Long-time Golden Plains councillor Des Phelan steps down

DES Phelan has dedicated most of his life to public service.

The long-serving councillor has been in office with first the Shire of Grenville and then Golden Plains Shire for 30 of the past 40 years, including eight terms as mayor, but decided not to contest his seat at this year’s local government elections.

“I’ll be 71 next month so I thought ‘well, bugger it, I’ll let the young ones have a go’, but the people who are nominating are nearly as old as me,” he quipped.

Mr Phelan – who has lived in what is now the Golden Plains Shire his entire life – has also served for more than 35 years as Grenville Group Officer with the CFA, and received the CFA’s Outstanding Service Medal in 2016.

His entry into the Shire of Grenville council in 1979 was an unconventional one.

“In those days you had ridings, you see, and the guy who was in the riding here retired,” Mr Phelan said.

“You had to have 10 signatures in those days to nominate – you couldn’t just nominate yourself – and I think it was 50 bucks.

“And my next-door neighbour arrived with 12 signatures and 50 bucks and said ‘you’re running for council’, so that’s how it started.”

Elected unopposed, Mr Phelan said he knew little about the roles and responsibilities of a councillor when he first took office as a 30-year-old.

“I thought they graded roads and built footpaths – that’s all they did in those days, they didn’t even pick up the garbage.”

Mr Phelan’s first term as mayor (or president, as it was known in the Shire of Grenville at the time) coincided with the Cain Labor Government’s attempts in the mid-1980s to amalgamate Victoria’s many councils “from 210 to not many at all”, and the long and protracted battle was a formative experience.

“The council wanted to fight it because we had no debt, we had the lowest rates in Victoria, and all our superannuation and long-service leave was paid up,” he said.

“So we fought it. I led the group, with help from Melbourne, and we fought for 18 months ‘til we beat them.

“So, in that 18 months I learnt so much about local government, and met so many people right across the board, so it was good.

“We employed international public relations to run our campaign, I worked with some really smart operators, worked with the press, politicians… I learnt a lot about how the world works.”

The Shire of Grenville Council was unable to repeat their success when the Kennett Liberal Government again tried amalgamation in 1994, as the Liberal Party had the numbers to force through changes to the Local Government Act.

“We worked on a stalling process, and we won, but when Kennett came along, he had power in both houses, so they changed the act so we couldn’t fight them the same way; we had no hope,” Mr Phelan said.

Mr Phelan was one of four Shire of Grenville councillors elected to the council of the new Golden Plains Shire (which also took in the shires of Bannockburn, Leigh and part of the Shire of Buninyong) in 1996 and was chosen by his peers as the municipality’s first mayor.

He said the early years of the new Shire were tough, not the least because of the territorial attitudes of some of the councillors towards their former shires.

“We had to build it into one municipality, and that was a bit difficult, but it worked out,” Mr Phelan said.

“I think we became really successful right up until now and we’ve done a really good job because of the dynamics of the municipality, with the heavily populated area around Bannockburn and the heavily populated area in the north, and the farmers in the middle.

“I hear some people say ‘we’ve got to get industry’ – we’ve got one of the best farming industries in Victoria, and we supply all goods. Some grain, lamb, wool, beef, eggs, chickens, goats; we do it all, and they need to be supported, as it’s an industry that’s really thriving right now.”

Mr Phelan was unsuccessful in holding his seat in 2002 – “I was probably disappointed I wasn’t on it (the council) for a month, but then you forget about it and move on with your life”, but Kevin Knight’s retirement in 2012 provided an opportunity.

“Kevin said to me ‘you’ll have to stand again’ and I said ‘no, I don’t really want to, I’m out of it now’. He said ‘no, we need a representative up this end’ because I’m the only councillor in Rokewood, or I was, so I stood and got up.”

He lists building Delacombe without going into debt while with the Shire of Grenville as one of his proudest achievements, as well as the Golden Plains Shire building “really good infrastructure”, such as the multi-purpose room in Bannockburn.

“We’ve been able to achieve most things,” Mr Phelan said.

He also prided himself on his ability to be decisive as a councillor.

“I’ve always believed that you have community consultation, and I think you should have it and it’s a great thing, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to walk away and make a decision that’s going to benefit the whole municipality, not just one set of the people, and in a 2700-square-mile municipality, that’s really hard to do.”