Failed Council

A fair description of Wednesday’s Council meeting would be a lot of ducking and diving from Councillor Tancred and Mayor Pennisi to keep the options currently under consideration in the Regional Water Assessment (RWA) process hidden from the other Councillors and the community.  In the end the room split as follows:

In favour of a truly rubbish report and hiding information from the community:  Mayor Pennisi and Councillors Tancred, Gale, Bartley and Gow.

In favour of open and transparent reporting to the community:  Councillors McDonald, McNally, Windle and Gliori.

Cr Tancred is the SDRC representative on the RWA working group.  Other local organisations on the RWA include the Stanthorpe & Granite Belt Chamber of Commerce, the Stanthorpe Community Reference Panel and the Granite Belt Growers Association.  As you would expect these groups are providing details of the RWA progress to their members; in the case of the Chamber even posting documents to their website so that they are publicly available.  Not so Cr Tancred.  Cr Tancred’s report was described by Councillor McNally as “scant at least” and “a report that has no information in it whatsoever.” 

Councillor McDonald asked Cr Tancred to provide more information on the RWA process and mentioned that she understood that 7 additional options had been looked at of which 4 have gone through to the next stage of the process.  She directly asked Cr Tancred if he knew what those options were.  Cr Tancred replied that Cr McDonald should ask the other community groups who had the information what the options were.  Maybe he wasn’t listening at the RWA meeting, or had misplaced his notes?  Whatever the reason, clearly Cr Tancred was very confused about what his role as the SDRC representative on the working group actually means.  Perhaps when you are wearing quite so many hats you can sometimes forget which one is on your head!

Cr McDonald then repeated the question, asking as a matter of transparency whether Cr Tancred knew what those 4 options were.  “Well I do” responded Cr Tancred.  “Can we have them” asked Cr McDonald “so that the community knows what those options are?”.  Dear reader, the short answer was NOPE.  Stubborn, isn’t he?

Time for the Mayor to ride to Cr Tancred’s rescue.  Mayor Pennisi said it’s “not our role to release those, it’s the government’s role as they’re running that and we should ask them if we can release that.  We shouldn’t breach that confidence in the government.”  He then referred the matter to CEO Burges, who didn’t provide any cover for the ducking duo, stating:

the Department has indicated that we can disseminate information.  We have informed other parties that we do not take the lead in that, [we’re] happy for the State government to take the lead role.  But there is no secret business happening. 

Cr McDonald was glad to hear it: “Sorry, no secret business happening?  Fantastic!  Then we should be able to talk about it openly.”  She reminded those in the chamber that “water security is very important in this region” and that it was important for the “community [to] see in a transparent manner what is going on in these various forums.”

It looked like there might have been progress, with Cr Tancred saying “There’s nothing secret, it’s just a process”, but he then dug in and refused to allow mention of the four options under discussion to pass his lips.  Did I say stubborn?

Given the impasse, the Mayor again referred to CEO Burges who said “I’m happy to share the 4 projects”.  Spoiler alert:  the four options were not detailed in the meeting.  A SDRC Director did though explain that the already shortlisted options include the Warwick and Stanthorpe Recycled Water Schemes and the pipeline from Leslie Dam to Stanthorpe via Connolly Dam which are progressing through investigation and assessment. 

Cr McNally pointed out:

Cr Tancred is appointed to this organisation to report back to Councillors and the information coming back was scant at least.  Why aren’t all the papers from that meeting being included …  As Councillors we’re left in the dark but members of the community are well aware of it.

The response?  Mayor Pennisi knew he had just the right answer.  “I’m going to call for morning tea right this minute.” 

When the Councillors returned from morning tea, Cr McDonald tried one last time, noting that the CEO had said the information was not confidential and that she was:

looking for transparency for the community, not just for the Councillors here, for the community.  That’s who we work for, that’s who we’re appointed for.

But the Mayor knew in his waters that he had the numbers (I’m sure it would not have been discussed during the tea break!) and pushed forward with a vote to have the report accepted.  The Mayor together with Councillors Tancred, Gale, Bartley and Gow voted to effectively ensure that neither Councillors nor the community know what’s going on in the RWA. 

Now that the Mayor knows he has the numbers to push through empty reports, hide information from the community and generally behave at a standard far below what we should expect from our representatives I doubt we can expect anything productive for the last year of this disgraceful Mayorship.

Wednesday was a meeting that showed the true colour of many of our elected Councillors, both good and bad.  For some reason Cr Tancred and Mayor Pennisi think hiding this information will somehow help their Emu Swamp Dam project.  But I cannot for the life of me work out why …

14 April 2023