Gold Logie winner Karl Stefanovic copped plenty of flak when he declared that his wife, Cassandra Thorburn, has the “best arse I have ever seen”.

Karl doesn’t mind talking frankly about the Thorburn family. When Cassandra’s father, Max Thorburn, was ejected from his first meeting as a newly elected Mildura Rural City councillor in December 2008, Karl joked about the antics of his father-in-law to a national audience on Nine’s Today show.

As of noon today, media of all persuasions will know a lot more about Mildura’s council courtesy of an extraordinary whistleblowing effort by another councillor with a strong media pedigree.

Vernon Knight AM JP is the father of the ABC’s Middle East correspondent Ben Knight.

After serving eight years on Mildura’s council he resigned in disgust two months ago. Today he has released this comprehensive 120-page report called “Mildura: too good to spoil!” It’s all nicely packaged up on a new website.

Victorian Deputy Premier Peter Ryan took time out from the crisis engulfing Victorian police commissioner Simon Overland and gave former Cr Knight a half-hour hearing last Tuesday to present his report.

The report goes chapter and verse into incidences of conflict of interest, inappropriate behaviour, inordinately large expense claims, planning controversies and the alleged failings of the existing legislative and regulatory tools to deal with code of conduct breaches.

Cr Knight did enjoy some early success when he engaged with those tools. After lodging a complaint, Cr Sue Nichols was placed on a six-month good behaviour bond for failing to declare a conflict of interest when she put up a motion in January 2009 calling for a new regional waste facility to be built at Mourquong, which is across the Victorian border in the NSW Shire of Wentworth.

The only problem here was that Cr Nichols double dips, serving on Wentworth Shire Council, which would obviously benefit from such a facility.

The other early scalp was Cr Mark Eckel who pleaded guilty in the Magistrates Court and ordered to pay $3000 for failing to declare he used to work for the community radio station run by Karl’s father-in-law.

Cr Thorburn is a very active media player as he also runs the Mildura Independent newspaper. A complaint was made that he was using inside information from council for his controversial editorials and Cr Eckel voted against taking any action without disclosing his past employment by Karl’s father-in-law. Amid of slew of other issues, former Cr Knight also raises that old chestnut of overseas councillor junkets to sister cities.

The Mildura councillors have given this a real work out over the past two years and ironically, Cr Eckels and Cr Nichols, are slated for another trip to Japan in October.

The report discloses some huge internet bills racked up on these overseas trips. Cr Eckel claimed $6667 for internet expenses on one trip to California and Cr Fiona Hilton-Wood slugged ratepayers with an internet bill of $11,246 after visiting Japan in 2009. This has only become public today.

Mildura’s CEO Mark Henderson doesn’t escape attention. He was the CEO of the bush-fire ravaged Murrindindi Shire in early 2009 who was savaged in the media for taking a two-week holiday shortly after the February 7 bushfires ripped through Kinglake.

Henderson subsequently moved to the other end of the state but will now be under fire again.

One of Vernon Knight’s revelations concerns a development matter where the group he worked for, Mallee Family Care, lodged a planning application for a new office development.

The only objector was the CEO’s secretary, who is married to a senior planning officer at Mildura. They lived across the road from the development and despite being an objector, the senior planning officer still handled the negotiations with the consultant claiming to be only wearing his planning officer hat. Oh dear.

There’s plenty more material such as that to chew over so check out the website, which only went live at noon today. King Karl should have a read and give his colourful father-in-law another mention on national television.

The whole episode will prove to be useful insight into governance issues in local government and it may well encourage councillors across Australia to follow Vernon Knight’s lead.

*Stephen Mayne is a Manningham City councillor who was not paid for this item