The mayor last week promised a more open council after asbestos allegations almost led to its suspension.
Yet when the Gazette applied last year to see the terms of reference for the inquiry commissioned into the asbestos issues, four completely blacked-out pages were supplied by council.
The terms of reference have since been published online by the law firm that is conducting the independent inquiry. The council’s own full-page information ad in last week’s Gazette provided the link to them, along with advice about how to make a submission.
The review into the asbestos allegations was discussed by councillors in a confidential session of a meeting on November 14 last year.
Four mayoral minutes were presented at that meeting – all of which were deemed confidential.
After the Gazette applied to see them under freedom of information laws, two were delivered uncensored. They canvassed the stepping down of acting general manager Stuart Liddell and the appointment of Rosemary Dillon as acting general manager (since confirmed in the job for a 12-month period in another confidential session) and details of the general manager recruitment process.
But the other two had been heavily redacted. The terms of reference for both the asbestos investigation and a separate inquiry into allegations over so-called jobs for the boys have been blacked out.
A council spokeswoman said the Gazette’s application was specific in its scope and “council responded to the scope of the… application strictly in accordance with the scope, as is required”.
The Gazette can only reveal that the latter inquiry relates to “very serious allegations made against the council and against individual council officers in relation to the recruitment of staff and consultants”.
The council privacy officer who handled the FOI request wrote that, because the inquiries are currently ongoing, “to disclose this information at this stage would prejudice the conduct, effectiveness and integrity of both investigations”.
He also said that disclosure “would prejudice the right to procedural fairness of any person who may be the subject of allegations under consideration”.
One of the councillors, Greens Kerry Brown, has complained that councillors themselves did not have a copy of the terms of reference for the staff recruitment investigation. At the most recent council meeting the mayor promised this would be dealt with in a resolution at the next council meeting, to be held on January 30.