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Central Coast Council’s new Chief Executive Officer, Mr David Farmer, gives his first interview on the Coast to The Point.
By Jackie Pearson
I’m warned before walking in to my 2:30pm Friday interview with Central Coast Council’s new CEO that it has been a big week and David Farmer is a bit tired. He’s had a few 7am starts to visit staff at Council depots but he doesn’t miss a beat when responding to my first, somewhat obvious question. Why would you take on the role of CEO at Central Coast Council at such a controversial time?
Mr Farmer’s immediate and direct answer: “Why wouldn’t you?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Mr Farmer says. “I’ve had a number of difficult councils, most famously Wollongong. I took Wollongong through the difficult time with its 2008 public inquiry and sacking of the council.
“I like work that is substantial and challenging. This is one of the largest councils in Australia, equal fourth by turnover and assets or at least nudging for fourth so it is a big substantial organisation in a beautiful part of the world where I want to live but a big challenging role.”
David Farmer is of the view it will take specific skills, his skills, to turn Central Coast Council around but it won’t be easy and it will not happen quickly.
“I know I can do it and I have done it but … these things aren’t solved quickly. You need to have a long-term strategy and stick to it.”
He describes his management style as one that encourages high performance, gets systems and governance right and wins the trust of people. He likes to build strong teams around him.
Farmer sees building trust as a way to get staff and the community “buying into the direction you want to take the place”.
In terms of his goals for Central Coast Council, Mr Farmer says he has two.
“From the staff perspective, the staff are proud of the work they do but I want to make them proud of the organisation… I have said to Council employees ‘I want you to be able to go to the supermarket and walk around in your uniform and be proud’.
“At the broader level I would like to take Council off the front page and make it boring again.” He says the operational side of local government should just happen with no fuss and no conflict.
“I have been successful in doing that, almost making operations of council to the outside community seem boring,” he says.
Mr Farmer has been fast out of the blocks. In the five days before this interview he’d visited five council sites and held a couple of all-staff meetings. He says he’s also visited the Nexus Hub in North Wyong and the Gosford Council building.
His assessment of staff morale following 250-plus redundancies, rate increases, service cut-backs and suspended Councillors – “Different people respond in different ways but many of the staff will be impacted by what’s happened.”
Success on the agenda
David Farmer believes both council employees and the community love being part of a success story.
He cites the redevelopment of Cairns esplanade and lagoon when he was with that council as an example. “It was a controversial project built behind hoardings so there was no visibility.
“Then we had a massive opening; 100,000 people attended during the day and 300 staff volunteered their time to show people around. It showed how much people want to connect with success that 300 employees in Council t-shirts wanted to give up their time to be there.”
The challenge of community engagement and community buy-in doesn’t daunt Mr Farmer either.
“I have worked with sophisticated community engagement teams for long periods of time and my understanding is this organisation has a strong team and strong background in this area. It is important that we don’t just listen to squeaky wheels but get the views of the broader community.
“I see strongly divided community viewpoints; more strongly divided than I have seen for some time and that has a bit to do with us [Central Coast Council] and where we are at the moment.”
He says he understands the importance of effective community engagement particularly while the elected Councillors are suspended pending a public inquiry.
Mr Farmer agrees there are similarities between the community of Wollongong and the Central Coast – both with a significant cohort of time-poor commuters.
“Wollongong has a much stronger economy and local employment but still a significant commuter group and a growing affluent community in the north and when you would talk to those people it was interesting that the place was precious to them. They would give up a lot to commute to Sydney during the week and have little piece of paradise on the weekend and I am sure there are those feelings here.”
The nitty gritty
Mr Farmer says Central Coast Council only has a few compulsory redundancies to go.
“We are down to the last few. Most voluntary people have left or will be leaving in the next few weeks and then we are going through the final placement process. We are trying to minimise compulsory redundancies and we are expecting less than 30, not hundreds,” he says.
As for cuts to services as part of the strategy to reduce Council’s debts and produce surplus budgets, Mr Farmer says: “When you look at them, like it or not most of those things are comparatively imperceptible. Most of those things are reasonably things the community won’t notice a great deal.
“I have talked to the staff about this. It is my hope and belief that as we bed down the organisation and we work on some of the problems we will be able to improve our efficiency and lift some of those service levels back but that will take some time.
“You can’t just take 250 people out of the business and hope the organisation will reorganise itself. It will take some reallocation of resources, not replacing certain roles and replacing other frontline service roles but I think if we are successful it will turn around the organisation’s governance, accountability and skills.
“It will be two or three years. I think it is five or six years to get back into a really strong financial position… but it is a long haul. It is a pretty serious set of circumstances and you don’t fix something as serious as that overnight,” he says.
“Administrators are appointed by the government for a reason and each administrator is different,” Mr Farmer says. “What I have learned is they will generally make harder decisions. Councillors are more concerned about making harder decisions. Councillors sometimes tell administrators they were thankful they had made the hard decisions.”
Although departing Administrator, Mr Dick Persson AM, has categorically ruled out any connection between the forced amalgamation of Wyong and Gosford Councils and the financial failure of Central Coast Council, Mr Farmer says “there hasn’t been effective harmonisation of many things.”
He cites IT systems as one area of ongoing consternation. “There’s still a lot of work to be done in the IT space and probably a lot more that I haven’t yet got my head around. A lot of hard decisions that should have been made haven’t been made.”
Mr Farmer has been CEO of councils acting as water authorities at both Mudgee and Cairns.
“This is by far the biggest and operates under the dual world of the Water Act and the Local Government Act and it is the only council in NSW to do so,” he says.
“There needs to be some clarification of what that means. Sydney, Hunter and the Central Coast operate their water authorities under the Water Act but Central Coast is the only one that also operates under the Local Government Act.
“It is interesting that we are regulated by IPART for example and the final straw that broke the camel’s back was IPART’s $39 million reduction in Central Coast Council’s water and sewer billing which is strange because if we get the rate increase residents will still be paying less than they were in 2019 because we are still taking the impact of the water and sewer decrease. I don’t think we’ve communicated that effectively at all.”
Does he believe the Central Coast water authority should be sold off as a solution to Council’s financial difficulties?
“I don’t,” he says. “I will have to talk about that with the administrator but there are structures and ways that the water business could be organised that are worth looking at.
“I am not sure a simple sell off is the most appropriate way to do it but a there are a number of ways you can look at the water business.
“We need clear and transparent analysis of that… It’s a huge asset worth a couple of billion dollars at least, that generates a lot of revenue for the community, and costs, but there are structures and ways for it to operate as a well-run business.”
Farmer’s ESG credentials
David Farmer says he “absolutely” understands the importance of environmental and social justice, in addition to good governance, for the future of the Central Coast Council.
“We have to pivot this organisation to look at today’s and tomorrow’s economy and environmental and social conditions and they are very different to the conditions that were in place when this part of the world experienced its most significant growth,” he says.
“You can achieve all of those things by looking at your urban form, urban redevelopment, managing your urban footprint, increasing density around transport hubs.
“Young people today, the next generation that are going to rule the world, are not going to be as car dependent, are going to want to walk around, are going to want a more complete neighbourhood are going to want a more interesting neighbourhood and are not going to want to travel for work.
“We will need to review our approach to housing, hubs and density, create more housing without taking up a large urban footprint.”
Mr Farmer says the Coast doesn’t have historically dense townships that were developed in some areas 100 years ago. He’s not talking about a township as large as Gosford, although he says “Gosford will blossom at some point.
“It is a matter of getting the settings right and landing at the right opportunity with the right private partners,” he says.
“This is a community of lots of smaller centres and how do we strengthen those centres around the world as it is going to be in the 2020s 30s 40s and not the 1960s 70s and 80s.
“The community will demand neighbourhoods, employment and amenity locally, with a smaller urban footprint and better public transport.
“The Coast is built around car dependence so it will be a slow process to unwind that but the demand from young people is actually for that and if we want to retain young people here and drive knowledge industries we will need to.”
David Farmer’s work history
Feb 2019 to April 2021 – CEO Ipswich Council, Qld
Jun 2007 to Feb 2019 – General Manager, Wollongong City Council
Oct 2000 to May 2007 – CEO Cairns City Council
March 1996 to Sep 2000 – General Manager Mudgee Council
Studied commerce, accounting and management at University of Wollongong 1982-1987
Mister fix it?
David Farmer started his 11-year term as General Manager of Wollongong City Council in June 2007. A couple of months before his arrival the council’s offices were raided by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
In February 2008 a public hearing took place that led to the dismissal of the council and the appointment of administrators.
The hearing revealed favourable treatment of local developers by certain council staff. The inquiry heard evidence that a council planner had been sexually involved with three developers whilst assessing their developments.
Evidence was also presented that ICAC officers had been impersonated.
Several NSW Ministers were implicated in the scandal and then Premier, Morris Iemma, agreed to tighten the rules around developer donations to political parties.
Councillors were dismissed in March and in October 2008 ICAC referred briefs of evidence in relation to eleven persons found to have acted corruptly to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
The DPP was successful in recording convictions for three of the eleven people ICAC found to have acted in a corrupt manner.
High-ranking council staff, councillors and developers were among those who faced up to 139 criminal charges. Local government elections were restored in 2011 and the council escaped forced amalgamation in 2016.
Mr Farmer was then appointed to Ipswich City Council shortly after its councillors were sacked and an administrator put in place in August 2018 after allegations of corrupt behaviour by several Ipswich councillors and executives which had spanned decades.
The former CEO of Ipswich City Council and three others pleaded guilty to corruption charges in the district court in Brisbane following an investigation by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission.
Corruption has been ruled out by Interim Administrator, Mr Dick Persson, as in any way contributing to the financial issues that confronted Central Coast Council and lead to the suspension of Councillors in October 2020.
