Maverick Queensland Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller has called on the remaining Ipswich City Councillors to "shut up" and "get out of Ipswich" as the state government passed laws to sack the council on Tuesday.
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Fifteen people connected to the council, including former mayors Paul Pisasale and Andrew Antoniolli, have been charged with 86 criminal offences in a highly publicised corruption scandal.
Following a damning report from Queensland's corruption watchdog, the state government has introduced laws to sack the council entirely, rushing them through parliament on Tuesday to come into effect on Wednesday.
Ms Miller, the Labor MP for the Ipswich-based seat of Bundamba, has been vocal for some time about corruption allegations against the council, and told parliament she had been personally harassed and had her political career derailed because of her public comments.
The remaining councillors who have not been accused of any wrongdoing spent Tuesday cleaning out their offices, and have claimed their sacking is unfair because they did nothing wrong.
But Ms Miller claimed they were "silent numpties" who allowed corruption to fester.
"I call on the councillors of Ipswich to now accept their fate and shut up," Ms Miller told parliament.
"We don't want those councillors to suddenly form an opposition group and gripe in the media, because they were silent when they had the opportunity to say something."
Under the changes administrators will be appointed to run the council until the next regular local government elections in 2020.
Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe told parliament the investigation by the corruption watchdog had found there was no way for the council to continue in its current form.
"Suspected official corruption, improper use of power and influence for personal benefit, and a lack of accountability for public resources, were just some of (the report's) findings," Mr Hinchliffe said.
"The people of Ipswich deserve better, and they will get much better under the arrangements we're putting in place."
The LNP opposition supported the laws, but pushed back against the government's move to rush them through in a single day, with Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington accusing Labor of trying to clean up a "mess" of its own creation.
The LNP moved a last-minute motion to identify Ipswich as a "Labor council" in the bill's official title but it was voted down.
Australian Associated Press
