Call for Public Enquiry into Lane Cove Council

Manipulation of CPI

One of the obligations of the councillors when determining the viability of a major project, is its full Life Cycle impact. This is done through the Long Term Finance Plan (LTFP). The final LTFP used to approve the Sports and Rec centre (Aug 2022) had significant errors and removal of previously reported information, giving rise to question if the council provided a false and incomplete LTFP, which artificially showed a better council performance, in order to gain approval of the proposal to construct a Sports and Recreation Centre.

The Lane Cove Council departed from using the RBA CPI forecasts as previously done, and used a CPI of 2%, 3 times lower than the RBA upper bound of 6%, when the actual CPI was 6.1%. This would grossly misrepresent the performance forecasts of the council.

The Long Term Financial Plan for 2022 handling of CPI is shown in the image.

As described below, it is reasonable to question if the council intentionally used a low home-grown CPI which would falsely show a better performance, to mislead the decision makers and public so as to gain approval for the proposal.

  1. The council use of a CPI of 2%. 3 times lower than RBA upper bound of 6%, is highly questionable, particularly in view of the fact that the real CPI was around 6.1% in Aug 2022 (ref: ABS CPI 27/7/2022).


  2. The CPI of Australia cannot be controlled by a council. While it can be influenced by the RBA, even the RBA is unable to fix its value. It is highly questionable that the council departed from the RBA forecast to a home-grown CPI value. It is reasonable to question if the CPI value was reduced to artificially lower the revenue and expenditure impacts on the LTFP to gain approval of the proposal.


  3. The decision to depart from using the RBA forecasts as previously used, must be intentional and cannot be an error.


  4. The reason given for departing from the RBA forecast, is that “we have factored in efficiency savings in our forecast expenditure”. Efficiency saving within the council does not affect Australian CPI in any way. This is a false statement.


  5. Furthermore, efficiency savings mentioned above would already be reflected in the expenditure section of the LTFP. Therefore, this would be a double provisioning of these unsubstantiated savings, invalidating the LTFP.

The public is unable to trust the council to provide accurate and complete information suitable for decision making.

It is reasonable to conclude that there is prima facie evidence that there has been corrupt conduct as defined in ICAC Act 1988 No 35, sect 8, 1(a), (b) and (c). 

We ask that the Long Term Financial Plan for 2022 is included in the scope of the Public Enquiry.

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