Kiama Council has released the agenda for its upcoming Ordinary Meeting on 21 January 2025. This article serves as a reflection on item 17.2 of the agenda, which can be found on pages 156 to 162. The item addresses community concerns about financial mismanagement and accountability, highlighting issues that have significant implications for Kiama and potentially for broader local government governance across New South Wales.

Kiama Council’s response to longstanding community concerns about financial mismanagement and accountability, outlined under item 17.2 of its Ordinary Meeting agenda on 21 January 2025, raises more questions than it answers.

The Council claims that financial mismanagement and project oversight issues predate the 2016–2021 term and have developed over decades. However, this narrative conflicts with the financial statements prior to 2020, which did not indicate the severity of issues now evident. If the financial challenges are indeed decades in the making, why did the Audit Office and the Office of Local Government fail to identify and address these problems earlier?

The Auditor General signed off on these past financial statements, which raises concerns about systemic oversight failures across New South Wales local government.

The Council’s own reports over the last three to four years, including the 2022 audit by Forsyth Accounting, do not substantiate the claim of a decades-long problem. Instead, they highlight governance failures within a more recent timeframe.

This raises critical questions:

• If these issues are as longstanding as claimed, what evidence supports this, and why was it not detected earlier?
• What role did the Auditor General’s Office, and the Office of Local Government play in allowing these problems to persist?

These omissions leave the impression that lessons have not been learned and that there is no comprehensive plan to prevent similar issues from recurring.

If Kiama Council’s narrative of a decades-long problem is true, this points to broader systemic issues within New South Wales local government.

Specifically:

• How will the Office of Local Government and the Auditor General’s Office ensure that systemic oversight failures are addressed to prevent similar governance challenges across other councils?
• What changes will be made to audit and compliance processes to restore public confidence in local government financial management?

Instead of providing a forward-looking vision and clear accountability measures, the Council’s response focuses on past reports and external blame.

This approach does little to reassure the community that meaningful changes are underway.

The community is left asking:

• What has the Council learned from these governance failures, and how will it apply these lessons to future operations?
• What specific steps are being taken to prevent such failures from occurring again?

By addressing these contradictions and asking these critical questions, Kiama Council has an opportunity to demonstrate true leadership.

To reassure the community and rebuild trust, the Council must articulate a clear and actionable plan for the future. Without this, the risk of repeated governance failures remains high, not just for Kiama but potentially for other councils across the state.