COUNCIL AGENDA HURLED AT MAYOR
Tensions boiled over when chief executive Douglas Daines was given his marching orders after a vote by Gold Coast councillors
IT WAS the most tense council meeting in the Gold Coast’s history.
Nothing during the reigns of mayors Tom Tate, Ron Clarke or Ray Stevens has come close to a meeting which started with cries for the council to be sacked and ended with an attempted assault on the city’s leader.
It was January 1998 and tensions were growing in city hall over the rule of controversial chief executive Dr Douglas Daines.
Dr Daines had been the city’s lead bureaucrat since shortly after the 1995 amalgamation of Gold Coast and Albert shires but had proved a highly divisive figure in city hall.
He had a long-running feud with Mayor Gary Baildon which finally came to a head in the early weeks of 1998 as the council moved to sack the chief executive.
Dr Daines became known as “Dr Death” after clashing with the development community who became frustrated over delays in project approvals.
In the last days of January 1998 councillors were summoned to the Chambers at Nerang to discuss the embattled boss’s future.
Cr Baildon pushed through a motion to sack Dr Daines on the grounds that his relationship with the council had “irretrievably broken down”.
The alleged mishandling of a Freedom of Information application to the council was among the grounds councillors used to dismiss him following months of infighting over his $200,000-a-year position.
Cr Baildon, who was petitioned by nine councillors to terminate Dr Daines’ contract saying he was “guilty of dereliction of duty and an argument for misconduct could also be advanced”.
Those who voted for the sacking included Crs Daphne McDonald, Jan Grew, Alan Rickard, Paul Gamin and David Power.
The sacking outraged the public gallery and councillors Dawn Crichlow and Eddy Sarroff, both of whom were supporters of the ousted chief executive.
The volatile Cr Sarroff exploded and hurled his council agenda papers at Cr Baildon, hitting the mayor in the face and chest, knocking him backwards and sending pens and a glass falling from the table.
“I’m Lebanese,” he shrugged after the meeting.
“I get angry. I’m still quite distressed with the happenings of today.
“But I apologised to the Mayor and I think he accepted my apology.”
Cr Sarroff went on to defend his actions.
“I was trying to say to the Mayor to give us an opportunity to speak,” he said.
“I very clearly was saying ‘Give us an opportunity. You can’t do that, we need to put our views across about Dr Daines’.
“I grabbed by agenda and said ‘I don’t want any part of any of this agenda today’ to throw it on the floor at the feet of the Mayor.
“I think it got a bit more momentum and landed on the desk.
“I did not mean to direct it at the mayor.”
Several councillors later rebuked Cr Sarroff for his outburst saying they were tired of his fiery temperament and told him to “shape up or ship out”.
“It was totally inexcusable,” Cr Bob La Castra said.
“Regardless of whether it was or wasn’t intentional, an elected representative should exercise a little self-control.”
Dr Daines was replaced by his deputy Paul Stevens who served until 2003 when he stood down and was succeeded by Dale Dickson who remains in the role to this day.