Council CEO role is not to align but to advise

SALLY SPAIN, WILDLIFE QUEENSLAND GOLD COAST PRESIDENT

IT’S worth reflecting on our local history, in light of current events (GC Bulletin, February 25, “Mayor’s handshake deal with new CEO before contract signed”).

Many will remember the time in 1998 that Gold Coast Council dismissed a chief executive officer, the late Dr Douglas Daines.

The council public gallery was filled with outraged citizens and the departing head bureaucrat was showered with flowers.

It seemed from the widespread and sustained indignation that he had earned the trust of many of those in the wider community.

Under separation of powers, cornerstone of our democratic system, the role of executive or bureaucracy is to give frank, fearless, educated advice, re: sustainable governance, in the interests of community, to elected legislators, the councillors.

The executive role is not to be “aligned” to development or anything else but to give expert advice on policy directions decided by councillors, so these representatives can make informed, sustainable ethical decisions on community behalf.

The state government’s Belcarra reform process is endeavouring to ensure local governance is more strictly accountable to, and representative of, their employers, the electors.

Reason for separation of powers, legislative, executive and judicial, with addition of fourth estate, an independent press, is to guard democracy, that is rule of citizens.

Our heritage, so often diluted, so often defended, is not plutocracy, rule of wealthy, is it?

It is not an oligarchy, a city the purview of a few, is it?

The historical, executive example is “the man for all seasons’’ Sir Thomas More stood with integrity in changing times.

He sealed his fate as Chancellor to King Henry Vlll by refusing to endorse, on principle, what he considered unlawful, the dissolution of the King’s marriage.

Gold Coast citizens in 1998 gave Dr Douglas Daines (pictured) a parting gift, a metal cup inscribed with the words, “a man for all seasons”.

Worth remembering our local history.