Connie Bonaros on 5AA Breakfast with David and Will: June 05 2025

MEDIA TRANSCRIPT 

The audio for this interview can be listened to here: https://youtu.be/DC_3kbmhUv4

Radio Interview 5 June 2025 08:00am 

Breakfast with David and Will, 5AA  

DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST : Well, it feels that barely a month goes by without some news story breaking over a council, be it a city council, a regional council, country council where there’s been some major blowup involving staff members and councillors haranguing and abusing each other. Often these disputes end up coming at a cost to the ratepayers as well… I can think of at least… four councils off the top of my head, including the Adelaide City Council where they have to call in the lawyers to mediate and the people who live in those council areas end up paying for all of this rat-baggery. Well, SA-BEST MLC, Connie Bonaros thinks that it’s time to have a proper look at the impact and frequency of this type of workplace harassment, not just abuse but also sexual harassment in the local government sector and we’ve got Connie on the line now. Connie good morning and thanks for joining us. As I was saying at the start, there’s no shortage of these stories is there? 

THE HON CONNIE BONAROS, MLC: Good morning… there is no shortage, it’s feeling more like a weekly basis now. Just yesterday we had a mayor resign. We’ve heard account after account in recent weeks of these things making their way into the public realm. I think the starting point should be… we have an Equal Opportunity Commissioner and their job is to lift the lids on these sorts of things. Up until a few years ago, the Equal Opportunity Act didn’t even apply to local government, it didn’t apply to MPs and didn’t apply to the legal profession, and we fixed that in ’21. I moved amendments to that and since then we’ve had two inquiries, one in Parliament and… two into the legal profession, looking at these exact sorts of issues and people ask, well why the Equal Opportunity Commissioner. They’re the best body to look at this, they’re independent, they’re impartial and their job is to go into workplaces like this and professions like this and lift the lid on the sorts of systemic and cultural issues that exist around harassment, bullying, sexual harassment and actually identify where the cracks and the problems are and find ways to fix them. 

PENBERTHY: Does it feel to you Connie that there might be… a bit of a lack of professionalism in the local government sector where the rigour that exists in other workplaces, where people are frequently forced, and rightly, to attend meetings reminding them of their rights and their responsibilities at work, that that hasn’t been happening enough? 

BONAROS:  Yeah, I do and people might disagree with me on that, but it’s not different to politics is it, in that respect, it’s exactly the same in fact and the legal profession… We always hold ourselves to a different standard and we think some of these things are okay, which is why I moved those changes in the first place because why on earth should we be exempt from those laws… There was no logic in that and in fact… the justifications given when those laws were first introduced were, well we need robust debate and we’ve got things like Parliamentary privilege and privilege that applies and judiciary and local government should be above… those sorts of issues, well we’re not and they’re not, and that’s been proven, I think. When I first introduced this motion at that the beginning of the year… I had an inkling that this was getting worse, and we would reach a tipping point. So, I’ve let it sit there in the hope that people would speak out more, I didn’t quite anticipate how many people would speak out, there were five Mayors in the chamber yesterday and that’s only a handful… and the President of the Local Government Association, she was there, Heather Holmes-Ross, she was there in support of this. I’ve spoken to the Adelaide City Lord Mayor; I’ve spoken to the Mayor of Norwood Payneham and St Peters. He has actually said to me that it has never been worse in terms of toxic culture and bullying and harassment as it is now. 

PENBERTHY:  Well, I know Onkaparinga was a basket case for a long time. You look anywhere on the map… 

BONAROS:  ...Tea Tree Gully. 

PENBERTHY: Yeah, that’s right – Tea Tree Gully, Burnside… so many that spring to mind. 

BONAROS:  But you’re quite right… Do you want to be footing the bill for that… and I don’t think ratepayers think that’s a good use of their money. I’ve got one local councillor who has refused to let her local council pay her legal fees, she’s paying it out of her own pocket and… in that particular incident we’ve got a councillor who has spent in excess of $400,000 apparently on legal fees. Now, it’s not just legal fees, its investigators, it’s mediators and we’re not talking into account the toll that this is having on those individuals and the weaponisation that I talked of yesterday, because we know like politics, this can be very factional… and very deliberate in terms of targeting members in council for particular outcomes. That takes its toll on a person…these are elected people, we put them there to represent our communities and to do a job for us in the community, and to provide services. I don’t want my ratepayers being spent on that and I don’t think your listeners do either 

PENBERTHY: 100%. It’s a great idea Connie, we’re glad that we got you on today to flesh it out… thanks for joining us 

ENDS.