State to run inquiry into how to deal with squabbling councillors

The Queensland government has announced an inquiry into how the complaints of squabbling local councillors should be dealt with, as the state deals with roughly 1000 complaints each year and some councillors deem the system broken entirely.

Leader of the house Dr Christian Rowan announced the parliamentary inquiry on Thursday, calling for a deep-dive on the effectiveness of the Office of the Independent Assessor (OIA) and the Councillor Conduct Tribunal (CCT).

Rowan said alternative models for the assessor should be looked at, as well as rights of review under the tribunal scheme, and any other change to either body that parliament’s Local Government, Small Business and Customer Service Committee considers desirable.

The call comes weeks after a CCT decision that Ipswich Deputy Mayor Nicole Jonic had, on the balance of probabilities, engaged in misconduct by sharing a confidential council report with a journalist in 2022.

The pair had accused Harding of influencing a report about community sentiment amid a debate over the renaming of a bridge and road named after former mayor Paul Pisasale, a Labor member.

Pisasale, mayor from 2003 to 2017, was found guilty of corruption and sexual assault in 2020 and released on parole in 2022.

In a statement online this week, Harding welcomed the finding.

“As someone who was elected as Mayor to clean up our city after the corruption and maladministration of the dismissed council, it was shocking to have my integrity questioned for simply doing my job and providing feedback to the CEO on this report,” she said.

In a statement of his own, Madsen said he had not been found of guilty of anything.

The other body to be subject to the committee’s probe is the OIA, the first port-of-call for councillor conduct complaints.

While complaints have decreased – the OIA received 368 complaints in the second half of 2025, a 28 per cent decrease from the same timeframe the year before – its processes have come under scrutiny amid allegations of internal dysfunction at Redland City Council, south-east of Brisbane City.

At a committee session earlier this year, Independent Assessor Charles Kohn said the average cost to the state of each complaint was $444, no matter the outcome.

Redlands was the council where the highest number of complaints were received, both in 2024/25 and the first half of this financial year.

Of the 1008 complaints received in 2024/25, 114 were about Redlands councillors. Since becoming Redlands mayor in March 2024, Jos Mitchell has received roughly 50 complaints.

Mitchell recently called out a culture