On 25 November 2022 the Queensland Government announced that Emu Swamp Dam will be included in the Southern and Darling Downs Regional Water Assessment (RWA) program.  This immediately brought into sharp focus the issue of who was representing us (the ratepayers of SDRC) in this process.  Answer: it’s the same two council members who cannot vote on issues relating to Emu Swamp Dam due to their various conflicts of interest, Mayor Pennisi and Councillor Tancred.  Clearly this is a problem.

The next day POW wrote to the CEO of SDRC, Dave Burges, asking whether SDRC would now replace the SDRC representatives on the RWA with non-conflicted councillors.  We’re still waiting for a reply some 6 weeks later.

Conflicts of interest are not just a theoretical issue.  Mayor Pennisi and Councillor Tancred have consistently claimed that Council is merely an investor in the project, and they don’t have any “inside information” on the project, for example, the identity of the other investors.  This doesn’t seem credible given their previous involvement with the dam. 

More relevantly, recent actions by the pair certainly show that their behaviour and statements could easily lead to a perception of conflict.  As an example, being involved in lobbying for government money for Emu Swamp Dam to be released and using the royal “we” when publicly talking about the project.

What our community needs is transparency and integrity.  If the SDRC representatives to the RWA are not free of conflicts of interest, then the community will rightly worry that these representatives are not looking after the interests of ratepayers and the community.  To ensure the entire community has confidence in the RWA process it’s time for Mayor Pennisi and Councillor Tancred to step aside from these roles, and hand them over to other SDRC representatives who do not have a declarable conflict of interest in this matter.    

SDRC should also be keeping ratepayers and the community as a whole informed of developments in the RWA process, such as which options have made the short-list.  For a Mayor who campaigned on a platform of transparency, yet again we find ourselves being kept in the dark on the most important issue in the district: water security.