Queensland’s Office of the Independent Assessor (OIA) will receive a staffing boost after the revelation today that the office is dealing with a record number of complaints against local government councillors.
The Deputy Premier and Minister for Local Government, Steven Miles said an additional three full-time staff would be assigned to the Office to cope with the increased workload.
Mr Miles said more than 1000 local government councillor-complaints had been referred to the OIA this year alone.
“The continuing high number of complaints received is likely due to the heightened focus on integrity in local government, previous under-reporting, and increased confidence in raising issues with an independent body,” said Mr Miles.
When established it was anticipated the OIA would receive approximately 160 complaints a year. In 2019-20, the OIA received 1030 complaints containing 1097 allegations.
“Despite this huge increase, in 2019-20, the OIA completed 75 per cent of assessments within 21 working days,” Mr Miles said.
“This is a credit to the hardworking team who dealt with this significant increase in assessments needing to be completed.
Prior to OIA’s establishment in December 2018, councillor-conduct complaints were managed by the Department of Local Government, Racing and Multicultural Affairs.
“We established the OIA as part of our government’s commitment to local government reform, to assess and investigate councillor conduct complaints,” said Mr Miles.
