Council conflict

The issue of conflict of interest for Councillors (and Mayors) across SA is an absolute mess. Yes, conflict is a serious issue that needed to be dealt with; but it should have been done professionally and with input from members of the Local Government sector. The final solution (of what we now have to work with) should have been broadly reviewed by Councils before implementation.
I feel that the Minister for Local Government has been seriously let down by public servants who drafted the the conflict of interest provisions. The people who drafted it had absolutely no practical knowledge of how Councils operate procedurally. It's like getting a plumber to re-wire the electrical cables at home.
The Minister (who is a former Councillor) is sympathetic and understanding and I have been informed that all the problems will be resolved by changes to the regulations. That's a messy solution, but it's the only way to fix it.

This whole mess will take months to resolve.
Meanwhile we struggle on with an unworkable system.
My stance (personally) is to simply apply common sense in determining if a conflict is real.

What really annoys me is that there are no similar conflict of interest restrictions for our State politicians. They do and say as they wish; and generally behave badly.