In 2020, Clare Stewart was elected as Noosa mayor with a promise to make the council more transparent. Using confidential items of council meetings as a benchmark, Noosa Council became significantly less transparent under her term of office, and that trend continues under Frank Wilkie’s mayoralty.

A diligent resident has trawled through all of council’s meeting records and come up with the following fascinating statistics. During the four-year term of Mayor Tony Wellington, from 2016 to 2019, there were just nine matters dealt with in-camera at council meetings. 

In the first three years of Mayor Stewart’s time, between 2020 and 2022, there were eight confidential reports to council meetings, thus maintaining the approach of the Wellington term. Then, in 2023, Stewart’s final year, there were suddenly 26 confidential issues.

In Wilkie’s first year as mayor, 2024, there were 22 matters dealt with in secrecy at council meetings. So, the trend towards opacity has plainly continued. Here it is in graph form:

What, you may ask, is the common factor that distinguishes the past two years from the previous seven years? The obvious answer is the CEO. Throughout Wellington’s term, the CEO was Brett de Chastel. In the first two years of Stewart’s reign, it was again de Chastel followed by one-year of Scott Waters as CEO. When Waters unexpectedly left, he was replaced by then head of infrastructure Larry Sengstock, who became an interim CEO. Under Wilkie’s council, Sengstock was given the job permanently, and so the approach to secrecy that he established as temporary CEO during Stewart’s last year has been maintained in the current council. 

A confidential session of council means the recording and streaming devices are switched off and all non-staff are required to vacate the chambers. There are only two good reasons to discuss a council matter in-camera. If the issue is genuinely commercial-in-confidence, it might be a candidate for a private discussion between councillors and staff. Very few issues come before council that are so commercially delicate that they should be considered inappropriate for public airing. Secondly, a matter may be deemed confidential if the council is facing legal proceedings and any discussion on the matter, if made public, could jeopardise the outcome of those proceedings. Again, these are rare cases.

Now it can’t be that in 2023 and 2024 the number of sensitive legal or commercial matters suddenly skyrocketed by a factor of around ten times. Therefore, the only assumption that can be made is that the new CEO likes to keep matters secret that really don’t need to be cloak-and-dagger. What’s more, the mayor who promised greater transparency allowed this to occur and that approach has been perpetuated under the current mayor.

BEHIND COUNCILLORS’ BACKS

Arguably, this increased secrecy goes to poor leadership. But the current council’s leadership failings are revealing themselves in other, perhaps more concerning ways. It seems that the staff are so wary of bringing significant matters to this rudderless, fractious council that they are now avoiding raising issues of import. Having been bitten on topics like the Noosa River Plan (currently in abeyance), the Noosaville Foreshore Infrastructure Master Plan (scheduled to be finally decided in June), and following the difficulty getting a decision on the planning scheme amendments, senior staff appear to have become gun-shy. It’s thus far easier to avoid the councillors altogether.

Here’s a classic example. Readers of Noosa Matters will know that the Queensland Government recently invited submissions on its Destination 2045 Discussion Paper concerning the future of tourism in the sunshine state. We encouraged readers to make their own submissions, and Tourism Noosa also made a submission which is publicly available. Plainly it was in Noosa Council’s interest to also make a submission.

On the false premise that there wasn’t sufficient time to bring the matter before the elected councillors (a councillor workshop can be called at any time as can a Special Meeting), staff drafted and submitted a document to Destination 2045 without a word of it being reviewed or approved by those who are elected to look after our affairs. Indeed, councillors had to request copies after the document was submitted to the state, and thus too late to make any alterations. Noosa Matters has sought copies of Noosa Council’s submission to Destination 2045, but senior staff have deemed it to be confidential and not for public viewing. 

Noosa Council has recently decided to continue funding Tourism Noosa to the tune of $2 million over the coming year. That decision was made at a hastily assembled Special Meeting, after a report was pulled from the previous monthly meeting round. The debate during the meeting included discussion about a “tourism pathway” and the blighted Destination Management Plan, yet there was zero mention of the council’s submission to Destination 2045, which presumably provides a framework for such a debate. 

In keeping the submission to the state clandestine, it may be that staff are at pains not to inflame certain public opinions or even upset Tourism Noosa itself. Nevertheless, none of that justifies keeping the council’s position on the future of tourism top-secret.  

Your council has made a formal submission on what is arguably the biggest issue facing the shire – that of increasing tourism and its potential impacts on resident living amenity – without any oversight or input from those elected to represent our interests.

Plainly this staff action was approved by the CEO. Did Mayor Wilkie also allow it to happen, or was he kept unaccountably ignorant of the staff machinations. If the latter, that would point to a failure in the working relationship between the CEO and mayor.

This affair points to a council where the CEO and his leadership team are calling the shots, while the councillors are being actively sidelined. Transparency is at a low in Noosa Shire, and someone should be held accountable.

This story has been compiled by the Noosa Matters team.