THE public, and more particularly Newcastle ratepayers and targets of the Scott Neylon letters, are being asked to accept at face value the conclusion that City of Newcastle's investigation into its CEO Jeremy Bath was well founded and justifiable.
Carried out by external consultant Pinnacle Integrity, the code of conduct investigation found there was "insufficient evidence" that Mr Bath was involved in a misleading letter-writing campaign under his best mate Scott Neylon's name, or that he passed confidential information to his friend of 25 years, who has lived in Japan for decades.
It is an assertion that holds up a lot better if the majority of the Scott Neylon letters and comments, submitted over 13 years to publications across NSW, are discounted.
Which is exactly what the investigation did.
Only one of 19 letters submitted to the Newcastle Herald over nine years was examined.
The others were all ignored.
That wasn't the job of this investigation, to look at how those strands can be brought together to offer a complete picture.
It had two jobs.
Firstly, to investigate, following clarification from lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes, whether Mr Bath provided confidential council information to Mr Neylon, which was used in letters written to the Newcastle Herald.
And secondly, to examine a complaint made separately to the council by the president of the Newcastle Maritime Museum Bob Cook.
But one of the greatest ironies about the 42-page final investigation report released by the council in April, is that reading it has morphed into a discussion about what it does not say.
Crucially, what Mr Neylon did not say. Or maybe, it's more a case of what he was not asked. It's impossible to know.
The fact that he responded in writing two weeks after a series of questions were put to him by the investigator, accepting responsibility for penning the letters, ticked all the unchecked boxes for the investigator and City of Newcastle.
Far more serious, however, are the gaping holes in the selective narrative that critics are impatient for Mr Neylon to fill in.
You only have to look at the Newcastle Herald's Letters to the Editor page, traditionally recognised as a barometer of public opinion, to see there remains doubt about exactly what has taken place.
Critical of the limited investigation process, it's not surprising some are suspicious, and a host of crucial questions remain.
Why did Mr Neylon repeatedly lie about who he was?
There is simply no explanation for this in the final investigation report.
Despite his sudden compulsion to tell the truth, Mr Neylon has given no insight into the many inconsistencies in his correspondence over more than a decade.
The report states Mr Neylon was "transparent as to his identity", but it fails to address why he felt compelled to repeatedly lie about who he was and where he was from.
The Newcastle Herald published letters date back to 2017 and contain numerous falsehoods, including that 48-year-old Mr Neylon is a grandfather and a pensioner, that he is a regular user of council pools, that he lives in Mayfield West, Mayfield, Dudley or Stockton, and that he is a Newcastle ratepayer.
As well as claiming to be a pensioner and grandfather, Mr Neylon has written that he has a teenage daughter.
Then, the story goes, he lived next door to Mr Bath, then just weeks later claimed he lived on the other side of Mr Bath's house.
None of these things are true. He has lived in Japan for 30 years and is married to a Japanese woman.
What were his motives for masquerading as so many things he is not? Unfortunately, due to the investigation report's silence on the issue, we'll never know.
Was Mr Neylon asked? Did he refuse to answer?
Why did he invent so many different personas?
Should we believe him now?
Regardless of what's behind it, the prolonged silence has been deafening since Mr Neylon refused in July last year to answer the Herald's questions about the glaring inconsistencies.
And the double standard from the council that the community is expected to accept the investigation findings when the silence is so loud is even more disquieting.
It's a gaping hole in the narrative that the final investigation report does nothing to answer.
Why was only one letter investigated?
It's clear from Pinnacle Integrity's report that it was tasked with only investigating one unpublished letter.
In a press release issued with the investigation report in April, the council states that the process cleared Mr Bath of alleged wrongdoing.
Mr Bath, meanwhile, signalled at the same time, that "the report confirms what I have always said".
"I did not write letters to the Newcastle Herald published under the name of my friend Scott Neylon."
The council then added further weight to the findings, detailing its commitment to the "highest standards of integrity, transparency and procedural fairness".
Pinnacle Integrity went on explain its role as being to "establish the truth having regard to available evidence".
"It is a scrupulously objective, independent, and fair process," the firm said.
While championing the process and its outcome, there was not the same level of praise in the press release for Mr Cook, who lodged his code of conduct complaint against Mr Bath after being targeted by several Neylon letters.
In fact, all City of Newcastle had for the former councillor was criticism.
Mr Cook was accused of "leaking confidential information" about the investigation to the Newcastle Herald.
Council announced that "as a result of Mr Cook's repeated breaches of the Code of Conduct procedure", it had commenced the process to ban him from getting any future information regarding complaints.
But of far greater interest to Mr Cook was why the council decided not to investigate one of the letters he complained about.
The Herald reported last month that part of Mr Cook's complaint, which was initially sent to Cr Nelmes, was excluded from the inquiry. According to the final investigation report, the complaint about a 2019 Neylon letter was excluded under clause 4.4 of the investigation rules because it was lodged more than three months after the letter was published.
Clause 4.4 states "a code of conduct complaint must be made within three months of the alleged conduct occurring or within three months of the complainant becoming aware of the alleged conduct".
But Mr Cook had only just learnt of Mr Bath's relationship with Mr Neylon.
It's clear that the investigation completely ignored part of what Mr Cook asked it to do. Crucially, who made the decision to rule that part of the complaint out? And, more importantly, why?
There appears to be a whole lot of unanswered questions here.
Including why when a complaint was made to the Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig about the letter being "unjustly" thrown out, no action was taken.
Mr Hoenig, who has the power to have the investigation reviewed, ignored the Herald's questions on the matter.
They were simply dismissed as not worth answering.
Who sent the comments from ClubsNSW headquarters?
One of the biggest mysteries of them all, and where the Herald has been unable to get any answers.
At the same time, Mr Bath was steering the powerful lobby group's campaign against the proposed reforms.
There were two pro-clubs comments posted within a minute of each other on former NSW premier Bob Carr's blog Thoughtlines, under the names Scott Neylon and Austin Yule.
The matching IP address on both posts was assigned to ClubsNSW, and can be traced to its Sydney headquarters where Mr Bath was working at the time.
The email addresses supplied to make the posts have links to Mr Bath and former ClubsNSW head Anthony Ball.
The first post, made under the name Scott Neylon, provided an email address with the prefix 'InkermanStreet'.
Mr Bath's wife owned a property in Inkerman Street, Parramatta, at the time.
The second post was made a minute later from the same ClubsNSW IP address under the name Austin Yule and provided an email address with the prefix 'TheBalls17', which is linked to Mr Ball's wife. The couple also have a son named Austin.
Mr Neylon told Pinnacle Integrity that "it was more than 12 years ago and until the Herald reported it, I had forgotten about it".
"I don't recall the details, but I suspect I thought it was a bit of fun to have a go at the premier who actually introduced poker machines into pubs," he said.
Mr Bath, meanwhile, told the investigator that "until reported by the Newcastle Herald in late July, I had no recollection of any post from Scott on a blog site by Bob Carr, which may be on the basis that it was posted more than 12 years ago".
"I don't know if Scott posted it or someone else, only that it was not me," he said.
So who submitted the comments? Was Scott Neylon in Australia? More importantly, was he inside the Sydney headquarters of ClubsNSW on a Thursday afternoon in April, 2011?
Surely it can't be too hard to remember if he was in the country.
We're left to wonder again.
Why wasn't the Newcastle Herald contacted?
THE aim of the Scott Neylon letter-writing investigation appeared relatively simple.
Make "any such enquiries that may be reasonably necessary to establish the facts of the matter".
But the investigation ignored key evidence the Herald could have provided, because this newspaper was never contacted.
Scott Neylon submitted 19 letters to the Herald, eight of which have been published.
These were cross referenced in people search databases, which lead to further email and residential addresses.
None of this information was examined as part of the investigation, because it was never requested.
Why didn't Mr Bath stop his best mate writing false letters attacking Newcastle residents?
Set aside the debate about who authored the letters.
When first contacted about letters sent to the Herald under the name Scott Neylon, Mr Bath said last year that he was aware of them.
"And yes I'm aware of his letters. Not sure if I'm aware of all but I've seen maybe half a dozen in the Herald," Mr Bath said.
Some members of the public have been rightly miffed.
As Herald letter writer Dave McTaggart wrote in a contribution published on Tuesday: "As a contributor to this page for more than 20 years I believe that Jeremy Bath had, at the very least, an obligation to advise the editor that his bestie's letters contained many misrepresentations."
Mr Bath, Newcastle's highest paid public servant entrusted with running our city's council, is yet to offer an explanation for his silence while his mate used this masthead to take aim at Mr Bath's critics while lying about his identity.
Dave goes on to ask: "Did anyone ever believe the investigation was going to get to the truth?"
It's a great question.
What we do know is the council investigation is over and Mr Hoenig isn't interested in having it reviewed.
Which means it's not certain we'll ever know much else.
And again we're left questioning why.
Donna.page@newcastleherald.com.au
