Conduct unbecoming at Liverpool Council reaps its own reward

Liverpool City Council has long been the poster boy for councils behaving badly, rife with political nepotism and allegations of corruption while blithely churning through senior staff. There have been 10 chief executive officers in eight years, and internal bickering is the order of the day.

But the rot has been halted. Liverpool City Council is about to be suspended after a scathing Office of Local Government investigation found evidence of widespread dysfunction in staffing, financial management, development assessments and regulatory probity.

Barrister Ross Glover, who previously conducted an inquiry into Wingecarribee Shire Council, has been appointed to head a public inquiry into Liverpool.

In April, Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig announced an investigation into Liverpool amid reports about dysfunction and staff matters following Mayor Ned Mannoun’s ousting of the council’s chief executive, John Ajaka, a former president of the NSW Legislative Council. The mayor used his casting vote to sack Ajaka without waiting for the conclusions of an external investigator.

Hoenig said the initial investigation had uncovered matters outside its terms of reference, and they would be part of the public inquiry.

“The people of Liverpool are also entitled to a council that is not dysfunctional, one that complies with the statutory processes, and one whose councillors are governing the area appropriately,” he said. “There’s been interference and prevention at a political level to enable compliance issues to be preceded with,” he said.

Mannoun said the report only related to council staff, not elected officials, and then went on to claim it was purely political.

Mannoun appears not to have read the report closely. For it specifically slams “the elected council” for having presided over the departure of a slew of general managers, demonstrated a lack of effective oversight of operations and expenditure and not taking action to remedy increasing levels of dysfunction at council meetings, industrial tensions affecting their workforce and public disquiet about the organisation as a whole.

“The matters of concern documented in this report build a compelling argument that the council is dysfunctional, that there is maladministration evident in many aspects of the council’s operations, including management and operations, that councillors and the mayor are allegedly inappropriately lobbying staff on development and compliance matters and that many of the council’s policies are intentionally bypassed, ignored or only partially applied,” it says.

And while elected officials and staff indulged in their internecine war, likened by some to Game of Thrones, the impact over the years on ratepayers is incalculable. However, the new league table introduced by the Labor government showing how quickly municipalities processed development applications provides a glimpse of the turmoil’s cost: Liverpool was the state’s sixth slowest, taking an average 195 days to complete an assessment.

For years the council’s bad behaviour has demanded action, and the Minns government is to be congratulated for bringing miscreant Liverpool to heel.

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