The man shot in the legs at Dickson pool last year just before his assailant crashed into the Jolimont Centre later killing himself, was not fit to be a public servant and should have been sacked for rigging a pool cleaning contract, according to the Disciplinary Appeal Committee.
The committee said the man, Geoffrey Patrick McGibbon, had put up a “”front man” to get a cleaning contract at Civic Olympic Pool. The front man, Alex Stevenson, did not have a clue how to clean a pool and tender documents were “”like Latin” to him.
Mr McGibbon had used pool employees to partly perform the contract without telling his boss, and that the contractor had employed Mr McGibbon’s wife without Mr McGibbon telling his boss.
The committee also attacked the credibility of a Liberal candidate for the ACT Legislative Assembly.
Mr McGibbon was the victim of a lover’s revenge attack in November last year. He was shot with a sawn-off shot gun between the legs, but had averted most of the blast. His assailant then drove into the Jolimont Centre causing an explosion.
Mr McGibbon was appealing against a decision demoting him from ASO3 “”pool manager” to the top of the ASO1 band for improper conduct between 1976 and 1983.
The committee said McGibbon should have been sacked and was not fit to be a public servant. However, it only had power to reduce penalties not increase them. But as Mr McGibbon had long left the Public Service and was unlikely to ever get another job in it, it was of no practical moment in this case.
Other Merit Protection Review Agency committees have criticised the inability to inflict a harsher penalty in appeal cases in the past.
The committee said a delay had been caused because the misconduct had not come to departmental notice until 1988 and that a police inquiry had first to be disposed of. Police pressed charges, but the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped them in October 1991, after ”Mr Stevenson indicated that he was no longer willing to adhere to his earlier statements”.
Mr McGibbon said the department had known about his wife being employed by the contractor. He called evidence from Harold Hird about a meeting at the pool in 1982 to support the claim. Mr Hird was an Independent Member of the ACT House of Assembly at the time and is now Liberal candidate for Ginninderra in the next ACT Legislative Assembly election.
However, the committee rejected Mr Hird’s evidence.
Mr Hird had said he had been at the pool with Mr and Mrs McGibbon when they had been interrupted by a departmental officer, a Mr Lalor, after which there was a conversation in which it had been revealed Mrs McGibbon had been employed by the contractor.
Mr Lalor, however, had been adamant the meeting had not taken place and had never met Mr Hird.
The committee why such a conversation would have been initiated by McGibbon in from of Mr Hird in the first place or why Mr Lalor would have interrupted them.
The committee found “”that the evidence of neither Mr Hird nor Mrs McGibbon can be relied upon, and accepts Mr Lalor’s evidence that the conversation did not take place”.