The NSW Opposition is calling out the NSW Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig for his refusal to enact a timeframe to review the Local Government Code of Conduct and close corruption loopholes for Councils.
With Local Government Elections approaching in September, the issue of former Councillors found by ICAC to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct being eligible to run for office is a grave concern for all constituents.
This morning at Budget Estimates, Minister Hoenig detailed that the review of the Local Government Code of Conduct was much harder than he thought it would be when the Minns Labor Government came to office almost 12 months ago.
During questioning the Minister attempted to maintain an appearance of progress by detailing that he was anecdotally looking at and listening to ideas for the Code of Conduct review, but refused to provide a timeframe or a guarantee that the work would be completed prior to the elections this year.
The Minns Labor Government’s clear lack of progress was further exposed when asked to detail the work undertaken in the past 12 months, the Local Government Minister declined to provide any detail beyond; “I thought I could do it myself”.
Shadow Minister for Local Government Wendy Tuckerman said “The Minister needs to act to provide certainty for communities across NSW. It was clear the Minister is concerned about the complexity of the current Code and the recommendations from the Gary Kellar PSM but has failed to put those concerns into action.
“Communities need strong governance to support competent Councils. Improvement to the Code of Conduct is a significant piece of work. The Labor Government needs to do more to strengthen our third tier of government. We have offered bipartisan support to achieve this end, but so far, Labor has only mustered meetings and ribbon cutting instead of delivering policy to support our communities.”
“I am extremely concerned that the Local Government Minister has not begun planning, let alone enacting the delivery of a new Code of Conduct prior to the September Local Government elections this year – time is running out.
The Labor Government has decided to reduce the time Ministers of the Minns Government can be scrutinised by considerably reducing sitting days in parliament, something the Minister indicated he was not happy about, this is in stark contrast to the Premier’s views, but it was suggested this may give him more time to devote to his portfolio.
WENDY TUCKERMAN 