An excellent comparison, and one which highlights the absurd way in which the present council majority has approached its duties.

On the same day, the Register reported Councillor Willmott explaining why he had met with Huscorp in Sydney about speeding up the approval process for a hotel development in Nowra, and his advice that he invited along Christian Democrat Councillor Paul Green “for accountability’s sake”.

Imagine such conduct in a public company. Imagine a director of Qantas whipping off to see a manufacturer of engines to help it speed up an approval process. Imagine that director of Qantas saying “It’s OK. They contacted me because I am ‘someone who would understand their frustration and speed up the process’. It’s really OK, for accountability’s sake, I took Ayatollah Brown to the meeting. I had a man of religion present.”

Come on!

Recall, going back to the 1970s, how ministers in the Whitlam Government ignored standard government procedures to have dealings themselves with financiers. Recall how Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser called these “extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances”. Recall how the Whitlam Government fell precisely because of that.

The Local Government Act does not limit the role of the elected council to the way a board of directors operates, aloof from the daily business of a corporation. The evidence is, however, that elected councils fail when they step away from appropriate distance from proper business process and get themselves into the situation of believing answers are in their pockets.

Shoalhaven Council has failed because of presumptions of those in power. Mr Watson was first elected Mayor in 1980, having been shire president in 1977-78. And Mayor again since 1999. It is not without precedent at Federal level that a leader can destroy his own party by staying too long and presuming too much.