And Then There Were None
"This is no time for refusing to look facts in the face."
from Agatha Christie's classic crime novel, And Then There Were None
by Cat Holloway /
All seven directors of Shoalhaven City Council (SCC) have resigned, retired or taken 'extended leave' since Mayor Patricia White and six Shoalhaven Independents were elected, dominating Council decision making.
Current Acting CEO James Ruprai resigned on July 4, citing a desire for a new personal direction as the reason.
Ruprai was long-tipped as a frontrunner for the top job which offers a maximum five-year contract with an annual salary exceeding $400,000 plus superannuation, a car and relocation support.
Now the rumour mill is grinding out spice that Andrew Constance, the former Liberal NSW Minister for Transport and twice-rejected Federal candidate for South Coast, is a hot contender for the plum Local Government position.
But Constance might have to compete with other ambitious Liberals currently out of a job but not yet old enough to receive their hefty parliamentary pensions.
So much for keeping politics out of local government.
Other SCC section managers and officers have also recently resigned, been fired or made redundant. United Services Union representatives this week met again with the Mayor and Council staff for another round of discussions over employee security at the embattled organisation.
Sources within SCC admit strained workloads and "basically non-existent" communication about staff changes is creating stress for them and their families.
Chance & Bec on their July 17 Triple U Radio Brekky Show strayed from the usual non-confrontational PR banter to question Mayor White about the impact of losing Ruprai following the exodus of so much other senior expertise.
White brushed aside concerns and claimed it was an opportunity for change in the institution.
But according to local government analyst and commentator, Steve Prothero:
"When a CEO and multiple directors depart in rapid succession, it’s not coincidence. It’s a canary in the coal mine."
There's a lot of tea brewing behind Ruprai's surprising resignation, and the political press releases and media messengers are not spilling.
But Spark is following cake crumbs.
So if you care about where your hard-earned rate payments go, how your crucial local services are delivered, and who you voted into this circus, follow along with me on a winding trail to discover: Who Wants To Be Shoalhaven Council CEO?
Not-So-Full Disclosure
Like an Agatha Christie whodunit, this council CEO saga continues to horrify watchers with thinly-veiled tensions, shameless scapegoating, political allegiances, financial desperation, obsessive detective work and a character bodycount matched only by mounting misdemeanours.
Numerous Code of Conduct complaints have been delivered by community members to the Office of Local Government since the start of this council.
More detailed and serious submissions about council governance were made to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
We cannot yet know what, if anything, has become of those allegations and Spark is prohibited from reporting on complaints or submissions.
But from SCC Annual Reports, we do know that five Public Interest Disclosures (PID) regarding Shoalhaven Council were lodged with the Office of Local Government and reported to the NSW Ombudsman in 2023-24.
The source and content of PIDs are strictly protected to give whistleblowers security.
But five PIDs in one year is a dark cloud over any organisation, especially for its CEO.
Confirmation of PIDs lodged in the 2024-25 period will soon be available through the NSW Ombudsman. But SCC is unlikely to release that data until the next annual report is published, November at the earliest.
The Public Interest Disclosures Act is a mechanism for public officials to disclose "corrupt conduct, serious maladministration, government information contravention, pecuniary interest contravention, a privacy contravention or a serious and substantial waste of public money."
Stephen Prothero ("Eye on Shoalhaven Council" via Facebook, YouTube and Substack) lodged a Government Information Public Access (GIPA) request with Council to unearth communication between councillors and staff about opposition to Robyn Stevens' restructure plan and the future for James Ruprai in the organisation.
After 50 days and $487 (including a 50% discount), Prothero received heavily redacted results such as this email (below) from then Cr. Greg Watson on July 31, 2024.
For Councillors that continually bray about upholding transparency, these black boxes are clear evidence that the Shoalhaven Independents Group (SIG) have secrets Council intends to keep.
The Chosen One
The story of SIG's Rupromance begins, as so many Shoalhaven Council issues do, with former Mayor Greg Watson and his enduring disdain for former Mayor Amanda Findley and the actions she supported.
It's also a cautionary tale about the dangerous dance between politicians and public servants who need to work in sync, without getting too close.
Just before the previous Council entered caretaker mode in August 2024, Council CEO Robyn Stevens, tasked with reducing SCC's spiralling debt, proposed a trimming of Council's management tree that would have "disestablished" James Ruprai's position if the plan was approved by the incoming council.
According to emails seen by Spark, then SIG Councillors Greg Watson, John Wells and Patricia White wanted to save Ruprai's job by blocking Stevens' restructure plan.
Watson wrote to some councillor colleagues:
"I feel sorry for James as he is being sacrificed, in my opinion he is the stand out amongst the directors. Effectively he is being sacked and this may seriously damage his future employment opportunities in an action which I believe is all about diversity and possible threat removal."
Watson emailed a suggested Notice of Motion to:
"withdraw any redundancy notification and halt the planned restructure of three Directorates until after the new Council has been installed and consulted."
He also provided instructions on how his recommendation should succeed.
Wells and White agreed and White wrote that she considered it "very important to me...in the best interest of the city".
She spoke vehemently against Stevens' restructure on radio interviews at the time.
But, significantly, Watson looked to other councillors to carry out his strategy and found willing collaborators in Liberal councillors Serena Copley and Paul Ell as the mover and seconder.
At the August 12 meeting, the motion passed. Ruprai held his position until Robyn Stevens negotiated her departure on November 12 and Mayor White immediately appointed Ruprai as acting CEO.
From then, SIG councillors openly sang Ruprai's praise, at times gushing with congratulations for his implementing the same cost-savings and restructure plan that the Mayor had stopped Robyn Stevens from achieving.
Relations were not even soured by Ruprai's clear warnings, backing his CFO, that a single 12% rate rise was well below the estimated 29.5% required for financial sustainability.
It seemed just a matter of time before Ruprai would be king.
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
James Ruprai resigned as Shoalhaven City Council's Acting CEO, saying that from July 31 he would: "pursue new professional opportunities and spend more time with family."
Sounds fair. (I'd like the same.)
With the shocking amount of costly and time-hungry CEO churn across Australian councils, chances are high that Ruprai - an experienced and capable public servant - would secure another job appealing enough to uproot him from the Shoalhaven and local family ties to leave the organisation he joined in 2022 as City Development Director, overseeing both Development Assessments and Natural Areas.
Of course, if that were true it would also mean that Ruprai had been looking for another job. Such executive level changeovers don't happen overnight.
Indeed, Shoalhaven Council has been without a CEO since November 2024, and by the time a replacement is chosen and relocated, it could be close to a year since the controversial exit of Robyn Stevens was orchestrated and Mayor Patricia White and 12 Councillors were sworn in (October 11, 2024).
Even before that ceremony, conservatives like Jacqui Burke were shouting loudly from their favoured hilltop, Facebook, to oust the CEO and "cull" hundreds of staff.
Mayor White and her personally-selected Financial Review Panel (FRP) likely found themselves at odds with Ruprai and Katie Buckman (former CFO, now Dir. City Performance) over how many staff Council should employ - and who needs to go.
Public records of those meetings did not include debate over the staff targets that angered the United Services Union and caused Cr. Jemma Tribe to argue on the floor of Council against a quota.
The original discussion must have happened during FRP confidential sessions.
Hiring, firing and budgeting staff is, by law, a Council CEO's domain. But a majority of councillors recently voted against the advice of staff and contradicted the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee (ARIC).
That's not surprising. SIG councillors often exercise their right to reject staff recommendations – and formal community consultation - on planning projects, local character, childcare, rate rises and tree management to name just a few.
But disagreement over staff levels might have proved the final straw for Ruprai.
Council as a workplace has become "toxic", "tense" and "threatening" according to multiple Spark sources, from councillors to management to frontline employees.
It could be that the new CEO's first battle will be with striking staff who want a clear path to Council cost-cutting without resorting to removing over 100 workers.
The Hunt for New Blood
With Ruprai's resignation, the story took a nasty detour into political scapegoating.
A lengthy, accusatory public comment from Jacqui Burke, a prolific Facebook user and supporter of Mayor White and SIG, followed Abi Kirkland's South Coast Register report.
(Although the article is paywalled, the comment is freely available.)
It's highly unlikely that Jacqui Burke, a now retired former ACT Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly, would have direct intimate knowledge of such extreme purported harassment of James Ruprai by "one councillor".
Unless she has a powerful friend inside Council who tends to embellish the facts.
It's also unlikely that as an experienced public service executive, James Ruprai would not wear his big-boy pants to manage the inevitable scrutiny that SIG culture attracts.
After nine months on the inside of reckless and caustic Council meetings, it could be that James Ruprai now better understands the risk of a professional partnership with Mayor White and The Shoalhaven Independents Group.
If so, it's a trajectory of misplaced trust that many Shoalhaven voters are also on.
In this week's Council meeting, likely Ruprai's last, an awkward spat between Mayor White and Ruprai peaked during another emotive debate about dog access on Narrawallee Beach and the cost to Council of legal challenges.
Mayor White, made an astonishing accusation that Council assessors had "manipulated" Narrawallee's Review of Environmental Factors "for a reason", not only throwing staff under the bus (again) but also perpetuating the dangerous narrative that council staff - especially the environmental ones - are part of a larger conspiracy to undermine elected representatives.
When the science doesn't match the political agenda, someone must be blamed.
Back to Jacqui Burke's spray which was also about throwing shade at a competing political pundit, the outspoken progressive Eye on Shoalhaven Council YouTuber and blogger, Stephen Prothero.
Prothero, who was previously highly critical of Ruprai's perceived alignment with SIG councillors, passed on Burke's bait instead turning to the CEO recruitment documents to determine what kind of public servant this Council is seeking.
By the way, the committee to select a new CEO was controversially stacked with SIG councillors plus one previous SIG member, Cr. Selena Clancy.
Labor Cr. Matt Norris was unceremoniously dumped from the team and replaced with Cr. Bob Proudfoot, ostensibly because of Proudfoot's exceptional mathematical capacity.
Perhaps the selection committee was anticipating the need for a calculating mind?
Anyway, Prothero highlighted some striking phrasing in the CEO "applicant pack" which he considered politically-motivated and against the spirit of the Local Government Act.
The CEO job description included language proudly reflecting SIG's "strong commercial focus":
"...networking with government and the private sector, to help grow the Shoalhaven and encourage investment in the local economy."
and
"You will bring a commercial minded/outlook – to be a good budget manager but also an ability to discuss investment with investors and bring a “can-do” attitude to helping investment in the City. We want something to happen…."
then
"A consummate negotiator – who can represent and advocate for the City with investors, developers, major service providers, government and other stakeholders"
with essential criteria including:
"Politically astute, and an ability to effectively engage with elected members and an enquiring and engaged community."
You'd be forgiven for thinking the selection committee was recruiting a property sales gun not a governance whizz. Worse, they might want a politician!
Well, what do you know? Cr. Denise Kemp's "shoalhaven city council residents complaints" page on Facebook supported rumours that long-time Liberal career politician, Andrew Constance, was vying for the CEO role.
To be fair, Spark didn't hear it first from Facebook. And Cr. Kemp may have finally taken sage advice to relinquish her administrator role on that vicious and influential page, lest she be hauled over coals by the Office of Local Government for a Code of Conduct breach.
SIG must protect Cr Kemp from harm because if she did have to vacate her seat on Council for any reason, a countback would install a Greens councillor in her place and threaten SIG's increasingly tenuous voting majority.
Really, Andrew Constance?
Speaking of environmentalists, Andrew Constance has applied to become Shoalhaven City Council CEO.
It's hard to imagine the SIG-stacked selection committee employing someone who described himself as a moderate-progressive and said publicly, after losing the last Federal election in May, that the Liberal Party "should be a pro-environment party."
Constance would, however, share a love of road building with SIG councillors. And he already has some close interactions with potential chamber mates.
During the recent Federal campaign, Constance teamed up with Mayor Patricia White and Cr. Selena Clancy for a Liberal Party photo-op to pledge $1.2m for a new St George's Basin SES headquarters, if he won the election.
Luckily for those dedicated SES volunteers, South Coast MP, Liza Butler, had confirmed on the organisation's social media back in January that the money for the new building had already been secured and that building works were "just waiting on SCC to allocate the land behind the Ambulance Station".
But wait, there's more.
Constance, with Peter Dutton, pledged $3.5 million to build the Bob Proudfoot Pavilion at Francis Ryan Reserve in Sanctuary Point. That's Cr Bob Proudfoot, who took Cr. Matt Norris' place on the CEO selection committee.
Cr. Clancy, also on the CEO selection committee, was famously present at Sanctuary Point urging local footie club kids to shout down the anti-nuclear protest stunt that ruined a Constance media moment.
Andrew Constance held the seat of Bega for 17 years and was a cabinet minister for more than 10 years, so he is due a sizeable parliamentary pension in four years time when he turns 55.
If Shoalhaven Councillors are courting Liberal ex-politicians, Andrew Constance is not the only one in the market for a job.
Former NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro stepped away from his lucrative Trade and Investment Commissioner for the Americas position after ICAC investigated him in 2022-23 as part of the Coalition "jobs for the boys" scandal.
ICAC cleared Barilaro of any wrongdoing and he might soon be looking to a return to public life.
Someone who has actually made the transition from government to governance is former state Liberal MP, John Ajaka who was appointed Liverpool Council CEO in 2022 and terminated in 2024 after he swore at the Mayor during a terse meeting.
He might still be tied up with lawyers over that one.
One Liberal career politician who does know a thing or two about local government and the Shoalhaven is Shelley Hancock.
She was a Shoalhaven City Council "alderman" before holding the Member for South Coast seat for 19 years and being Minister for Local Government for almost three years.
What Shoalhaven City Council really needs is not a "name" but an intelligent, experienced manager who understands the intricacies and legalities of applying the Local Government Act to a large public service organisation carrying a massive debt.
Whoever gets the job might seek advice from Kiama Council CEO, Jane Stroud, who was mentioned by some for Shoalhaven, as her experience running a council operating under a Performance Improvement Order might prove pertinent.
Kiama Council just last month extended Stroud's contract for three years.
With a background in engineering, town planning, business administration and local government administration, Carey McIntyre, is experienced and respected.
Currently on extended leave from his SCC position as Director of City Services, McIntyre was previously Shellharbour Council CEO.
His leave period is due to end in September, theoretically.
Hopefully the SCC selection committee members are keenly aware that staying within the legal boundaries of council powers and ensuring due process to avoid maladministration could be the difference between council staying afloat or being placed into administration.
Central Coast, Balranald and Botany Bay are all examples of councils that were dismissed, merged or placed into administration following financial mismanagement, governance failures, planning breaches, improper conduct or staff conflict.
Running a council is definitely serious, even though it isn't a business.
