NCAT disqualifies former Wagga Wagga councillor from holding civic office

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Published: Monday, 26 June 2023 12:29

There’s a lot of history in this for us, both in relation to the former councillor, and the Office of Local Government.

On 19 June, NCAT decided to disqualify former Councillor Funnell from holding civic office for two years. OLG made the application, we had attempted to intervene in support of the OLG action, which they opposed - something they seem duty-bound to do any time we raise anything.

It’s good to see a serial pest finally disqualified but it is reasonable to wonder why the prosecution was limited to two instances of misconduct when OLG would have had at least 20 to choose from, and why they would propose only a two year penalty, meaning he couldn’t stand for election in the next local government elections, when the multitude and frequency of complaints would warrant longer. And he had indicated he wasn’t interested in standing at the next election anyway, and didn’t contest the penalty...

But, there is more to this. The two examples of misconduct were in 2020, and where Tim Hurst, former director of OLG had famously said in an order about the same person that there had not been “any prior offending or post event conduct in the past two years and the lack of previous incidents of misconduct”.  Really?

Here is a letter we sent to the current Executive Director, Local Government, DPIE, Brett Whitworth, on 19 June, with some important questions.

We will publish a full report in our July issue.