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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-28 Daily Xml
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT MEETINGS

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (15:33): My topic is how local government copes with the disruption of the proceedings of council meetings so severe that the council cannot function. Councillor Jim Jacobsen has done this to Burnside council repeatedly, and Charles Sturt mayoral candidate Kirsten Alexander has employed the tactic from the gallery at Charles Sturt.

Indeed, at Charles Sturt, we had the mayor, a 74-year-old widower, shouted at by Miss Alexander's host that he was a four-letter word beginning with C. Councillor Anna Rau was spat upon by a person from the same host. Miss Alexander tells us that her protesters were just 'mums and dads'. I do not accept that a demonstrated ability to reproduce gives one licence to behave in this fashion.

Up to half of Miss Alexander's followers at these demonstrations were not from the Charles Sturt council area, let alone Woodville. Those who have met or had dealings with Kirsten Alexander are most unlikely to vote for her in the current ballot but, alas, not enough Charles Sturt ratepayers will meet Kirsten Alexander before they vote, and I predict she is a shorter price to win the mayoralty than So You Think was to win the W.S. Cox Plate last Saturday.

Like the People's Liberation Front of Judea in Monty Python's The Life of Brian, the St Clair residents' action group has split, and its Facebook site is now vilifying former member and candidate for the state district of Cheltenham, Henrietta Child of Woodville North, who is also running for mayor.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Splitter.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Yes, indeed, splitter, as the part owner of the Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, Richard Tonkin, accuses her on the Facebook site. We can look forward to four years of the Charles Sturt Council's being a soap opera as mayor Kirsten fights the staff and ward councillors in the course of trying to make the Corporation of the City of Charles Sturt's principal function that of a battering ram against the state Labor government. I predict that should Mr Jacobsen not be elected mayor and Miss Alexander not be elected mayor neither will accept the result.

They will continue to disrupt the duly-elected councils from the gallery. They will call for an independent commission against corruption (ICAC) to be established, presumably for the purpose of investigating the majority of electors who fail to endorse their candidature or those who had the cheek to nominate against them.

Anyone who disagrees with them they will characterise as 'corrupt' or 'alien'. Indeed, it is a most unpleasant feature of civic discourse in South Australia that disagreement about any political topic, even the most mundane, leads to opponents of the state government—from Her Majesty's opposition to the bloggers—claiming that their opponents are corrupt and that the matter can be resolved with the inauguration of an ICAC.

They think of an independent commission against corruption as a kind of an Australian NKVD, dispensing antipodean instansyia to purge our state of counter-revolutionaries. The innocent must be purged so that none of the guilty escapes.

It is important to preserve the right of public protest and the right of individual-elected councillors to be obstreperous. This must be balanced with the ability of elected bodies to conduct their deliberations. We have seen many examples in modern history of mobs refusing to accept the legitimacy of elected bodies and besieging them, or minorities on the floor of the chamber effectively dissolving them by defying the chair.

A former member of the other place, Mr David Winderlich, supported standing orders that prevented both in this house and in the other place just the kind of misconduct by strangers that he led at Burnside and Charles Sturt, including an invasion of the chamber at Burnside.

You, Madam Deputy Speaker, have the authority to name members who are frustrating the despatch of business—the business of the house. In local government, the mayor as the presiding member is authorised to keep order at council meetings. Councillor Jacobsen has defied the rulings of the mayor at Burnside council meetings and defied a resolution of the council that he leave the chamber for deliberately obstructing the business of the council.

An hour after the resolution he had still not left the chamber. Burnside council cannot get help to deal with councillor Jacobsen's misconduct. One rather doubts, given the network responsible for the Burnside council report, that it will be a matter addressed in Mr MacPherson's report.

I can understand why South Australia Police would steer clear of such offences. My thoughts on this topic turn to the Office of State/Local Government Relations, but it seems that it cannot or will not do anything. What is the role of Mr John Hanlon in this, given that he is a former chief executive officer of the Burnside council?

Time expired.

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