MISCONDUCT EXPOSED! (Page 1 of 2)

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This is a claim that has been repeatedly made by TRC, since May 2024. It is effectively a key spin piece used by council to attempt to explain why council willfully breached its duty of care and recklessly endangered the public. Council sticks to this claim, despite indisputable documented evidence that has been on the public record for over a year, proving it is false. It is perhaps the single most  egregious statement that council has made. 

Simply put - it is a lie. That council would willfully provide false information over an extended period of time, in our view is serious misconduct. This same false information has been supplied to external investigate agencies. This further elevates the seriousness significantly.

Further to (1), TRC was directly warned by a council officer 25th March 2024 about serious concerns of risks to public safety with evidence the building had structurally failed. Despite senior management including the CEO being notified within 40 minutes of the email, and other officers making plans to close the building, it was not closed, the public was not warned, and instead the public continued to use the Pavilion for another 8 weeks completely unaware of any risk to public safety!

Which senior council officer made the decision not to close the building, instead overriding the officer who had rightly put safety first, and had taken preliminary steps to close the building? Any why? 

TRC's full claim, which is too big to fit in the title is: 'Whilst TRC was aware of some structure issues in the Pavilion as a result of previous condition reports received between 2015 and 2023, in each report the advice had been to manage these issues as needed.'  

This is a statement that has been repeatedly by TRC since May 2024. The engineering reports of T&W Kolber (2015), PDR SMEC (2018), and TEG (2023) all clearly articulate exactly what is required to repair the building. The reports did NOT state 'manage issues as needed!'

Earlier reports also outlined that further inspections were required to gain access to parts of the building. Council ignored the advice.

All reports can be found on the website links page.

Under the Crime and Corruption Act 2001 (section 218), A person must not give the commission a document containing information the person knows is false or misleading in a material particular. Maximum penalty— 85 penalty units or 1 year's imprisonment. 

Following a formal complaint being raised with council, a Corrupt Conduct Assessment Form was completed 15/08/24. This is a statutory requirement to determine if the threshold is reached for potential corrupt conduct to be self-referred to the CCC.

This documentation was submitted to the CCC 18/02/25. The documents contain multiple false and misleading statements.

Within the document TRC states: 'Although the allegations if proven could amount to corrupt conduct, the decision-maker is in possession of information that indicates that the allegations are not accurate.'

That 'information' relied on false statements made within the report by TRC, that was then used as justification not to self refer council to the CCC!

This includes the following statements made in reference to the 2023 TEG Structural Engineering report: 

'No component was assessed as being substantially or severely damaged and likely to collapse unless when placed under ultimate loading (not under serviceability loading).'

Both the above statements are completely false! 

The TEG report found the Sub Stage Wall to stage to be SUBSTANTIALLY DAMAGED.

Further, the report stated:

The asset structural component is unlikely to be able to support ultimate loading and likely to deform beyond limits under service load. The repair needs to be immediate or as soon as possible as the member or system does pose a risk to stakeholders or community users of the structure, under serviceability loading. Action is required immediately within the noted audit period to undertake remediation. Additional monitoring the component is recommended and/or system should be signed as out of service. 

This is information that TRC could not have mistakenly put in the document in error. It was specifically referenced and directly quoted, in both formal complaints that preceded this reply. Links were even supplied to the source documents! Further, this information was included in a complaint to the CCC that was sent to TRC that directly resulted in council submitting these documents!

In addition to being directly quoted  in  the above documentation, this information has been widely referenced over the last 14 months including in the media. Council has been in possession of the TEG report since June 2023, the documents made public under RTI came from council!

Further, when a video was released 18th June 2025 https://youtu.be/IwyUlTHbxL0?si=hhONDolkH4J2u3fQ making this information public, TRC doubled down and the CEO elected to issue a media statement the following day denying all wrongdoing. Within the statement TRC continued to willfully provide false information to the public. The CEO elected to go further attempting to smear the character of the person exposing the misconduct. (This will have additional legal consequences for Tablelands Regional Council). On the 20th June I publicly released this documentation. Notably council has been silent ever since. 

In December 2024, the CCC advised they were referring the bulk of an extensive complaint to TRC to investigate.

TRC failed to do so stating in Feb 2025 'the allegations raised by the complainant have already been addressed in full by TRC in its previous responses.. our complaints management process has been exhausted.'

Both the above statements are fabrications. Two formal complaints were submitted to council 21st & 29th July 2024. As both responses contained false statements, I elected not to respond further, instead lodging a complaint with the CCC. This complaint covered a range of alleged misconduct including multiple false claims made by TRC in their complaint responses. Further, it covered incidents that occurred after July, including pertaining to the Sept 2024 council meeting. 

It is literally impossible that any parts of the complaint pertaining to any issue post my 29th July complaint could have been previously addressed nor responded to!

Further, as the complaint management process had not even commenced RE these issues, it is impossible it could have been 'exhausted'.

Further to (4), additional false or misleading information was used to by TRC to make the determination not to self refer the complaint to the CCC. This documentation was provided to the CCC 18th Feb 2025.

In relation to the TRC survey on the Pavilion, in the Corrupt Conduct Assessment Report TRC states Option 1 'effectively mirrors what the complainant is asserting should be provided as an option to the community.'

This contradicts statements TRC made.

The formal petition of over 2000 signatories called for:

Tablelands Regional Council save the Malanda Pavilion from demolition, properly restore the building, and take all necessary measures to ensure this historic building is properly maintained post restoration.

So now we have TRC in a document that never would have made light of day without a targeted RTI request, effectively saying what the petitioners called for WAS possible and WAS an option.

The problem for council is the survey option made no mention of restoring the Pavilion. Further, it was not amended to add this option despite formal complaints being lodged requesting this third option be added.

In fact the former CEO stated 23rd July 2024:

'A third option, namely the preservation of the Pavilion, was not provided because in the view of Council officers and external experts (cited above) this is not a viable option. To list a third option promoting repair would only serve to raise unrealistic community expectations that the Pavilion could be restored when this is not the case and to attempt it would be an irresponsible use of limited Council financial resources'

So which is it because both versions can not be true?

This is yet another nail in the coffin for what is alleged to have been a sham consultation process involving a skewed petition and a campaign of sustained false and misleading information being supplied to the public.

[Documentation can be viewed under (4) above.]

5th May 2025 TRC CEO makes the following statement: 

 'the CCC is satisfied with the way TRC previously investigated the allegations'. 

Subsequently, clarification was sought from the CCC on this specific assertion. The CCC responded 11th March stating:

'While the TRC has liaised with the CCC regarding the referral of your matter, the CCC has not conducted a review of their investigation of the matter.' 

This is not the only example of misrepresentation made by the CEO in relation to this matter, but is by far the most serious.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: These email exchanges took place prior to documents being obtained proving TRC provided false information in the Corrupt Conduct Assessment Form, used to decide not to self refer council to the CCC. The CCC being satisfied with the (separate) aspect of the complaint [council not referring the matter to the CCC], relied on the assumption the information supplied by TRC was truthful.

As per (1),providing the CCC with a document containing information the person knows is false of misleading is a serious offence with a maximum penalty of 1 year imprisonment. Following this evidence coming to light, and despite TRC's continued denials of wrongdoing even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, I informed the CCC of this new evidence 17th June 2025.

The Patrick English Pavilion had a Local Heritage Overlay. Under the Tablelands Regional Council Planning Scheme [section 8.2.6], the demolition of a building with a Heritage overlay may only occur, when an engineering report is submitted to council demonstrating the building is structurally unsound and is not reasonably capable of being made structurally sound. 

When the Malanda Community Options Report was submitted to council in 2020, this overlay prohibited the demolition of the building. The report withheld the Heritage Overlay from councilors. Further, the report failed to inform councillors that the recommendation to consolidate facilities by demolishing the Pavilion was not even possible, due to the Heritage Overlay, at that time.

Therefore councillors were required to vote on the future demolition of the Pavilion, with critical information being withheld.

TRC in responding to my 29/07/24 complaint, stated: 'You have requested TRC to confirm when, prior to May 2024, did the CEO (or other Council officers) provide the 2023 TEG report to the elected representatives and when were they advised of what you allege are, the serious structure issues identified in that report. The structural assessments were not provided to the CEO or Councillors at the time and were not tabled in specific reports at Council meetings. The Divisional Councillor was appraised of the situation by TRC officers in July 2023.'

Statutory Declarations were obtained from three former councillors who were in office at the time of this report. This equates to half the divisional councillors in office at the time. The Stat Decs include the statements:

• During my time as a Councillor, I have never received advice relating to the state of disrepair of the building known as the Patrick English Pavilion.

• I have never been given nor seen any Consultants Report relating to the state of repair of the above building.

• As a councillor, I expected that the Engineering Report that outlined the structural issues of the building, particularly if the report contained information relating to the safety of the public, would be presented to Council in workshops and formally at a timely Ordinary Council meeting.

Why did TRC withhold this report? 

Further to the above, 19/08/24 TRC stated:
'The condition report findings produced after the PDR SMEC Assessment in 2018 were not assessed to be substantially different from recommendations identified in earlier reports (up until this year), nor did they recommend TRC close the Pavilion. As Council was aware of the condition of the Pavilion and nothing had changed substantially, no further reports were tabled in relation to this matter.'

The extent to which the above statement is not only false, but attempts to downplay the contents of the 2023 report, is so utterly reprehensible, that this alone highlights TRC's complete disregard for Public Safety in the name of achieving their desired outcome - the demolition of the building. Further, it highlights how far council is willing to go to attempt to justify and cover up what has occurred.

The extensive TEG report, following five years of inaction since the previous report, outlined seven pages of serious defects posing potential and actual risks to public safety. It correctly predicted the structural failure of the building within 12 months. NONE of these risks were raised in previous reports.

There is no justification whatsoever as to why the report was not tabled. Further there is no justification as to why potential risks to public safety were withheld from the public.  Instead, TRC elected to ignore all engineer recommendations to 'take immediate action' to rectify defects.

In 2024, a Right to Information request was filed to obtain records of any repair work that had been carried out to serious structural defects identified in successive independent engineering reports dating back to 2015.

The RTI covered:

All quotations & invoices pertaining solely to structural repair work carried out on the Patrick English Pavilion over the past ten years. Specifically pertaining to the following areas: 

1. Trusses: Curved / Arched Trusses, Truss frame, Truss base, Truss Floor. 

2. Roof frame, Roofing, Cladding, Purlins, Purlin Bracketry. 

3. Sub-Stage Wall, Subfloor. 

• Quotations & Invoice/s for last previous roof replacement pre-dating this time period

5th July 2024, the RTI officer advised the following:

‘The agency dealing with the application for access is satisfied the document does not exist, example, a document that has not been created’

Therefore, none of the structural defects identified in successive engineering reports was ever rectified by TRC. 

This includes the serous structural defects raised in the TEG report. Including defects posing potential risks to public safety requiring immediate action be taken to rectify defects.

Why? It is my belief that TRC failed to act on these reports in order to achieve the required opinion from an engineer needed to override the Heritage Overlay to enable demolition, in line with councils agenda. 

When the 2023 TEG report did not offer this opinion, despite the building being left to rot for five years since the previous inspection, and in light of the prediction made by TEG of the structural failure of the building within 12 months, it was highly likely - perhaps even certain - that in the absence of intervention the structure would fail. 

As predicted 12 months later the building was found to have failed. Thus delivering the opinion needed by an engineer to override the Heritage Overlay.

No second opinion was sought. No quotation to repair the building was obtained.

Further to the above, council states:

TRC strongly refutes your allegation that it made a deliberate decision to  allow the building to deteriorate until it was no longer reasonably  capable of being made structurally sound which would justify its  demolition under the Planning Scheme.

TRC’s position being that despite:

• Council failing to inform councillors of the Heritage Overlay in the 2020 report;

• Council failing to carry out ANY of the structural repairs outlined in 2015, 2018 & 2023 reports;

• The 2023 TEG report correctly predicting the structural failure of the building within 12 months;

•  Council failing to warn the public of any safety risks, until council had the opinion necessary to override the heritage overlay under section 8.2.6;

Council would have us believe this is in fact just a stunning series of accidental actions that just by coincidence happened to culminate in triggering the exemption needed to override the Heritage Overlay thus enabling demolition..