City of Canning chief executive Lyn Russell has paid the $1.65 million bill for the Canning inquiry after Local Government Minister Tony Simpson issued a direction to pay last week.
Canning commissioners resolved to pay the bill when it emerged as an urgent business item at the October 13 ordinary council meeting.
They rejected the officer’s recommendation to not pay and resolved to allow Ms Russell to pay the bill and authorised her to continue to negotiate with Mr Simpson to reduce or rebate the fee.
The bill included $910,000 in professional fees, $443,000 for staff supporting the inquiry panel office, $141,000 for building lease costs, $71,000 for transcripts, $28,000 in cleaning costs and $12,000 for advertising and promotion costs.
Ms Russell denied it was an attempt to have the commissioners deal with the matter and not the new council.
“We have been toing and froing with the minister’s office since last September so it’s over a year and I think the commissioners felt they had exhausted all our options. The minister had now written and said ‘we would really like you to enact my request to pay’,” she said.
She said the city met with Mr Simpson the day before the meeting and when the matter of the inquiry cost was raised said the city was still awaiting a detailed breakdown of those costs before payment could be recommended.
Within hours of the meeting, a detailed breakdown was received by the city.
“When they received it on the day of the meeting there didn’t seem much else we could do but pay because the minister had made that formal request in writing to us that the matter be determined at the council meeting,” she said.
Ms Russell said the city had sought legal advice on not paying but was told the chances of winning a challenge were not good.
The money was paid from the local government and organisation development reserve fund, which had been put aside to pay costs associated with local government reform and had a balance of almost $2 million.
She was waiting to hear from the city’s insurers who had not been able to progress the matter without an itemised account.
“It is a unique situation because no other council has ever been required to pay these costs so we are probably setting a bit of a challenge for the insurers to be able to make that judgement,” she said.
Ms Russell said it wouldn’t leave the city in any financial difficulties and the city had about $30 million in reserve funds.
Mr Simpson said there had been discussions between the Department of Local Government and city for weeks with the department sourcing all the invoices to produce expenditure categories as requested by the city.
He said once a direction from the minister had been given it had to be paid.
“I did make some comments that I would like it to be solved before the council came in,” he said.
“It did come down to the 11th hour where they said, if you provide the information we’ll push it through so we ran a bit faster.”
Mr Simpson was concerned by inaccurate comments on social media that other councils had not been required to pay their inquiry bills and that it had become an election issue with candidates.
“South Perth, Joondalup and Wanneroo paid for theirs, no one was ever given a discount,” he said.
“I even rang Troy Pickard, the mayor of Joondalup, and said ‘did you pay for yours’ and he said ‘too bloody right we did we had to pay for it’.
“I don’t know where it came from and it kind of worried me a little bit, those comments that they didn’t pay.”
Commissioner Steven Cole disagreed with the order to pay.
“I respect the minister’s right to make a decision and that is the basis on which we authorised the payment,” he said.
“I didn’t respect the decision that the minister made and I’ve continued to make representations to his office and I think he should reconsider that decision and we’ve spelt out some of the rationale for that.”
