Nambucca remarries first wife - after humiliating and expensive divorce

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Published: Wednesday, 22 May 2013 14:55

While it’s normally pretty easy to work out if you are in love, it’s not quite so easy to work out when you’re not and to end the relationship. Is it just part of the inevitable ebb and flow, a reaction to the reality of being together all the time and the problems jointly faced and no-one remembering to put the garbage out, a reasonable reaction, or an overreaction to a lovers’ spat? Some people find it harder than others.

Famously, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor married twice - the second time only 16 months after their first divorce. Now Nambucca has joined the ranks of those who remarry (metaphorically speaking, of course) by realising they really were in love with the three director structure that they abolished and replaced with a two director model in 2012 and after an unsatisfactory affair, they want their first love back - resolving 16 months after killing off the three director structure that they want it back.

The 2012 restructure was messy and embarrassing. The Council is hiding the cost of the exercise, refusing to disclose what it cost to make employees redundant. They also refuse to do the calculations that could be made to put a cost on the loss of a competent and experienced Manager Building, who couldn’t cope any longer and fled to Queensland. And, during the course of Nambucca’s affair with a combined corporate services/environment and planning directorship run by the previous director of environment and planning, now they’ve lost that competent and highly-regarded employee to Kyogle. How do you put a cost on this loss?

Not only was the 2012 restructure poorly conceived and planned and reliant upon keeping a GM with planning qualifications to take some of those responsibilities, but only two months after the new structure was implemented, more fiddling took place that made redundant another of our members. How many goes at this do they need? Will the last person out please turn off the lights.

Nambucca is one of the councils identified by both the TCorp analysis and by the Independent Review Panel as being “Weak or Very Weak” and with a “Negative Outlook” where the Panel has called for medium-and long-term financial strategies, amongst other things, to get them out of trouble.

Clearly there’s not much in the way of medium or long term strategies evident here. If Nambucca can’t get its act together on its structure, if it squanders public moneys on losing good staff for the folly of a structure which lasts only a little over a year, then there are bigger questions to ask.