However, the Lord Mayor's recent behaviour (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/lisa-scaffidi-saga-opposition-wants-investigation-into-perth-lord-mayor-travel-20160316-gnk87w.html) has received attention - and deservedly so.
Lisa Scaffidi just doesn't get it when it comes to openness and accountability.
She admits there are more trips she hasn't declared - which raises the question of why she apparently didn't mention these to the CCC. She attempts to justify some of them by saying that other Lord Mayors went as well - but who else went is not the issue. The issue is that they were paid for by a third party and therefore should be declared lest they be seen to potentially have influenced the Lord Mayor in the performance of her duties.
Shadow Local Government Minister, David Templeman is quite right in saying that the Barnett Government is taking too long to release the inquiry report, that the standing of the Lord Mayor was being sullied by speculation and that it "erodes the status and puts a dark cloud over the City of Perth in total".
What a pity, then, that Mr Templeman and the ALP didn't delay the passage of the City of Perth Bill through the Parliament so that these matters could be resolved and we could be sure the City of Perth was worthy of its new exalted status before the Bill became law.
The ALP voted against referring the City of Perth Bill to a committee of the Legislative Council, where such matters could have been investigated.
And if such a move had failed (as would have been likely, given that the Nationals also opposed it), the ALP should have had the courage to remove its Lower House support for the Bill and vote against it - which, given that the Nationals, the Greens and Rick Mazza voted against would have defeated the Bill.
As it is, we have legislation for the City of Perth to be WA's Capital City precisely at the time that its Lord Mayor and, by implication, the whole Council, is under a very large cloud.
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