[zakman440]

Well he's not a mayor anymore:

Geelong council and its mayor, the mohawked former paparazzo Darryn Lyons, will be sacked by the Victorian government on Tuesday after an independent inquiry found it was “dysfunctional” and unable to provide good government.

The state’s local government minister, Natalie Hutchins, will introduce legislation to dismiss the council in parliament on Tuesday afternoon and appoint an administrator to run the city until 2020, placing it under unelected governance for an entire local government cycle.

Lyons, a former News of the World and Daily Mail photographer who was elected to the post of mayor in 2013 after a presidential-style campaign as a “comedy candidate”, took to the airwaves on Tuesday morning to accuse the Labor government of making a party-political move and “shutting down democracy”.

He told the radio station 3AW he hadn’t seen the independent commission’s report but said: “I don’t agree that it is dysfunctional.”

He also denied that he had been aggressive, belligerent or threatening as mayor and said he would continue working for Geelong, saying: “It’s business as usual, as far as I’m concerned. I will be going about my business loud and proud.

“Regardless of what happens today or in the coming weeks I’ll wake up every day fortified to serve Geelong and its people – as mayor or not.”

The council dismissal comes after a report in October by the former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Susan Halliday found that a “significant number” of City of Greater Geelong employees felt “undervalued, unfairly treated and bullied”.

The council was required to make three action plans as a result of that report, and Halliday at the time praised the council for “taking a credible and determined step towards cultural improvement”.

But the commission of inquiry report, which will be tabled in state parliament at 1pm, listed a failure to properly respond to the Halliday report as one of the grounds for dismissal.

Other grounds included a failure to develop a long-term vision for the city and a serious failure to provide good governance, which the report says rendered the council so dysfunctional it was unable to work in the city’s best interests.

“The report outlines serious governance failures, among other issues, leaving the government no choice but to dismiss the council,” Hutchins said on Tuesday. “It is not a decision that has been taken lightly.

“The people of Geelong deserve better. The city is too important for it to be run by a dysfunctional council that is simply unable to work together.”

Hutchins rebuffed accusations the dismissal was politically motivated, saying the report and its 12 recommendations had been drafted by independent commissioners. “Unfortunately the dysfunction has been so high, and the report is so significant, the state government’s not been left with much choice,” she said.

The opposition leader, Matthew Guy, also suggested a political agenda and said he would not make a decision until he had seen the report. “The Labor party has wanted to sack Darryn Lyons for 12 months,” he said.

Geelong is the sixth Victorian council to be sacked since 1998. Wangaratta, whose council was dismissed for a “toxic” and “dysfunctional” culture in 2013, remains under the control of administrators, who will be replaced by a new council after local government elections in October.

Rob Spence, the chief executive of the Municipal Association of Victoria, said Geelong residents should also be allowed to elect new representatives in the October elections instead of waiting four more years. “If the council is going to be removed, which is not our favoured position, but if they are we say that they could be in a position to elect a new council in October,” he told ABC radio.

Spence lumped part of the blame on Geelong council’s decision to allow voters to directly elect the mayor, which he said had allowed Lyons to be elected without a power base on council, and thus left the council without a leadership structure.

Lyons had a career as a reality television star in Britain before returning home to Geelong, incuding a 2011 stint on Celebrity Big Brother which saw him introduce the concept of the “no-sweat sixpack” to a confused audience.

Last year protesters called on him to resign after he was photographed at a public event wearing a shirt featuring a naked picture of Madonna with the slogan: “Gas, grass or ass, no one rides for free.”

http://www.theguardian.com/australia...ked?CMP=twt_gu