By Glen Atwell
A ONE-year self-imposed ban on overseas and interstate travel has been quashed by Casey Council after just five weeks.
In an extraordinary series of events at Tuesday night’s meeting, councillor Rob Wilson was approved to attend a transport conference in Canberra in June and councillor Lorraine Wreford was given the green light to jet to the Gold Coast for a national local government convention late this month.
Mayor Janet Halsall and chief executive Mike Tyler will also fly to Queensland with Cr Wreford to represent Casey at the Local Government Managers’ Association (LGMA) National Congress.
Cr Wilson’s ratepayer-funded trip to the South East Australian Transport Strategy (SEATS) conference in Canberra on 18-19 June will see him act as a representative of SEATS, not the City of Casey.
Having already exhausted his annual $5000 education and training allowance, Cr Wilson was forced to transfer unspent money from councillor Paul Richardson to fund the trip.
Casey’s travel backflip comes weeks after council agreed to ban travel spending to show local residents it was not journeying around the country during tough financial times.
Councillor Kevin Bradford said he was disgusted by the decision to approve more interstate travel at ratepayers’ expense.
“It perfectly demonstrates the hypocrisy of this council,” he said.
“We make a responsible decision to stop travel, and then we overturn that decision five minutes later.”
Cr Bradford also questioned the need to send a councillor to an LGMA congress.
“It’s a conference for local government managers, not councillors. I can’t see the benefit,” he said.
“And with an election only months away, spending money on councillor education and training could be useless. What if Cr Wreford isn’t re-elected?”
Councillor Steve Beardon said he was the only councillor not to spend a cent of his “junket allowance”.
“I can’t believe the interstate travel ban is out the window. These trips are just elbow-bending booze fests,” he said.
Ratepayers forked out more than $45,000 in 2007 to pay for trips by Casey staff and councillors
More than $56,000 was spent on interstate and overseas travel in 2006.
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