Gympie councillor Bruce Devereaux suggests staff overtime bill outrage is due to transparency

‘The transparency hub shows what we’re trying to do, and giving the people the chance to look. Most won’t, and that’s ok, but having it there I think builds a bit of trust with the public.’

Gympie councillor Bruce Devereaux says public outrage over financial issues such as staff overtime bills could be because the community is not yet used to the council’s new attempts to be more transparent with them.

Gympie councillor Bruce Devereaux says public outrage over the revelation of the council’s near-$900,000 staff overtime bill could be the result of its increased transparency with the community.

The council’s new transparency hub recently revealed staff have been paid $891,319 in overtime between July 1, 2020 and April 30, 2021, a figure defended by CEO Shane Gray as being well within the amount expected to be paid over the period.

Public reaction to the figures was largely negative, but Cr Devereaux said that may be because the public was not used to seeing such figures prior to the hub’s launch.

He said he hoped the hub would help build trust between the council and the community going forward.

“I don’t know if those figures were released prior, whether they released what the overtime figures were for council or whether this is the first time the public has had access to it,” Cr Devereaux said.

Division 4 councillor Bruce Devereaux.

“The transparency hub shows what we’re trying to do, and giving the people the chance to look. Most won’t, and that’s ok, but having it there I think builds a bit of trust with the public.

“If people have doubts about what we’re doing and where council is spending money go and have a look.

“There’s going to be more and more information put on it, but we want that information to be solid before it goes up there.

“Now that we’ve got it, it’s just the start.”

Mr Gray said the overtime bill to date was $100,000 within the council’s expected $35.8m budget for staff for the financial year.

The council’s figures showed in the 2019/20 financial year $771,100 in overtime was paid to staff, but Mr Gray said it did not reflect the full financial year.

He said a new financial reporting system was introduced “to enable more accurate financial information reporting”, and overtime for the first four months of the period was rolled into the full staffing bill under the old reporting system.

Cr Devereaux has already begun pointing members of the public towards the hub as a means to keep themselves informed of the council’s financial status going forward, including an apparently disgruntled former Mayor Mick Curran this week.

Mr Curran appeared to take issue with Cr Devereaux’s thoughts on the council’s transparency goals.

Former Gympie Mayor Mick Curran. Picture: Shane Zahner

“Transparency Bruce? Did I miss the draft budget process whereby the community saw and could comment and meet with councillors prior to the budget being adopted?,” a comment understood to come from Mr Curran’s profile in the Gympie Times comment section said.

Cr Devereaux said he was not interested in “fights” with any former councillors.

Regional news at the heart of our best journalism

“I certainly don’t want to get into a fight with any ex-councillors over this. They were here, they had their time, they did their job,” he said.

“The time for blaming anyone in the past is gone. We’re in charge now, and we’ve got our own agendas. I think we’re moving towards the ultimate goal of getting things back in a good position.”

VIEW THE COUNCIL’S TRANSPARENCY HUB HERE

Originally published as Gympie councillor Bruce Devereaux suggests staff overtime bill outrage is due to transparency