I have no intention of resigning

Press Release from Cr Peter Coad, Mayor of the Huon Valley Council — September 15, 2016

The Mayor of Huon Valley Council, Peter Coad, said this afternoon that he had no intention of resigning.

Mayor Coad was responding to Minister for Local Government Peter Gutwein’s call on him this morning in Parliament to stand down.

The mayor said that he had told Mr Gutwein, in a letter on Tuesday (September 13), that he was no longer willing to participate in the mediation process ordered by the Minister on June 15 last, in which Huon Valley Council had been ordered to implement seven Ministerial Directions.

Mayor Coad said today that he had written to the Minister on several occasions to express his concerns that the mediation process put in place by the council was flawed.

He said: “Since the Minister’s directions were issued, the position of the mayor has continued to be undermined. Not only that, the council, by resolution at its August 31 meeting, has barred me, as mayor, from being an ex officio member of all council committees.

“What is the point of me continuing to participate in a mediation process when I am treated with contempt by those who are in the mediation process with me?”

Mayor Coad said Huon Valley Council had been required by the Minister to discontinue its portfolio system. This had resulted in a need for council to appoint councillors as chairs of some 16 council committees.

He said he had not been chosen to chair any of the three committees he had shown a preference for, and that a motion to make him an ex officio member on each committee had been defeated.

He drew attention to Recommendation 38 of the Gutwein Board of Inquiry report that the minister had received in June.

That stated that the mayor should have the right to be an ex officio member of all committees.

Council, he said, had rejected this recommendation by defeating the August 31 amendment.

“This, in effect,” said Mayor Coad, removes all rights of the mayor to have any effective communication with council committees.

“Therefore,” he said, “I have been deliberately denied access to information on the activities of council or participation in the affairs of council.”

Mayor Coad said he was sure that this was not what the Board of Inquiry had intended when making its recommendations to the Minister.

“Removing the portfolio system is one thing,” he said, “but removing the right of the mayor to participate on council committees removes the voice of the many people who voted for me to lead their council.”

Mayor Coad said: “This again was a clear demonstration of the dysfunction that the Board of Inquiry found at the council in the seven months that it spent carefully investigating the affairs of the council.”

He said he had made a genuine effort to engage with the mediation process that the council management had put in place, but it had become clear to him that no amount of mediation would change the culture of the council.

“My decision to withdraw from the mediation process has not been taken lightly,” he said.

Mayor Coad said the decision of the Minister to allow a dysfunctional council to be responsible for setting up the mediation process in which its councillors and management were the main participants was always going to be difficult.

“This, to me,” he said, “is why the Board of Inquiry did not make mediation one of its main recommendations. In fact, it said that the situation was beyond mediation.”

Against the board’s advice, he said, it was Minister Gutwein who had demanded mediation.

Mayor Coad said: “Very serious allegations of poor governance arrangements at Huon Valley Council had been made to the Board of Inquiry, and I understand that the Minister is well aware of those concerns.”

He said he had made several requests of the State Government for these allegations to be investigated, but he had received no advice from the Office of Local Government that these matters were being, or would be, investigated.

Mayor Coad said the mediation process put in place by the council had not addressed the root cause of the dysfunction identified by the Board of Inquiry.

“I know that council can tick all the boxes to satisfy the Ministerial Directions,” he said, “but it won’t change the culture of the council to make it a more open and transparent organisation.

“If the council was open and transparent,” he said, “it would have no problem with making the mayor an ex officio member on council committees.”
Peter Coad, Councillor, Huon Valley Council