By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
Geelong voters will elect a fresh council in 2017 – and Darryn Lyons could return as mayor, according to the state opposition leader.
Matthew Guy reckons Cr Lyons would have a fair chance of winning his mayoral position back.
The Andrews Government was forced to back down on its plan to install administrators to run City Hall for the next four and a half years.
The opposition, Greens and crossbenchers in the upper house all stated concerns at the length of time Geelong would be without a council.
Legislation to sack the council was passed in the lower house on Tuesday, with the council to be dismissed until 2020.
But the Government lacked numbers to ram the bill through the upper house, forcing Labor to negotiate with the Greens.
Opposition leader Matthew Guy said any Victorian, including Cr Lyons, had the right to run for election.
“It’s his decision,” Mr Guy said.
“Would he win? He’s probably still popular in Geelong.
“I don’t live in Geelong, so what I get is second-hand but I think he’s got a fair following in Geelong. It wouldn’t surprise me if he stood again and won.”
Mr Guy said holding fresh council elections for Geelong in 2017 was a “sensible timeframe”.
He said any move to change the governance structure of Geelong, including adding a directly elected deputy mayor, should be held back and considered over the intervening 18 months.
Former long-serving Geelong state Labor MP Peter Loney said sacking the council was the easy part – changing the bureaucracy would be difficult.
“It reads like there was a Game of Thrones-style stuff going on in the bureaucracy,” Mr Loney said.
“There’s some significant and serious stuff in there about way council bureaucracy behaved over a long period of time.
“Council officers deliberately undermined each of the elected mayors, Keith Fagg and Darryn Lyons.
“That sort of behaviour is anti-community and anti-democratic, it’s a culture of control where elected people don’t count.
“There are big issues coming out of that which the administrators will have to deal with.”
Mr Loney said the focus on Cr Lyons was misplaced and that he had sympathy for some of the councillors.
He also questioned WorkCover’s insignificant involvement, given that it was the state agency charge with handling workplace bullying complaints and would soon relocate to Geelong.
