Wednesday, 13 May 2026

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (14:03): I also gladly rise in support of this call by my colleague Mr Limbrick for a review into the councillor code of conduct framework. I have watched this issue unfold across the last few years with horror, and I have raised it many times with this government. The fact is that good, innocent elected councillors are having their lives destroyed and their reputations ruined and are generally just being damaged in every single way possible, in addition to not being able to do their jobs because of how badly this framework operates. Of course I could open and close my case for this review with the simple example of Wyndham City Council. The mayor of Wyndham City Council, along with another man, who was almost set to come to this place and replace me, signed a character reference for their friend of over a decade vouching for his good character after he had pleaded guilty to child rape and attempted child prostitution. Later he claimed not to know the full details of the case before he wrote this letter – they both did in fact – despite the very easily verifiable fact that the Victorian sentencing guidance requirements are that referees need to be fully aware of the offending before putting their name before the court.

The reference itself was disgusting. It discussed the child grooming and the sexual assault charges as just a one-off event and attempted to attribute the behaviour and blame the behaviour on COVID stress and isolation. That mayor has refused to step down. None of the other councillors want him there. One has resigned in protest. The community have been protesting over and over. They do not want to suffer through the indignity of having a person like that as their mayor. Two monitors have been appointed, and yet he is still there. What kind of a system allows a deadlock like that? That is an absolute disgrace.

I could move on to the example of Melton. Thankfully the majority of councillors there have managed to keep that boat pretty steady, but the same kind of deranged behaviour has been going on there since I was a councillor there. I still remember personally watching a particular councillor break every single rule in the book. People refused to be alone in a room with her because she would make up such ridiculous, spurious allegations, and the code of conduct framework basically could not deal with her. Nothing was done. She was not stopped even after she was chastised. That particular councillor and her partner have already lost a defamation case. There are AVOs out against them. I had to write via my lawyer to have some manufactured lies that she tried to slot into another of her complaints redacted or I would have sued the council myself. They have leaked confidential documents from that councillor, and what has happened to them? Nothing.

The core problem is that the councillor code of conduct framework punishes scrutiny, criticism and dissent, but it does not really respond at all to genuine collapses in integrity or conduct. The entire structure surrounding how it shapes councillor behaviour through fear of complaints, reputational destruction, financial pressure and procedural warfare is well known, and there are councils across this state who feel that it is being weaponised, not just by crybullies on a local level but politically. And they have got a point because of the way that it is set up and who picks who the arbiters are.

There are lots of things that need to change, and it is not just about how individual councillors behave, it is about how the framework actually operates. Good governance requires independence, fairness and equal treatment, and democracy requires a reasonable level of freedom of speech. We have suffered as ratepayers and councillors and have been suffering through having all of this mess cost us millions and millions of dollars. I know that one councillor was actually even provided with a lawyer when you are not supposed to be provided with lawyers, but because she is Aboriginal, she gets a lawyer. I mean, there is nothing objective or fair in the entire system. It reads well on paper, but what happens in practice? It is completely corrupt and a total mess. I cannot believe, even though I have not very high hopes for this government to organise anything properly at all, we are in a situation where absolutely nobody wants a mayor – absolutely nobody in the whole state, even the government; everybody wants to get rid of this mayor – and he is safe and sound.

I was going to go back through the cases that have been raised. I might just touch on a few. Steven Hughes from Frankston was suspended after making negative comments about council performance. I mean, what if they were underperforming? Melissa Ferguson from Latrobe was forced to make a degrading apology for criticising someone who was investigated for paedophilia. I mean, that is a disgrace. Council and government and everybody should be apologising to her for putting her through that degrading, disgraceful treatment. If she had not done it, she would have been bankrupted. You should not be able to have your integrity and your reputation and your ability to defend yourself contingent on going bankrupt because of a rigged system. This has to stop, and it has to be managed through a proper system, not this one that we have, which clearly is biased and does not work for the benefit of the ratepayers and does not work in the interests of unbiased governance. I commend this to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:09): I am pleased to also rise on this motion – 1424, I believe it is – that has been raised for us by Mr Limbrick today. It is a valuable opportunity to discuss the local government sector but also the reforms which have taken place. I confess perhaps I am not quite as prepared as I would normally like to be to respond to the rather extraordinary comments by Mrs Deeming, but what I would say is that it is a very good thing in fact that this government is banning the use of character references, particularly for sex offender cases and child sex offender cases. Whilst I am not personally au fait with the example that Mrs Deeming illustrated, I certainly did, along with the rest of Victoria, watch on in bewilderment as that debacle engulfed her party just a few weeks ago. Indeed, on the face of it those are extraordinarily disturbing things for anyone to have done, particularly on that rationale. I think I will leave my remarks on that particular component there, but I want to say, since we have gone on to this subject, it is worth noting that the government is taking strong action to eliminate the ability for people like that to allegedly provide references as despicable as that for people in those circumstances.

Moving on to the substantive motion at hand, I do acknowledge Mr Limbrick for raising this in the chamber, and I acknowledge all speakers. I did have the opportunity to engage with and listen to the majority of the debate prior to question time, and suffice to say there is an important principle here that as elected representatives – there is a distinction where those of us in state and federal Parliament do have parliamentary privilege – it is right and proper that we should all, federal, state and local, have the ability to voice genuine concerns of ourselves or members of the communities that we represent. There are obviously appropriate rules of conduct, and this is where we come to the heart of the issue.

I do not think anybody wishes to see these rules broken. They are designed to intervene in some of the practices we have seen in councils, some published or proven. There are a vast number of anecdotal cases of bullying by a small number of councillors against their council colleagues or against council staff or, quite potentially, bullying of councillors by others in the council as well or by executive staff. There is a very clear reason why we have this code of conduct and an arbitration process, which does predate the recent reforms. The data that I have seen shows that the number of arbitrations decreased following these recent reforms, as opposed to increased.

It is worth going to some history on this. As members will know, the implementation of this and the legislation which sets out the model code of conduct arose as a direct result of recommendations in the IBAC Operation Sandon report. That relates to some particularly egregious cases of wrongdoing and alleged wrongdoing in a council that both Mr Limbrick and Ms Payne, who I see in the chamber – in fact we have almost the whole south-east team here – are very familiar with, and that is the former council in the City of Casey, which did some outrageous things. It shows what can go wrong when councils stray too far from relevant guidance. I do reflect on the fact that we need to have that appropriate balance, and the code of conduct is very specifically here to be for conduct, not for speech or for reasonable discussion.

I am drawn to the matters at hand in Operation Sandon and councillors engaging perhaps in ways which facilitated inappropriate activity and inappropriate planning decisions that they may have had a vested interest in. There is a fundamental right for elected representatives, be they federal, state or local, to make the decision that they see is best. We do not want to see some sort of bureaucratic overreach shrouded in the name of integrity that says that politicians, whatever their level is, must comply with a recommendation given to them by executives, bureaucrats, council staff, whatever the case may be, because that would fundamentally go against the point of having elected councillors and elected MPs.

MPs, governments, councillors, must be free to make decisions as they see fit, even if it goes against what has been advised to them. You see indeed with Operation Sandon the egregious case of what can go wrong when that is allowed to go too far, and indeed there are certain appropriate probity checks and measures, ranging from the simplest of a conflict-of-interest declaration right through to more serious penalties, as there should be for inappropriate conduct where a councillor personally advantages themselves from a decision of their own council. That is obviously way out of bounds and should never be tolerated. I am mindful that it is appropriate of course for the government to fully enact recommendations that are made to us by integrity bodies, but we must also be mindful that governments, councils, do have the right to make their own decisions.

I reflect on an adjournment I gave in this place actually just the last time that we were sitting here, in the previous sitting week, when I raised concerns on behalf of constituents of mine in the new Casey council. Certainly it is refreshing to have councillors back there after a long period of administration, and there is no parallel between the current council and the former one. I was expressing frustration on behalf of community members of mine in the suburb of Berwick that related to a council decision. There is a very popular park in that council in my electorate, Wilson botanic gardens, that does draw in a lot of people, and they are having issues with traffic and the car park overflowing. As a result, council has proposed to build a new, offsite car park at a different entrance to the park, at the rear and through parts of residential Berwick. This particular location, in my view and in the strong view of my constituents, is completely unsuitable given the nature of the street – the relatively narrow, winding nature and indeed steep hills – and traffic issues at the bottom of the street as it interconnects with Ernst Wanke Road, the main connector road. These are all very valid reasons for the residents to object.

I raised their concerns because I was not satisfied that council had appropriately taken their concerns into account, and indeed I maintain my concern and I appreciate the chance to have had discussions with many in council and will continue to do so. But I did say at the time when I raised this adjournment, and I maintain today: I disagree with this decision that council made, but council had every right to make it. Now, my understanding is that council has acted on the advice of the executive, and I am concerned as to how fulsomely perhaps that advice captured the various complications and circumstances of the residents of Kramer Drive. However, irrespective, if the executive have said, ‘Don’t proceed with this project,’ and the councillors have said, ‘We’re going to do it,’ they had every right to do that.

It is important that we maintain that distinction or that independence. Councillors and councils should be free to speak. Obviously it is not to be done in an outrageous, inappropriate or abusive way. We have our robust debates here in this chamber, and we all very much enjoy them. But there is an appropriate way to do things and there is an inappropriate way to do things, and nothing in providing councils with this freedom should infringe on the rights of councillors or council staff to be treated fairly and appropriately. I think, Mrs McArthur, in your contribution you said you have been slammed many times in this chamber, and I think I would agree with that. And I would possibly even submit to you that you have slammed others just as much in return.

Bev McArthur: I agree.

Michael GALEA: Indeed. I love our slanging matches, and in fact the fact that we are both in the chamber on a Wednesday and not screaming at each other already is quite remarkable for us, Mrs McArthur. The truth is we do enjoy that, but we know that there is a time and a place to do that. We certainly would not be doing that in the back corridors of the Parliament, having an all-right barney, and I know that you or I certainly would not be yelling at any of the staff of the Parliament in that way. There is an appropriate forum to do things, and obviously in Parliament we do show a particular side of it in this chamber as well.

But that is what the objective of the code of conduct is. And I understand and I know that the minister is invested and engaged in ensuring that it is as responsive and reflective of those ideals as possible, so that we can have councillors supported to do their jobs fully and council officers supported to do their jobs fully but in a way that still allows for that robust, vigorous and fair expression of debate that we do want to see at all levels of government, especially in our local councils.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Before we move on, I am just going to acknowledge former member Fiona Patten in the gallery.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:19): Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for their thoughtful contributions on this debate. It does not sound like there was a lot of dissent on it. I would just like to pick up a few points that some members raised. Mrs McArthur raised the chilling effect. Indeed the big problem with what is going on here is not the frivolous cases that I raised; the big problem is: what are people not saying that they should be saying, or as Mrs McArthur raised, what sort of talent might be wanting to put their hand up for council elections and choosing not to do so because they feel that they will not be able to say what they think they should say? So I think that is a very good point, Mrs McArthur.

Dr Mansfield pointed out the applicability of these things to mayors, which is an excellent point, and also the idea that the arbiters are very inconsistent. This is indeed what I have noticed as well. A number of members, including Dr Mansfield and also some others – Ms Ermacora – raised the idea of the Supreme Court as an option for administrative review of any decisions. As Mr Barker will be able to tell you, this is not an accessible or cheap exercise. This is a very, very expensive exercise that limits justice for many people. As Mrs Deeming pointed out, some councillors would rather just acquiesce than face potential bankruptcy, which is not a desirable outcome at all.

Also, Mr Ettershank, I would like to thank you for your comments and also your contribution to this motion. You provided some excellent feedback, which we actually took on board. And I think one of the points raised by Mrs Deeming was around how we still end up in a situation where some people doing bad things end up getting away with it and people who are trying to do good things get punished. Obviously that is not desirable. I do not think anyone would desire that.

But overall, I would like to thank everyone for their support on this, and I hope that actually we can get some agreement that we need to do something here to make sure that the system works a bit better than it is working now. This was not something to smack the government with. I know that the government’s intention was to reduce frivolous cases and protect robust debate, but the evidence from what I have seen and by talking to councillors and hearing their stories is that that is not the case across the state. So thank you. And I will leave it there.

Motion agreed to.