By Tara Murray
Hume council has conceded it wouldn’t have started disciplinary action against councillor Trevor Dance had there been clarity around the meaning of ’serious misconduct’ under the Local Government Act.
At the December 11 council meeting, councillors voted to write to Local Government Victoria and the local government minister providing a transcript of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court proceedings, following the council’s decision to drop its legal action into whether Cr Dance had committed serious misconduct.
Cr Dance and councillor Jodi Jackson both voted against writing letters.
As previously reported by Star Weekly, Cr Dance was cleared of serious misconduct by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in December 2022, after a Councillor Code of Conduct Panel (CCP) had earlier found that he was responsible for serious misconduct.
The CCP had found Cr Dance breached council’s internal arbitration process by failing to attend two arbitration hearings in June 2021, in relation to his allegations that councillor Jack Medcraft had made false and misleading statements. Cr Dance had cited his mental health for his inability to attend the hearings in person.
Hume appealed the VCAT decision at the Court of Appeal. It withdrew its action in August during the hearing when the judges of the Court of Appeal indicated that non-attendance by a complainant at a CCP arbitration was not necessarily serious misconduct as defined in the Local Government Act.
At the December 11 meeting, in their report council officers highlighted Court of Appeal Justice David Beach’s views relating to the definition of serious misconduct as defined by the act.
Officers advised councillors that had the court’s definition been commonly understood at the start of the process, that CCP would not have been convened in December 2021.
“Officers form this view, as the effect of the interpretation as discussed at the appeal would mean no sanctions should apply to a councillor who initiates an arbitration process, and then does not comply with it,“ officers wrote.
Officers said the court’s view “further supports there are issues with the legislation“.
“This view complements already acknowledged concerns regarding the legislative framework and its ability to manage councillor conduct matters in a timely and efficient manner.
“The timely and inefficient processes relating to councillor conduct matters had a detrimental impact on both councillor and staff health and wellbeing as well as being time consuming and costly.”
Speaking at the meeting, Cr Dance said the matter had “been a time of hell and shows what the bureaucracy of a council and self-interested persons can do to an individual”.
“The total cost to ratepayers and insurers will be more than $300,000. Not the costs because of me as some try to say, but contributed directly to council,“ he said.
“I was accused of serious misconduct, it’s not serious misconduct because I had a paper bag full of money for example, but it was serious misconduct simply because I was unable to attend an arbiter’s hearing face to face. What a crime.”
When questioned by Cr Dance about the total cost to council, chief executive Sheena Frost said Hume had paid its insurer a $50,000 excess but she could not confirm the total cost of the matter as council was awaiting advice from the respondent’s lawyers.
Cr Medcraft also mentioned the toll on his mental health before saying the “whole system is a shambles.”
“Whoever designed it should be taken outside and spoken to because it has no relevance. It has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese. And basically it doesn’t work, the code of conduct procedure could have been solved without all these costs.”
