And for some, uncomfortable. LGAQ boss Greg Hallam. Credit:Dave Hunt/AAP Greg Hallam, boss for the past 25 years of the Local Government Association of Queensland, the lobby group for the state’s councils, said this week: “There is no way of sugar-coating this, these are tough times.” The alleged offences committed by councillors and others, ranging from official corruption to fraud, extortion and even assault, in some cases date back many years. Has something rotten been long mouldering in the city halls of Queensland, and why is it all emerging now?

Experts say there’s been a lack of scrutiny of local government by law enforcement agencies and the media in Queensland going back decades. In the meantime, the seeds of corruption have been nurtured in the state’s south-east corner - where many of the problems have emerged - by a fast-growing population and the pressures and profits of development. Launching its landmark Belcarra report into local government corruption last year, the head of the Crime and Corruption Commission, Alan MacSporran, said the public was “right on the money” in believing local government was a “hotbed” of corruption. Corruption watchdog 'too Brisbane-centric' But Timothy Prenzler, a criminologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast, believes the CCC has to take some of the blame, having belatedly realised its significance and only then in response to a welter of complaints following the 2016 local elections.

“Historically it hasn’t investigated complaints about local government in any depth,” he said. “It’s tended to either dismiss the complaints or send them back to local councils to investigate themselves.” Crime and Corruption Commission chair Alan MacSporran says the CCC might consider a wider public inquiry into Queensland local government. Credit:AAP Professor Prenzler said that as soon as Queensland’s first anti-corruption agency was set up in the late 1980s following the Fitzgerald Inquiry, which looked at police corruption but also identified problems at a state level, “it received large numbers of complaints about local government”. But, he said, “it never really put in the processes to deal with those problems effectively”.

Professor Prenzler called for the crime and corruption functions of the CCC to be split into separate agencies so local government wrongdoing could get the attention it deserved. “It’s really very easy for an anti-corruption agency to get distracted by the more exciting and glamorous issues of serious and organised crime,” he said. He added that the CCC should set up regional offices as its focus was too Brisbane-centric. For others, the size and role of councils and the influence of political parties - or lack thereof - are key factors in determining how councillors and council staff behave. Queensland council boundaries have waxed and waned, first with amalgamations in the 1990s and 2000s, and more recently a handful of de-amalgamations such as in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast and Tablelands in far north Queensland.

One retired long-serving south-east Queensland councillor told Fairfax Media his experience of amalgamation was that “bigger is not necessarily better”. He also decried other changes that had made it the norm for bigger councils - although rare in Australia - to have salaried councillors, a move intended to professionalise their activities. “Why would you want to do that?” the former councillor asked. “The greedy ones - they’ll always want more.” Party lines 'insulate' against rogue councillors

A constant has been the massive size of Brisbane City Council, one of the biggest local authorities in the southern hemisphere. And also one that has largely avoided scandal. University of Queensland political scientist Graeme Orr said the capital city council’s physical size, wide-ranging responsibilities, financial heft and the amount of media attention it garnered helped explain this, while smaller but fast-growing councils on the city fringe, such as Logan and Ipswich, suffered. Graeme Orr. “I think it’s not such a bad thing that we have such a big council in Brisbane,” he said. “If there are bigger resources, more planning decisions in the one council then, yes, whatever rotten eggs there are, they’ll make a bigger stench.”

Professor Orr said that unless council areas could sustain their own “media market” that provoked genuine scrutiny and ratepayer interest, councils could go unchecked. “If people are not interested in local government then you’ve got problems with traditional media-based political accountability," he said. “While there are good people reporting in the local press, is there genuine attention going on with the average person?” Professor Orr pointed to the United Kingdom, where councils had “an institutionalised broader role” and were involved in providing education and health as well as conventional services. “It attracts a lot more attention and then you can attract a better calibre, a broader calibre of people,” he said.

More controversially, Professor Orr argued that the organisation of city politics along party lines - Brisbane is the only local authority in Queensland where this is the case - helped shore up the integrity of councillors. “I know people think parties are on the nose but parties actually provide some insulation against the risks of rogue politicians, of donations," he said. “The parties have an ongoing issue in policing problems - bad eggs - because parties are like an ongoing institution, they are interested in their future reputation, not just in the individual who’s more interested in their own advancement. “Compare that to the US where it’s easy to buy access to a single politician and they have weak parties.” The CCC has flagged further charges against officials at Ipswich: its widening investigations of Logan and Gold Coast councils continue and local government corruption continues to dominate the news.

On Friday Mr MacSporran said the CCC might consider a public inquiry into local government across the state. The Local Government Association of Queensland strongly rejects such an idea. “If we’re in a constant situation where we’re under scrutiny, councils aren’t able to do their jobs, there are investigators in and out of those councils, it makes it very difficult to run a council,” Mr Hallam said this week. 'When they complained they lost their jobs' But for some, the revelations of wrongdoing in Queensland councils have so far only scratched the surface.

North Queensland grazier Jason Ward worked closely with former state member for Cairns Rob Pyne in gathering evidence on allegations of corruption at councils across Queensland. He has spent about $750,000 of his own money on travel and research over the past four years, setting up a confidential support network to council staff and others who have attempted to blow the whistle. Former MP Rob Pyne (left) with Jason Ward at a protest outside the Queensland Parliament last July, calling for an ICAC for the state. Credit:Felicity Caldwell “I’m doing this because it’s the humane thing and the right thing to do,” he said. Mr Ward said many of the people he had helped had been trying to expose “creative accounting” at councils involving millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money, something that none of the current investigations were looking at, to his knowledge. Many of these people had already paid with their jobs and some had contemplated suicide, he said.