News / Council
Conlan quits council ahead of suspension
Ex-councillor lashes “secretive, repressive and undemocratic” process
Mark Phillips
Updated: Thursday, August 15, 2024
INDEPENDENT councillor James Conlan has dramatically resigned just hours before he was due to be suspended for misconduct.
Conlan, who represented the Brunswick-based South ward, announced his resignation from Merri-bek Council through social media on Wednesday afternoon in a move designed to pre-empt his suspension for a month over a social media post he made earlier this year.
His lengthy announcement lashed out at the process through which councillors are able to lodge complaints of misconduct against each other as undemocratic and repressive, and said he would continue to pursue social change from outside the council as a community activist.
The council was to have on Wednesday night tabled a report from an independent arbiter appointed to investigate a complaint against Conlan lodged by councillor Helen Davidson.
Tabling the report would have triggered a recommended four-week suspension, but Conlan’s resignation made it unnecessary and while the report was tabled, no further action resulted.
“Instead of legitimising this undemocratic process, I have just resigned from my council position early,” Conlan wrote on social media from Europe, where he has been holidaying while on an approved leave of absence from the council.
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The dramatic move followed a determination by the state government appointed arbiter, Jo-anne Mazzeo, that the use of the word “shamefully” to describe Davidson and fellow councillors Lambros Tapinos and Annalivia Carli-Hannan in a social media post in March fell below the standard of conduct expected of elected councillors.
Conlan had used the expression in a social media post which accused the three councillors of deliberately avoiding a council vote in favour of support for Gaza.
Mazzeo said the social media post could only be interpreted as being disrespectful to other councillors, was misleading and had no factual basis.
Davidson has welcomed the finding, saying she needed to stand up because “I nor anyone else who serves our community on council should be made to feel unsafe by our fellow councillors”.
In his public resignation announcement, Conlan insisted he had factually reported on the result of the Palestine vote and denied his post had intended to bully, harass, or intimidate the councillors who abstained from voting.
“The ‘crime’ that I really committed was to embarrass those councillors by bringing attention to the fact that they didn’t vote on one of the most important and publicly scrutinised issues of this council term – the genocide of Palestine,” he said.
Conlan criticised the “top secret” nature of the complaint against him, and likened a “a secretive, repressive and undemocratic” process to North Korea.
“The purpose of these laws is to silence councillors like myself from speaking, critiquing and questioning,” he wrote.
“It’s a system designed to force councillors to participate in maintaining the facade of councillor collegiality bereft of any meaningful public dialogue and critique.
“The long-term goal of these laws is to create a well-disciplined, obedient local government sector where councillors do and say what they’re told, and when.
“As more councillors continue to use these misconduct laws to silence their political opponents, local democracy will be the loser … It’s clear that people like me, who question and critique the status quo by speaking their minds, are being deliberately expunged from local government.”
Before embarking on a month’s leave of absence, which was due to end early next month, Conlan had already announced he would not be seeking re-election this October.
Merri-bek Council confirmed Conlan’s resignation would take effect immediately, and the Minister for Local Government and the Victorian Electoral Commission had been advised.
This story was updated to reflect the decision not to table the arbitration report at the council meeting.
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