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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-16 Daily Xml
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Mr PICCOLO (Light) (15:39): The Acting Ombudsman, Mr Ken McPherson, raised a number of concerns in a recent Economic and Finance Committee hearing regarding the operations of local government in South Australia. On previous occasions I have raised issues in this place which I believed needed to be addressed through the reform of the Local Government Act. Only a few weeks ago I spoke about the way local government was interpreting the existing community consultation provisions of the Local Government Act in relation to the annual budget process in a manner that made consultation meaningless because of the minimal time period allowed and the poor quality of information made available to the local residents.

It is my view that my concerns can only be addressed through changes to the Local Government Act. Accordingly, I conveyed my concerns to the Minister for Local/State Government Relations. In addition, I am concerned about the transparency and accountability of some decision-making by local government given the very limited rights of review by aggrieved persons.

Not only are rights of review limited, but they often lack any independent oversight, with many local councils lacking the capacity to provide meaningful and effective review procedures or processes to deal with these grievances. While the current act requires councils to adopt and publish grievance resolution procedures, many of the policies lack rigour, with some councils lacking in their organisational capacity to provide processes that would meet generally accepted standards in complaints resolution.

In many cases, the person reviewing the decision is in fact the original decision maker. In those cases where the reviewer is a different person, it is often the decision maker's superior officer who is often unwilling to overturn a subordinate's decision because they want to be seen to be supporting their staff. In short, many councils do not have a culture whereby they seek complaints processes or grievance resolution procedures as an input into reform or improving decision-making in the organisation. Rather, they see review processes as a negative rather than a positive.

Furthermore, any external review processes are voluntary unless a resident seeks judicial review. Such action in most cases is beyond the financial reach of aggrieved persons. Many local councils lack the understanding of basic administrative law principles. Their actions are often governed by a range of extraneous matters and many do not follow basic natural justice principles—a view supported by the Acting Ombudsman. These problems arise in some cases because of lack of training while, in others, poor examples provided by the council leadership.

I have, on previous occasions, brought to the attention of this house the previous appalling state of affairs at the Light Regional Council—and I say 'previous state of affairs' because things have improved there. In evidence to the Economic and Finance Committee, the Acting Ombudsman highlighted the difficulties his office has encountered in resolving complaints lodged by ratepayers and residents because of the intransigence of local government officials including some council CEOs.

What hope has the ordinary ratepayer/resident in having their issue or complaint resolved when the Ombudsman experiences difficulties as well. While this state of affairs may not be across the board, varying degrees of ignorance in relation to administrative justice is quite widespread throughout local government. I receive numerous complaints about the processes council officers follow in the administration of the Development Act.

Some of the complaints could be avoided by council officers taking more care in explaining their reasons or decisions. In other cases, I am satisfied that some actions border on maladministration. About 50 per cent of complaints handled by my office would be related to local government decision-making. Some issues and complaints are compounded by the poor and unhealthy relationships which exist between some officers and elected members in some councils.

Conflicting advice given to residents by council officers and elected members generates distrust in the community. These problems require practical, cost-effective solutions and must be owned by local government themselves. For this to occur, I strongly believe that the Local Government Act needs to be amended to:

strengthen the rights of residents in relation to complaints and grievance resolution;

improve accountability and transparency of decision making;

strengthen the codes of conduct which facilitate better and more respectful relationships between council officers and elected members;

improve the organisational capacity of council to effectively address resident complaints; and

strengthen the community consultation, participation and engagement process of local government.

I intend to refer the concerns that I have raised in this house today to the minister for her consideration.

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