EACH working day Ipswich mayor Teresa Harding arrives early to her new executive office overlooking historic St Mary’s Church and prays for help and guidance.
“I think it is very important when you are making big decisions to have a place to reflect and pray,” Mayor Harding said, 15 months into her first term and aware that every Ipswich City Council decision is being closely watched.
In 2020, Mayor Harding swept into office as Ipswich’s new mayor – on a platform of transparency and reform – following the sacking of the entire council 18 months prior.
Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission delivered a damning report into the council’s past activities, alleging a culture of corruption and finding an improper use of power and inappropriate relationships.
A total of 15 people, including two former mayors, were charged with criminal offences including fraud, corruption and extortion.
In 2019, former mayor Andrew Antoniolli was found guilty of fraud. In 2020, he won an appeal against his fraud convictions.
And in September 2020, another former mayor, long-serving Paul Pisasale was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail, after previously pleading guilty to more than 30 offences including sexual assault, official corruption and fraud.
Today, Mayor Harding faces a massive task correcting past wrongs by returning council finances from disarray and regaining the trust of an entire community.
At the same time she leads a large council enterprise grappling with providing infrastructure, homes and jobs for a booming population.
As a Christian woman she says she finds herself drawing deeply on her faith as she faces all her civic responsibilities.
She finds St Mary’s Church an inspiring Ipswich landmark to turn to each morning in prayer.
“I pray for courage and also pray to be selfless – making sure I make decisions thinking of all the residents, not my own interests,” Mayor Harding said.
“I also pray for our community coming out of COVID. A lot of people are hurting. So I pray for people to have strength to get through things together as a community.”
Last month Mayor Harding even prayed for Ipswich’s most famous tennis export, Ash Barty, to win Wimbledon.
“Of course,” she said with a chuckle.
Mayor Harding is quick to point out that she is Anglican, not Catholic, but that she has strong Catholic connections, and hence her strong affinity for St Mary’s Church.
When the council’s new administration headquarters was being built the architect’s plans showed the mayoral top floor office on the eastern side of the building, but during the final stages Mayor Harding insisted her office be relocated to face west so she could look out over St Mary’s Church.
Her daughter attended St Mary’s College, next door to St Mary’s Church and she served on the school’s P and F for four years.
There’s a deeper Catholic connection too.
Her former husband from Brazil was a Catholic. Each of their three adult children were baptised in the Church.
She proudly produces the baptismal certificate of her son, Ryan now in his twenties.
He was baptised in a parish in Porto Alegre, capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, in the same church in which her former husband was baptised, and by the same priest who presided over his confirmation.
“To me faith is very important,” Mayor Harding said.
So too is the spirit of community and outreach that she says exists at schools like St Mary’s – something she is trying to foster across the entire Ipswich community.
It took Mayor Harding two unsuccessful attempts as a LNP candidate for federal seats before she switched to local politics and was elected as mayor in March 2020.
She has impressive professional experience as a former RAAF Base Amberley defence consultant, leading the maintenance of the RAAF F111 jets, and senior officer in the Queensland Government, and a small business owner.
In particular Mayor Harding has expertise in open data and governance and is intent on delivering “gold standard” accountability to winning back the trust of Ipswich ratepayers.
The council recently launched an online transparency hub – the first council in Australia to do so.
It provides financial transactions of the council-owned entities providing ultra-detailed records of councillors’ expenses and the council’s ongoing expenditure.
Ipswich ratepayers lost more than $78 million after the previous council invested in CBD properties where members of the board were councillors themselves.
“After what’s happened here in Ipswich it’s very important to make sure that we are a trusted council, and that has become the transparency journey we’re on to regain the trust of the people here,” Mayor Harding said.
The new transparency hub publishes all council purchases and awarded contracts over $10,000.
It shows not just the current council’s spending, but much of the previous council’s spending as well.
“I think it’s only fair that people know how their rates are being spent. We also live-stream all our committee meetings where decisions are being made.
“In between committee meetings briefings received from council officers and external sources are also published online.
“People may not agree with the decisions we make but hopefully they can see the information we were given and understand why those decisions were made for the greater good of the community.”
For the first time, the latest Ipswich Council budget contains information for all its 33 core services – the costs to run each service, any revenue, staffing levels as well as the actual service provided.
Even the council’s city mowing schedule is now on line so that ratepayers can monitor when their local park is due for a trim.
Looking beyond the dark days of council scandal and corruption, Mayor Harding is leading a council region that is booming.
Ipswich is the fastest growing city in Queensland and is expected to double in size over the next 15 years.
About 70 per cent of that growth is taking place in a corridor between Ipswich City and the new suburban development of Springfield, placing huge pressure on infrastructure, particularly public transport.
In the heart of Ipswich, Mayor Harding’s new eight storey council administration headquarters for about 800 staff is the centrepiece a $250 million redevelopment of the old city mall into what is now known as the Nicholas Street Precinct.
There is a large public plaza fronting the administration building, a city centre library and a busy entertainment hub.
A stone’s throw away is St Mary’s Church that was last month turned into a stunning night-time showpiece of SPARK Ipswich, the reimagined Ipswich Festival.
After dark, the works of some of south east Queensland’s best known artists were projected onto the iconic façade of St Mary’s, while the church was also opened each Friday, Saturday and Sunday night for tours and prayer.
Mayor Harding was a keen supporter of the artistic endeavour, working closely with Ipswich Catholic community priest, Franciscan Father Stephen Bliss – another example of how St Mary’s holds a special place in the life of the city’s mayor.
