By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Former Casey mayor Amanda Stapledon has conceded she did not fully declare her conflicts of interest with developer John Woodman, an IBAC hearing was told.
“I believe I was very sloppy with my paperwork,” she repeatedly told the inquiry on 16 March.
While running for Narre Warren North in the 2014 state election, Ms Stapledon didn’t declare the conflict of interest at all at council meetings.
After the campaign, she underplayed Mr Woodman’s help. Routinely she described her conflict as him “attending fundraising events” for the 2014 state election.
She failed to report his $25,000 donation to her 2014 state election bid, as well as buying two tables at her $1000-a-head fundraiser, donating a helicopter ride and a lunch at Yering Station for auction and hosting her campaign launch.
“It wasn’t as articulate as it should have been,” Ms Stapledon told IBAC.
“It wasn’t designed to be deceiving.”
IBAC Commissioner Robert Redlich said it appeared to be a “deliberate omission of the primary reason for your conflict”.
“I certainly didn’t have that agenda, sir,” Ms Stapledon replied.
After the 2016 council election, Ms Stapledon also omitted declaring being part of Mr Woodman’s $100,000 campaign for a group of “like-minded” candidates.
The campaign included election ads, photos, printing and mailouts.
Then-councillor Sam Aziz, who organised the campaign, had said “we didn’t need to worry about” who funded it, Ms Stapledon told IBAC.
Ms Stapledon didn’t declare the assistance on her election declaration, nor as a conflict of interest at council.
She told IBAC she wasn’t certain Mr Woodman funded the campaign until some time after the election.
“Mr Woodman has never asked me to do anything for him.
“I need to be very clear there: he has done nothing improper in that regard.”
On 1 April 2014, she failed to declare the conflict of interest and voted on rezoning industrial land in Cranbourne West – a matter in which Mr Woodman had a significant interest and had prepared a briefing note for Cr Stapledon in February.
For the rest of the year, she “got out of the room” and didn’t vote on Woodman-related matters – but didn’t declare her conflict.
She told IBAC she should have “declared the donations and the support”.
She knowingly failed to do so, to hide Mr Woodman’s assistance from others in a “fractious” Liberal Party.
Some in her party, “headed by the then upper house MP”, were trying to “stifle” her election fundraising because she was a state candidate “that wasn’t wanted”.
It resulted in a “broken” campaign, she told IBAC.
“Funds were starved, equipment was withdrawn, which certainly happened to me, and there was … what I would perceive was a deliberate campaign to derail the candidate’s campaign.”
Ms Stapledon said Mr Woodman offered to donate to her campaign in mid-March 2014.
This was in contrast to his claim at IBAC that she requested the donation.
“He said that he’d done well in life and he wanted to support good candidates and he wanted to support good causes,” Ms Stapledon said.
“I was aware of my conflict of interest. I was also aware that he had said to me, ‘I want you to be open and transparent,
declare, and get out of the room.’”
In February 2014, she and then-councillors Sam Aziz and Geoff Ablett had met with Mr Woodman ahead of him drafting a briefing note for Casey Council to investigate rezoning industrial land in Cranbourne West.
In closed council, councillors voted in favour of the investigation.
Ms Stapledon conceded “in hindsight” that the pre-council meeting was improper.
“With all that I know now, that probably … wasn’t the best thing to do.
“At the time, sir, I felt that I was being informed.”
