned that some of the detail was in a report which was part of a “private discussion”.

Ray Stevens, Member for Mermaid Beach, defended the council in an address at State Parliament. Photo: Regi Varghese.

Mr MacSporran acknowledged that was the case, but continued to address the comments by Mr Stevens.

“I found the remarks by Mr Stevens disappointing in this sense: what everyone should understand by now I would have thought is that, we don’t have the luxury of simply saying to a complainant ‘Don’t waste our time, go away’,” he said.

“Every complaint that comes to us is assessed in the first instance. It’s assessed to see if it reaches the threshold of satisfying us there is a reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct. If there is, we commence an investigation or send it back for an investigation subject to our monitoring.”

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The CCC at the end of its assessment reported the results and whether the allegation was substantiated or charges to be laid.

CCC announced it had not found any corrupt conduct in its probe into Black Swan Lake, the Surfers Paradise Waterglow development and controversial sale of Bruce Bishop Car Park in Surfers.

Workers move earth at Black Swan Lake at Bundall. Picture Glenn Hampson.

Some referrals had been made to the Office of the Independent Assessor, one matter involving a staffer referred back to council while the CCC investigation continued on several other complaints including mayoral directives and a trip to China.

“And then at the end of that process we report the results whether the allegation is substantiated or whether charges are to be laid,” Mr MacSporran said.

“But the comments suggested we should never to do anything unless we have hard corroborative evidence of an allegation — well, that would defeat the purpose frankly.

“The idea of assessing and investigating is to gather evidence to see whether the matter can be substantiated, and if not to say so. Which is a very important procedural process that protects everyone including us.

“That’s the process we routinely follow, no matter where the complaint comes from, who it is, which entity, no matter how high profile or otherwise it is, we adopt the same process every time.”