Wednesday, 29 October 2025

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (18:45): (2056) My matter is for the Minister for Local Government, and it concerns the City of Kingston. On the back of an FOI application to Bayside council concerning any declaration of conflicts of interest by Cr Andrew Hockley, Bayside council reported that no conflicts of interest have been declared at any council meetings up to and including the date of this decision, being Tuesday 28 October. In his role as advocacy lead at the City of Kingston, Andrew Hockley is required to declare conflicts of interest. In the most recent report, titled Quarterly Advocacy Update, it was reported no council officer or officers or contractors that have provided advice in relation to this report have declared a conflict of interest regarding the matter under consideration. All this seems highly unusual. How can a councillor, Mr Hockley, possibly fulfil their elected duties on one hand at Bayside whilst being the advocacy lead at Kingston on the other – two councils with different views on many things – and not declare a conflict of interest to either council? It is very curious how this is operating.

I notice that at the same time, or through a similar period, the Minister for Local Government Nick Staikos has appointed two monitors, Mr Tanner and Mr Watson, and these are obviously both eminent people. The purpose of the monitors is to assist the council in strengthening its governance, with a specific focus on health and safety, meeting procedures, decision-making processes and managing conflicts of interest. This is this the Kingston council that Mr Staikos described in August this year when he appointed the monitors. He said the council was less than ideal.

So we have got a situation here where Mr Hockley, with his deep Labor links, has been very active in working as an advocacy lead, talking about things like the Suburban Rail Loop and other matters in the City of Kingston. At the same time, he is an elected councillor, more recently in the City of Bayside. These are obviously adjoining councils – they have some interests that are in common, but inevitably they have some interests which are not in common. How on earth does Mr Hockley, with one hat here and another hat there – how does this work? How can you operate like that, when you have got clear conflicts of interest in two separate roles? It appears there has been no declaration of conflicts of interest in either role. This smells very bad. Corruption is open in these sorts of matters. We need to be very clear. We need to have proper declarations of conflicts of interest. These matters are important. The Minister for Local Government needs to make sure that these conflicts of interest are declared properly and that there is no lapse in governance.