How to undermine a conscientious councillor — Interview of Cr Walkom, 2014.07.04

Kangaroo Island, 2014.07.04

I have been watching more closely than usual, for nearly four years now, what passes for local politics on Kangaroo Island. What I see is disgraceful. By its words and deeds, the majority in council has demonstrated a stupendous lack of a sense of what true democracy is. Democracy is government by the majority, not power to oppress and suppress the minority.

Well, this is not the way the game is being played on so-called paradise island. Again and again, what transpires as a power club acts in a way that shows that, for it, control of council decisions, collusion with the higher levels of the administration, shameless pandering by the sole local newspaper, and the backing of powerful friends in government and business, are not enough : the club also demands quietness and quiescence on the part of the minority of elected members who are worried about council’s administrative orientation and poor financial situation.

What I can only qualify as a totalitarian urge for 100% control, 99% not being enough, is at the source of a very aggressive political culture of endless persecution of those councilors who do not close the ranks and, in my opinion, take their position seriously. One has resigned, in exhaustion and disgust; the two remaining ones, councilors Liu and Walkom, though the going gets tougher and tougher, keep going. I must say their determination does impress me. Let me be clear: I am not talking out of any sense of appreciation of political orientation, but out of a moral sense of appreciation of brave underdogs.

These days, a ferocious offensive of sullying has been launched on Cr Walkom, as there had been one on ex-Cr Rosalie Chirgwin. Considering that The Islander does not properly do its job of balanced information, I offer here a platform to Cr Walkom where he can provide his viewpoint.

Dr Gabriel Bittar, KIpolis.net webmaster

*******************

How to undermine a conscientious councillor — Interview of Cr Walkom, 2014.07.04

– Some people are stamp collectors. The Island vine whispers that you collect, since being elected councillor 4 years ago, code of conduct complaints. Is there any truth in this ?

– That’s an interesting way to put it… Yes — but not by choice.

– Well, is it correct that they are all related to you exercising your functions as a councillor? If yes, how and why did it start ?

– There are clear responsibilities for councillors which I take seriously and place above formalities. In particular, I must keep under review the council’s resource allocation, expenditure and activities as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of its service delivery. Complaints about me started from the former CEO who fobbed me off when I wanted to know information about how council was actually performing in its responsibilities. My questions were considered too pointed. One of three complaints lodged by the then CEO was about me, two were about the State elected member for commenting on the former council’s performance just before our council was elected. The mayor convened out of the blue a meeting closed to the public where councillors were told they had to support an investigation into three unspecified occupational, health and safety incidents. No information was provided, councillors were told to vote blind, and most did, because of the element of surprise and out of trust.

– I remember well these events. For those interested, there are a few links at the end of this interview. Could you expand on this matter of how the present council hinders really responsible councillors from properly operating?

– That was my education on how council would work: if you ask serious questions about how things are going you must endure an endless rain of administrative attacks. A lot like a small group of children getting bullied on a daily basis on the school playgrounds, and having to fend for themselves. Out of the three questioning and investigative councillors, one resigned in disgust, and the two remaining ones have to spend a lot of energy fighting such complaints and many personal attacks. The objective appears to be to hinder our effectiveness as councillors.

– Since you started, how many administrative attacks did you have to fence off?

– Dozens. I don’t count them anymore. The most interesting ones are where the majority in council call for the ombudsman to investigate council. That move opens up the process to anyone laying as many charges as they can on the councillors they don’t like and the “recipient” must answer to those complaints. This is a bit like a small town calling in the police to investigate everyone within the community — of course, the police will be very busy with everyone dobbing on everyone else.

– You said dozens of administrative attacks just on you !… But have you lodged some complaints yourself ?

– I initially lodged my share of complaints, but I quickly found out that the body that “investigates” (sort of) – the Local Government Governance Panel (LGGP) – is apparently there basically to emasculate those who don’t follow the appointed leader, whatever the facts. You also have to realise that council spends a lot of ratepayers’ money trying to silence voices of concern when they speak on council’s financial largesse, bad management and strategic technical errors. Whilst the administration had previously kept out of the elected member disputes, more recently, as a result of me being progressively disenfranchised, I have been much more blunt in my private and confidential communications; as is obvious from the documents that have been published by others and the three recent recent reports from the LGGP.  Very recently I lodged a formal complaint after a very badly managed scheduled council meeting, but I cannot say more at this stage, otherwise I would be in the same bucket as those who routinely deny natural justice in any hearing process.

– It’s not a problem limited only to Kangaroo Island, seemingly. I have been watching too, though from a distance, a number of upright individuals fighting incompetence and corruption in different SA councils, and it seems to me that the whole legal and political apparatus is there to crush or exhaust the whistle-blowers. Do you concur?

– It needs to be appreciated that councils continuously use lawyers to prosecute many of these complaints against those councillors it dislikes. These legals appear to write whatever the CEO or the mayor say to write, in a convoluted and often ambiguous or even contradictory manner.  And council spends lavishly its money: on one issue I had to contend with four lawyers! As I do not personally bother with lawyers but argue my own case, this is probably why I don’t win many complaints. Things are more evenly balanced when matters are considered by the Ombudsman SA, who does try to follow natural justice processes and does allow significant opportunity for argument. Nevertheless, my experience in dealing with the Ombudsman is that there is seldom any finding against the establishment (council) and his usual response is “I can see nothing wrong here”. And when he does find that council erred, council is indifferent to fixing the wrongdoing and the ombudsman is indifferent to this indifference.

– Have you had the Ombudsman find in your favour against this council ?

– Yes, twice. In October last year the mayor convinced council to throw the book at me and presented a number of complaints and a box full of “evidence” to the Ombudsman wanting the Ombudsman to ‘lower the boom’ on me but council lost all those. In my defence I also put a boxful of evidence to the ombudsman and got a finding of council acting unlawfully, so the net result was Cr Walkom 1, council 0. This was despite council having four solicitors and a QC pushing their case. It is a subject of indignation for many on the island how much money council is prepared to spend in its efforts to silence me – in my view it is arrogantly misappropriating ratepayer’s money, which it’d better use to fix our many dangerous roads !

– You say that the Ombudsman did not uphold any of council’s complaints, but one of the LGGP reports to council’s July meeting is a recommendation from the Ombudsman that you breached the code of conduct, is it not?

– Yes it is. The Ombudsman considered that my confidential email to the CEO was not complimentary to him – by any means, it was not meant to be… Council’s highly-paid solicitors then obviously goofed in not advising Council that this matter first had to be referred to the LGGP – which specialises in foregone conclusions; rather, they went straight to the Ombudsman, requesting that the email be included as one of three complaints; these complaints were intended to facilitate a charge of too many code breaches against me to the District Court. So the exorbitantly paid council solicitors mucked up. The second report from the LGGP [dated 20.6.2014] is this one [ LGGP_vs_Walkom_014-06-26-Code_of_Conduct ] and is the result of council being forced to follow their own declared processes.

– Hmmm. This looks like a very convoluted after-the-facts adjustment of a most dubious process, which lacks both transparency and natural justice. It has to be said that these three LGGP reports are damning of you. But I take it with a pinch of salt: I know this is the body the mayor usually refers alleged code breaches to; I also know it specialises in foregone conclusions. I nevertheless would like to know your viewpoint on this. Also, what about the LGGP process – I deduce that they do not follow a similar format to the Ombudsman?

– The LGGP proclaims to be an independent subset of the LGA (Local Government Association). The LGA exists on subscriptions from its various membership councils and has various mayors as members (including our own mayor), some as office holders. The LGGP (including support staff) is resourced by fees for service and by the LGA. The LGGP investigations ‘panel’ is always one person who from my experience has no legal training or legal expertise. The LGGP has published terms of engagement which state they will follow natural justice provisions in their so-called investigations… but they simply do not do this. When a complaint is lodged, there is provision for the mayor to “nip it in the bud” by having the issue mediated at the local (island) level and save time and money. This has never been done by our mayor that I am aware – it is always referred to the LGGP chair who also has a responsibility to assess the merit of the complaint and decide whether it needs to be sort of investigated. Needless to say the vast majority of public complaints against council or the mayor are not investigated, because they are of course found to be trivial or to lack substance, whereas all those lodged against conscientious councillors (including me) are deemed serious, must be “investigated” and, yes you guessed it, it is always found that these councillors have breached the code.

– But you would surely appeal such decisions made under such a process? If the system was half as bad as you indicate a genuine review would not uphold those decisions?

– There is no review. I learnt that very early on when, armed with much evidence of very bad process, I appealed to the Ombudsman. His answer was that he is not empowered to investigate the LGGP. He is therefore unable or unwilling to take on board any possibility that their findings may be wrong, unreasonable, or biased. As a councillor one just has to suck it up and get on with being a harassed councillor.

– The LGGP states they are bound to follow natural justice processes. How well did they do this from your side of the fence for these three complaints they have just reported on?

– When it comes to the LGGP, their so-called “investigations” are very one-sided and superficial. In the case of the last three complaints… For the first one – the CEO complaining that my observations in a meeting (the purpose of which was to discuss concerns members had) were too harsh, not that they were wrong – the LGGP did not provide me with the complaint until the time of the interview. With the CEO’s long-winded writing style, I perused only a small part of his concerns before the interview was concluded. Based on my past experience with the LGGP processes, I insisted that the charges I had to contest must be stated prior to the interview. The LGGP “Panel” (one person) gave me written assurances that she simply did not follow. In the other two complaints that this same “panel” investigated that same day, I never saw the complaints until after the interview, so I refused to discuss these because I did not have copies of the complaints. I was then given assurances that there would be interviews to follow after I had seen the complaints… but that never happened.

– Right. You are saying you received two of the complaints against you only until after your ‘hearing’, which ipso facto was a non event anyway, while the one you have been interviewed for presented to you the allegations only during the hearing?

– This was undeniably the case. When I went through the LGGP three reports I found, for the first one, five critical omissions of essential information I had nonetheless provided to the panel, or errors of fact in the report detrimental to an objective outcome. For the second report: four errors of fact detrimental to me. And for the third one: seven errors of fact detrimental to me! For these two reports, of course there were no omissions… since I had not been interviewed! This is called “justice” LGGP style.

– What do you expect council to do with these reports at this next council meeting, on the 9th?

– The mayor in particular is desperate to get me silenced and sees the best way to do that is to get me before the district court and some enforced conditions placed on me from that.

– Do you think that will happen?

– Yes. Council has so far shown little concern for natural justice and will not be concerned with the processes followed to get to this point. In all probability these three complaints will be accepted ‘as read’ which will allow referral of my bag of fabricated misdemeanours to the ombudsman, with an accompanying bag of paid legal advice to the ombudsman, advising that I must be referred to either ICAC or the district court.

– Are you concerned about this likelihood?

– I am more concerned about council’s administration and finances. The discipline issues are an occupational hazard to one who makes the effort to do what the LG Act requires of councillors.

– If I get you correctly, in a nutshell, your main sin is to be worried as a councillor about the financial state of Kangaroo Island Council, and this has brought onto you the wrath of some people with political power. Could you expand on these financial matters of concern to you, in a following interview?

– Yes, I will. I possibly need to state that these are my opinions and views and not necessarily those of council – otherwise I will have another Code of Conduct complaint.

– Thank you, councillor Walkom.

Related posts:

Councillors should not be intimidated into not asking questions from the Council administration — Dr Bittar, Gabriel, 2011.01.27

Censorship by the mayor and administration — Unexpurgated Personal Statement made at Kangaroo Island Council by Councillor Walkom, Graham, on the 13th of April 2011

Councillor Liu’s questions re Council legal expenses for investigating alleged Code of Conduct breaches by elected members, 2011.05.04

Censorship again. Complete letter by Dr Bittar, Gabriel, 2011.05.12, in relation with Councillor Walkom’s Personal Statement of 2011.04.13, its censorship, then expurgation

Councillors Walkom, Liu and Chirgwin respond to the orchestrated attacks on them – their full media statement, 2011.10.26

Unexpurgated letter of Councillors Chirgwin, Liu and Walkom regarding the attacks on them – 2011.10.26

Kangaroo Island council has acted in a way that is contrary to law — from OmbudsmanSA’s report, 2011.08.26

Criticism of the CEO and staff is not warranted or accepted — Council resolution, 2011.11.09

Councillor Liu asks the CEO to explain his allegations re who’s responsible for legal expenses — QoN 2011.11.09; Council decides to keep its reply secret — UPDATED 2012.11.27

Legal costs to Council of Ombudsman investigation — QoN by Cr Walkom 2012.03.14

Cr Davis’ complaints against Cr Chirgwin — a very questionable process, 2011-2012, by Cr Walkom, 2012.03.14

Councillors who speak up have no protection against litigation — A legal analysis by Jacobsen, Jim, 2012.06.01

Council’s doors close on the last few shards of openness and transparency — Cr Gr. Walkom, 2013.01.16

Why is Council in financial and management trouble ? — Short interview of Cr Walkom, 2013.09.29

KIpolis will not be drawn in the censuring and silencing of Cr Walkom — G. Bittar, 2014.02.08

Misleading CEO report against councillor — Cr Walkom, 2014.04.04

Censored QoN for Council meeting 2014.04.09 — Cr Walkom

Storm in a cup of tea – Ombudsman’s contribution to a saga involving Cr Walkom — Bittar 2014.07.05

Kangaroo Island Council dire financial situation, part 2 – Interview of Cr Walkom, 2014.07.07

Kangaroo Island Council not functioning properly — interview of Cr Walkom, 2014.07.11

2 thoughts on “How to undermine a conscientious councillor — Interview of Cr Walkom, 2014.07.04

  1. In this interview I make reference to the investigations into these allegations and the findings against me. As with most LGGP outcomes from councils across this State there appears to be a template for what is required from the so-called “offender”, and that includes recommending to council that it requires the councillor to apologise. Note the word “requires”.

    What happens next is that this recommendation is restated verbatim in the resolution of a council: that the offender is required to apologise. In fact, the law does not empower a council to require an apology: what the LG Act states very clearly is that a council may request an apology; this is a big difference – the former is mandatory, the latter is optional, it is a matter of conscience and common sense.

    So what councils in SA have been advised by their legals is quite wrong. It is the State Ombudsman who has the authority to require an apology – presumably if the so-called “errant” councillor declines the council request to apologise when it appears warranted. But then the Ombudsman would never be able to determine such an outcome because by his own advice, he cannot review the LGGP or any of their processes – they are not within his complaint-review umbrella.

    As I pen this, there are a number of matters in different councils in South Australia playing out, all with a similar theme: a councillor or two raise an issue within a council; it is valid but disregarded by the mayor/CEO/council. The councillor is concerned enough to voice the matter outside council’s closed doors. Now if that councillor is seen as a threat to the mayor, or is disliked by a majority of peers or by the CEO, the discipline process of formal complaint / LGGP adverse finding / council public humiliation / complaint to the ombudsman / ombudsman adverse finding… is highly likely to be routine because while it classicaly started out of spite, it has by now reached a frenzy. The will to persecute has taken a life of its own and the matter which originated the dispute and about which council is supposed to be overseeing justice… is intentionally averted. This process, if you are directing it, nursing it, feeding it, is an excellent way to cause public and political harm to a competitor at election time… and yes a number of the “offending” councillors are indeed political opponents for mayor or councillor in these councils.

    As I am.

    Recently one councillor from Marion legally contested the Ombudsman’s report and outcomes: to a casual observer the Ombudsman (meant to be an objective complaint referee) looked very amateur and sloppy in its apparent efforts to endorse the formal process and the outcomes that preceded its own review. In this situation at least it appears that the Ombudsman has not provided the critical review required from it.

    In my own case, I have a deadline of 17th of September 2014 to make a number of “public apologies” under this sham system. Of course I have never accepted the corrupt process used to get these political outcomes and I would normally not apologise on such a charade. However, as a candidate for mayor myself, to not comply at this time invokes a risk the political system could well prohibit me from contributing to the community, now or in the future.

    So I make the following formal written apologies not by free and logical choice, not because they have resulted from a sound investigation process with reasoned outcomes, but because it appears prudent to do so and potentially harmful to me and the community if I do not.

    So…

    I apologise in full accordance with the KI Council resolution 10.10.2 of 9th July 2014.
    I apologise in full accordance with the KI Council resolution 10.10.3 of 9th July 2014.
    I apologise in full accordance with the KI Council resolution 10.10.4 of 9th July 2014.

    Signed Cr Graham Walkom, Kangaroo Island
    (please note the usual caveat: the above are my personal views)

  2. I have only today made myself aware through an excellent question and answer interview between Graham Walkom and Gabriel Bittar. I found the information alarming although as a ratepayer I have usually been left to find it out by hearing the unreliable version in the press either maligning the person being victimised or the pumping the chests of the CEO, Mayor and some councillors. The outcome is that matters of this kind and all too frequently legal advice is sought when it is not warranted. This cost to the ratepayers of unnecessary use of legal opinion means we have less money to spend on our run down roads or services. Well done Gabriel and Graham.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *