The Sacked Councillor : David Brown

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David Brown was a Labor Councillor for Ward 3 (Wollongong City) when Wollongong City Council was sacked. He was not implicated in the corruption or named by ICAC during the public inquiry.

Mr Brown believes, like many of the other Councillors who were sacked, that the whole Council shouldn’t have been sacked because of the actions of a few people.

It came like a bolt of lightning from the blue. And a lot of people at the time thought it was pretty unjust. There were a number of city Councillors who were adversely named, a small number of staff and business people and the government then took the action to dismiss the entire council, he said.

Mr Brown said he thinks appointing Administrators was the wrong choice for democracy in Wollongong.

“I think you either support democracy or you don’t,” he said.

“And democracy is sometimes a bit messy and sometimes it isn’t all that efficient, but I certainly know in the year or so after the dismissal of Council resident were still asking me for advice about planning matters… and there was certainly a concern that the Administrators weren’t from the area.”

“I think you can rely on the good sense of the voters to sort these things out. If we’d gone to the election a few months after the dismissal, I think you can rely on the voters to get it right.”

Mr Brown now works as a Media Officer for the South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Area Health Service, and said he couldn’t give a concrete answer on whether he would stand for re-election as a Councillor in 2012.

“It’s still a long way away, the next elections, it’s not something I’ve made my mind up about. I think it will be very hard for anybody in the last Council to nominate and run again,” he said.
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What happended to democracy in Wollongong in 2008?



What is the future of democracy in Wollongong?



Extended interview