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Liverpool Council prepares for legal siege after damning report
By Max Maddison and Kate McClymont
Liverpool City Council has demanded the Minns government delete every copy of a scathing Office of Local Government investigative report that raised allegations of corruption and broad dysfunction, as the council prepares to commence defamation proceedings.
Documents tendered with the NSW Land and Environment Court ahead of a summons hearing on Thursday afternoon sought for several injunctions to be imposed on Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig and senior bureaucrats, arguing those named in the report were denied procedural fairness.
City of Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun after Monday’s extraordinary general meeting.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Liverpool City Council launched the legal challenge on Monday after Hoenig announced he intended to appoint an administrator and defer the September local government election while a months-long public inquiry probed serious and systemic issues detailed in the interim report.
The summons documents lodged by the council’s legal counsel, Megan Hawley, seek to address the “actual bias or apprehended bias” contained within the interim report, including deleting the publication in all available forms and gagging the minister.
As part of the claim, the council’s lawyers said the office “failed to observe the requirements of procedural fairness”, reflecting the claims of Liverpool Council Mayor Ned Mannoun and acting chief executive, Jason Breton, who said the report was error-riddled and denied procedural fairness.
In correspondence to staff, Breton said the interim report contained “untested allegations”, as he conveyed advice from the office “citing urgency” that no documents should be destroyed, removed or tampered with.
Several senior executives were named in the investigative report, alongside allegations the council engaged in a “frequent and repetitive pattern” of hiring family and associates of senior staff to lucrative jobs without proper processes.
The claim required the government “within 24 hours of this order to delete from all website, libraries and other record depositories the interim report”. It also called for report to be taken down from all websites the government did not control within seven days.
The hearing was adjourned until Friday afternoon. The Office of Local Government removed the interim report was at some point on Thursday.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Hoenig said despite the seriousness of the matters raised by investigators, “fairness dictates” the council should be provided with “every opportunity to be heard” before the minister proceeded with the public inquiry, election deferral and council suspension.
“While proceedings are on foot, the department has removed the interim report containing the investigators’ advice and recommendations to the government from its website without prejudice as an act of good faith,” she said.
If successful, the council would cover the legal costs of staff mentioned in the interim report “for advice, representation, commencement of legal proceedings, or to defend proceedings including but not limited to defamation proceedings”.
The high-stakes legal action is likely to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with Liverpool Council’s general counsel David Galpin telling an extraordinary general meeting on Monday the bill would be $150,000 at a minimum – and multiples of that figure if the bid was unsuccessful.
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