The Court held that a municipal monitor's failure to comply with the procedural fairness requirements in s 181C of the Local Government Act 2020 (Vic) — specifically, failing to provide a councillor with sufficient details of proposed adverse findings and an opportunity to respond — invalidates the monitor's report, with the consequence that the statutory precondition in s 229A(2)(a) for the Minister's recommendation to suspend a councillor is not fulfilled. The Court rejected the Minister's argument that the notification and response process under s 229A(2)(d)-(e) constituted a 'second round' of procedural fairness capable of curing defects in the monitor's process, finding that the Act locates the principal procedural safeguards at the monitor stage and contains no mechanism for the Minister to remedy non-compliance. While the Court found the monitor's report otherwise met the substantive requirements of s 229A(2)(a) — including that 'serious risk' carries its ordinary meaning and does not require medical evidence, sole causation, or extraordinary conduct — the procedural deficiencies in failing to particularise the social media statements characterised as racist, homophobic and transphobic, and in failing to disclose certain other proposed adverse findings, rendered the report invalid and the suspension order unlawful.
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