Mallard scrutinised over DA votes

City of Sydney Councillor Shayne Mallard has been accused of violating Council’s code of conduct, after participating in a debate and vote regarding two Development Applications at a Council meeting in June.

The specific instance relates to a pair of DAs lodged by the Aurora Hotel and the Gaelic Theatre – both premises owned by George Thomas – which were considered at a Council meeting on June 1. Cr Mallard participated in the discussion and voted on both DAs, but declared a non-pecuniary interest on the grounds the Liberal Party had received donations from Argos Investments Pty Ltd, a company part of Mr Thomas’ hotel group. The applications were passed unanimously.

However, Democracy4Sale’s research co-ordinator Dr Norman Thompson said Cr Mallard’s election returns showed a total of $11,000 in donations from Argos to Cr Mallard’s campaign account between 2007 and 2008. On this basis, he said, Cr Mallard was required by the June 2008 model code of conduct to declare a significant non-pecuniary conflict of interest, and absent himself from the relevant debate and vote.

The model code of conduct defines a “significant non-pecuniary conflict of interest” as any contribution by a single donor of more than $1,000 over four years to an individual councillor or their ‘official agent’.

But Cr Mallard defended his actions, arguing the donations were made to Liberal Party head office, and said that to the best of his knowledge he had not broken the code. He added the new, retrospective arrangements for declaring donations were a “mess” which had made it much more difficult for parties to be transparent about their donation sources.

According to Dr Thompson, the incident highlighted concerns the Liberal Party was routing all donations through head office on purpose, to make the money trail as opaque as possible. “Our discovery that Cr Mallard failed to absent himself from voting on development applications from a major donor shows how important it is that these donations are made public,” he said. “The Liberal Party’s current practice of hiding donations going to local government campaigns means it is difficult to discover if other Liberal councillors also vote for submissions made by large donors. This undermines the public’s trust in council decisions.”

Dr Thompson said it was important all councillors followed the code of conduct. “Councillors must take great care dealing with submissions from donors to their campaigns so the public will have faith that council decisions are made on merit and not to help contributors to political parties,” he said. “It is the law, and as a councillor, you should be seen to be upholding the law.”

“The Liberals, for many elections now, have worked hard to hide the political donations link between individual candidates and the big end of town,” said Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon. “People have to make the links [themselves] – there’s no paper trail. And now Labor have decided to go down the same path, it’ll be harder to expose these sorts of scandals.”

In November 2008, Lord Mayor Clover Moore was alleged to have broken the code of conduct after participating in a Council decision to buy a property from her largest individual political donor, Peter Holmes à Court.