Adrian Raedel Tells All

As election day edges closer, Adrian Raedel, a candidate for City of Moreton Bay Division 12, bared all in a candid podcast interview with JtA NEWS. Raedel, known for his unwavering dedication to the community, assured that no topic was off-limits in the discussion.

Reflecting on his journey from growing up in the vicinity of Caboolture to becoming the inaugural councillor for Division 12, Raedel shared both the triumphs and challenges he faced along the way.

“I’m not going to hide, I’m not going to go away if I lose,” affirmed Raedel when questioned about his future plans, emphasising his steadfast commitment to serving his community regardless of election outcomes.

Raedel’s renowned initiatives, such as organising free family events like movie nights and Easter egg hunts, underscore his deep-rooted connection to the community. When asked whether he would continue these activities if not elected, Raedel’s response was unequivocal: “Sure, I’ll be a bit sad, that’s fine, but I will still be one hundred percent behind the events that occur here.”

Throughout the interview, Raedel elaborated on how his involvement in community events facilitated accessibility as a councillor, enabling him to address issues and resolve constituents’ concerns effectively.

Delving into his achievements within Division 12, Raedel shed light on the efforts behind significant projects like establishing Woodford’s visitor information centre, developing the Wamuran Rail Trail, and enhancing CREEC with an all-abilities playground.

However, the interview delved beyond fluff, addressing pressing issues such as the need for a planning scheme reset to align with evolving community needs. Raedel emphasised the importance of transparency, even when faced with uncomfortable truths, citing his own experience with legal scrutiny.

Raedel openly discussed the distressing ordeal of facing a corruption charge related to a house deal with a developer. Recounting the harrowing experience of police intervention and subsequent stress, Raedel highlighted the toll it took on his family, including a failed pregnancy they attribute to the ordeal.

Despite the adversity, Raedel remained resolute, opting for transparency by publicly disclosing the situation to Division 12 residents.

“Many people want to know what’s affecting them, what’s affecting their friends, what’s affecting other people in the community,” explained Raedel, reflecting on his decision to address the charge openly.

Ultimately, it was proven that Raedel never lived “rent free”, could have rented under an ordinary arrangement cheaper and easier, and paid evaluated market value for the house.

The Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) never provided evidence and eventually dropped the case.

Even amidst threats of reprisal, Raedel persisted in supporting the community and organising events. Looking forward, Raedel reaffirmed his commitment to accessibility, pledging to remain open to media engagement despite past discrepancies in reporting.

As the election approaches, Adrian Raedel stands as a testament to resilience, transparency, and unwavering dedication to community service, promising to continue serving Division 12 with integrity and accessibility, regardless of the outcome.

Full JtA NEWS Podcast Transcript

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Thank you very much for your company. You’re listening to a JtA news podcast. I’m Andrew McCarthy-Wood, and I am with Adrian Raedel. He’s the guest today, and we’re going to be having a detailed conversation. Adrian, how are you?

Adrian Raedel:
Oh, it’s a great morning actually.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Adrian, it’s an election period right now. The polls run in a couple of days away, or the final poll. There’s been a pre-poll and only two locations for the whole of Division 12, 3.

Adrian Raedel:
And Division 2.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And 2.

Adrian Raedel:
It’s absolutely been crazy. So we’re looking at 2,000 people a day going to those pre-polls. It’s been pretty full on.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
There’s been a lot of questions that have been coming out in relation to you. So what we need to do is just paint a bit of a picture, disclose context, and be completely transparent. So to anybody listening to this, you might want to stay around and listen right through to the end because Adrian’s agreed to have a no bars held conversation. Is that right?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, that’s correct.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Okay, so first of all, we’ve known each other for a lot of years.

Adrian Raedel:
We have. We go right back to-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
When we’re both in business?

Adrian Raedel:
Both in business, yeah.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You were a songwriter, and that’s how we first came into contact with each other, the Caboolture days.

Adrian Raedel:
Over at Syd-Beck, the Caboolture [inaudible 00:01:21], I think.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
That’s exactly right. That’s where you were. Along that journey, I got to know your family quite well, particularly your late mum.

Adrian Raedel:
You did. You did. There’s a story.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, there’s a story. We will talk about that. So before we just jump straight to you became a councillor for Division 12, you were the first councillor for Division 12 under the Moreton Bay regional council at the time. As the amalgamation happened, Caboolture, Redcliffe, and Pine Rivers were put together.

Adrian Raedel:
Correct. So the only new councillor. All the others were previous councils for the different areas.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, right. So just before we get to that, your growing up, tell us all about that.

Adrian Raedel:
I grew up in Beachmere, and it was a fantastic place to grow up. We got to take the canoes out and the boats out and muck around in the water, go fishing all the time. But Mum and Dad had a landscaping yard in Caboolture, so we spent most of our school holidays at the landscaping yard, either helping out or getting under their feet while they were trying to work.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, you’ve got two young boys in the house, so that’s karma, right?

Adrian Raedel:
I do know a little bit more about that now. But yes, so we got to, I guess, explore Caboolture as well, so Lagoon Creek and also back there is something grand that we also got to play around in, brand new machinery.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, Lagoon Creek. So you’d remember, I know it was right behind that landscaping yard. I’d often ride my bike, and you’d find yourself on the other side on Tomlinson Road. You could cut through that creek, but sometimes the water would be running and you’d have to hold your bike up above your head.

Adrian Raedel:
Yep, you would, and it was a great little creek because right at the back of the landscaping yard was where the creek actually runs through in behind Missionary Parade and Industry Drive. We used to go down there and from time to time, Mum and Dad would have 44-gallon drums that they’d be using for something, plastic ones. And we’d cut them in half and have little canoes and be able to canoe down the creek, and then other times the creek would be that dry that you could skip from one side to the other. We’d make cubby houses down there and bow and arrows out of lantana and all sorts of stuff. It was a great place to grow up really. It was at Mum and Dad’s business first. It was still a fantastic place to grow up.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So you were at Seabeck. They had a Caboolture business enterprise, and you would remember those Seabeck breakfasts with Dennis Chiron and-

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, Miran and everybody’s prawns.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, yeah. Because I remember you were at those events, and then also we had Commerce Caboolture. You were involved in quite a few other community organisations back then too, yeah?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, back then I used to attend the Caboolture, and I became the president of Apex at Caboolture there and we grew. So that club, when I joined, only had about six members that were still under the age limit. So we grew that, myself and a couple of others, Mark Perkins. He’s out at the Showgrounds. We grew that up to about 40 people. It was a fantastic little organisation to be a part of and to grow, and we did some fantastic stuff out of Grindey. The other country music festival was on, Apex and the Show Society and the Rodeo Association, I think. We used to do the bar. We used to have a great time doing that. And then the money that we raised at Apex would go to a community group that needed it or one of the community projects like the hospital garden and that kind of stuff.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I remember distinctly during those times, you often looked like you had the ass hanging out of your pants, and I also remember the vehicle that you drove. It really struck me because we both… I think that’s why we hit it off, and again, we just have to be absolutely transparent in this because there are a lot of things being thrown around online, as you can these days because we go back to a time before that. But it always struck me as we would cross paths, doing different community events and things like that. You would always throw everything you had, including every bit of money that you had, into these events and what you were getting up to. And sometimes that didn’t necessarily leave a whole lot for you to actually live.
Can you just tell me a little bit about, now I never actually witnessed this, but just through conversations, it’s bound to come up. So I’m aware that there was some pretty interesting living arrangements along the way.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, there are times sometimes when people don’t pay you, and there are times when yes, I used to spend my money on different community events and being out there and dreaming and being a part of the community. So at one point, my living arrangements was living in my shed. Money wasn’t there, so yeah, I set up my shed for a period of time until I got back. I guess got back on my feet is not quite the right word, but got back going. Look, it wasn’t a bad place to stay but probably wasn’t the best place.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Let’s move forward a little bit now to the election itself, with the formation of the Moreton Bay region. You ran, if I remember correctly, on a mantra of you wanted a fresh new approach, and you wanted to serve. You actually wanted to serve the people of the newly formed Division 12.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, I did because it certainly was something that I was passionate about. I’d always been passionate about a community, and I just felt that in Division 12, which travels everywhere from Elimbah to Woodford down to WA train station. The councillor that got elected would need to, especially in that newly amalgamated council, where everything was up in the air, would need to bring it together. And that was I guess the mantra that I had was to serve the community, to look after them, to take them through this amalgamation period, and make sure that there was still that sense of community. We tried to bring that along with the movie nights and the Easter egg hunts and all of that stuff that we did. But also-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, we want to talk about those Easter egg hunts and those events that you did put on, but let’s just go back to those early days. Something that’s remained very, very consistent, I have practised journalism pretty well all the way through, and in the role of journalism, have you always got a free ride?

Adrian Raedel:
No.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, this is going to bring us to an interesting conversation. We really do need to talk about this because this goes to the heart of a lot of the discussions that are in the community at the moment. So I remember very clearly, and I’m sure that you probably remember even clearer than I, I got on very, very well with your mum.

Adrian Raedel:
You did.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Love her dearly, your late mum, absolutely. And this was actually a testament to her because we had a massive, massive difference of views as to how maybe some things should be approached. There’s this one particular story about you took a pay rise.

Adrian Raedel:
I did.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Along with all of the other councillors. You actually voted for it, and I had a paper circulation that covered Kilcoy, Woodford, Wamuran, Elimbah. You’re heartland here.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now, you talked about your parents’ business. The agreement with your mum at the time was that she took care of all of the distribution in the Elimbah area, so we used Australia Post for Kilcoy, Woodford, Wamuran, and then she took care of Elimbah. Now when she saw the article that absolutely smashed up her son for taking a pay rise, we had a very, very stern conversation because she was refusing to distribute a article that essentially went after her son. Would that be a fair description of that?

Adrian Raedel:
And she didn’t deliver it, did she?

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
No, she didn’t, she didn’t. And we didn’t talk for a week because then I was back there with the next circulation for her to distribute. But one of the great things with her is that she didn’t hold anything personal there, and there was a greater picture there. I think, if anything, there was a mutual respect. I definitely had respect for her in relation to her loyalty to her son, and she probably had respect for me because the truth is the truth and that’s what was going to get told.

Adrian Raedel:
Correct. And I think you still had to [inaudible 00:10:27], but Mum certainly refused to do it, I think.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, we found other avenues.

Adrian Raedel:
It wasn’t just in Tarji. You’re a friend, but you’ve probably always been a friend when it comes to journalism. You’ve been quite fair, but certainly when there’s been issues, you’ve reported it and it’s been sometimes a bitter and hard pill to swallow, but that’s how it is. I’ve always made sure with you or any other journalist, have made myself available to them.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And that’s evident because there are those articles that are published. Some have really been probably hard for you to endure through, and we are going to come to some of those articles all the way through. And it’s something that greatly concerns me right now, but I think the Moreton Bay region and even more so the northern area of the Moreton Bay region is absolutely, fundamentally lacking in good, rigorous, well-funded journalism. It needs that to come back somehow, and it needs to be competitive journalism too. It’s not good having one masthead, for a better term, that can maybe sometimes get it wrong and be unchecked. So you would remember the good old days of the Caboolture News, Northern Herald, the Northern Times.

Adrian Raedel:
The Caboolture Herald?

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yep.

Adrian Raedel:
Northern Times, the Caboolture News, and then you were doing your-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Community News and Views.

Adrian Raedel:
Community News and Views, that’s right. And then there were a couple others around as well.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, exactly right. And not only would you keep those that needed to be kept in check, but you actually kept each other in check as well because there was a competitiveness to investigate and also apply critical thinking when you saw others got stories and all of that sort of stuff. It really appears like we’re lacking that now, but going back through that time, I know firsthand, whether people believe this or not, it is actually on the record, but you always made yourself available to us. And it was always evident that you made yourself available to others, even though those conversations might’ve been uncomfortable at times. So they did awesome things, right?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, and I guess that was a time when you folks didn’t just print press releases. It was a time when they wanted to seek comment from councillors, and if you hid, that wasn’t doing anybody any favours. It wasn’t getting the positive out there, it wasn’t getting your side out there, and if you didn’t do it, in my view you shouldn’t have got elected because that’s part of what the job description was and should be. So if we don’t have that combative in that region, it’s a bit of a worry that we won’t see that accountability ever again.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So before we get into the stuff that everybody’s probably actually listening to this for, I still want to look at what you actually achieved as the councillor for Division 12. And I’ll just recount a story. This probably actually describes Adrian pretty well. If there was something to do for the community, there wasn’t much that was going to get in the way of that happening, but Woodford. There’s two main stories that just come straight to my mind. One is the visitor information centre, which we’re going to talk about first up, and the other is we had a major flooding incident.
But first of all, there was no visitor information centre, and the community wanted it. And Adrian was going to deliver it. How the hell did he do that?

Adrian Raedel:
So a lot of the trouble [inaudible 00:14:13] counselled me and said, “We need a visitor information centre.” They’d been around Australia several times, and they thought that Woodford lacked it. And they were willing to volunteer at it and make it work, make it run. But what we didn’t have was anywhere to put it, so I still had my sticker van-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Anywhere to put it? You didn’t have a visitor information centre physically either, right?

Adrian Raedel:
We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have the land, we didn’t have anything. It was virtually nothing. So I still had my sticker van, and so after some agreement, we then-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Explain the sticker van for a moment and what it was because you were a sign writer, yeah?

Adrian Raedel:
I was a sign writer. So to make ends meet, I used to do stickers and I used to take this sticker van… It looked like a food van. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a food truck or a food trailer. But in it was my computers, my cutters, and my vinyls, and I would drag it down to Moreford Road and cut stickers for people or take it to events like the Farm Fantastic and cut stickers for people there. And it wasn’t being used because obviously I was a councillor.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
A councillor in the area.

Adrian Raedel:
So I got an agreement to put it where it went, which is right next to the water tower, which is where the visitor information centre is now. But one afternoon, we decided it was time to take it out there, and this sticker van had sat around for a couple of years.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
It was very ready to get out there. We had no lights.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
No, really? No, it wasn’t.

Adrian Raedel:
It was pretty gross.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I was with you when this thing got moved, and I believe there was-

Adrian Raedel:
It was pretty heavy though. It was pretty heavy. But we got out there, but it was the middle of the-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, we can talk about this now because a police officer’s not around, but he made sure you were there to jam when he knew this thing was going to get moved.

Adrian Raedel:
He did, and then he met us there.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
He did. He absolutely did, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
He was just there so that he would… So he ministered to make sure we’re all good, which was nice of him to do that. But all of a sudden, this storm comes over and it’s a lightning storm.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, I remember it.

Adrian Raedel:
There’s lightning bolts going everywhere. We’re trying to get this caravan on the footpath in front of the water tower where it was going to be housed, where it was going to stay. Next minute, the policeman comes along, “You guy all right? Guys, so you’re all good?” “Yeah, yep.” “You guys, this lightning stuff’s getting quite out of hand here.”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yep, you’re hanging on to a big metal structure here. You’re right next to the tallest thing in this town.

Adrian Raedel:
It had antennas on it.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And there was a lightning storm, but we couldn’t leave at that time because we had to get the wheels off, had to be up on blocks. And it had to be safe because it was going into a public place, so we had to stay committed to that.

Adrian Raedel:
And we were actually drowned rats by the end of that.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, absolutely.

Adrian Raedel:
And there was literally lightning strikes everywhere around that spot, luckily not just there. It was a lot of fun, and it served a purpose because so many visitors ended up going through that sticker van as the visitor information centre.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, if I remember correctly, and I think you just mentioned this, but essentially it had come up in council and they’re like, “Nah, nah, nah.” You’re like, “Okay, if I can put a temporary thing there for the visitor information centre, if they can then run a log and they can meet a target, then the deal is you’ve got to build it.” Is that-

Adrian Raedel:
That’s correct. It was the only way, yeah, was to do a trial, and they, Ted and Noah and Orville and Tess kept a log. And it turned out to be one of the biggest visitor information centres, as far as visitor numbers, that Moreton Bay has or had.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And what’s standing there right now? Not your sticker van.

Adrian Raedel:
Not my sticker van. We ended up getting a purpose-built cabin that we fit in with the surrounding area that looks appropriate, looks the part, and it became the visitor information centre. Just getting that cabin there or that visitor information centre, that building, was quite amazing in itself because in the meantime, the state government had popped out the election in 2012 and moved it out. So the bureaucrats were doing the budget and they’d actually ripped it out of the budget. I had to go back and fight to put it back in because it was too close to budget time coming down, that that fight ended up… And I’ll give this CEO to Jeeves. He gave me a promise that he would fund it in the first quarter after the budget was worked out, and I already have his go at that and he did.
He funded it, and then we had the fun of getting it through main roads, which is another story all in itself because they couldn’t understand why there’s a round building with a square footprint. They couldn’t figure out what that was, but when she came down on us, she figured out it was a water tower.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, while we’re talking about Woodford because there is so much of the region that you did have an impact on, but just the floods, what we found out through those floods was that Woodford becomes an island, right?

Adrian Raedel:
It does.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And you and I found ourselves on that island.

Adrian Raedel:
We did. It was pretty amazing to see [inaudible 00:19:21] though. So it was the big floods, 2011. Turned out council didn’t have much flood response or a backup response at all. What we saw was the Woodford community stand up. So all of a sudden, there was no way in and out of Woodford, particularly towards Kilcoy. We could still get through after the event, after the wall to Caboolture, but that took a little while to happen too. In the days afterward, it stayed cut off from Kilcoy for I think a week, week and a half, something like that.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, we had issues with it had flooded so badly that they were concerned that the bitumen had lifted with water under it.

Adrian Raedel:
There were engineers. Yeah, I remember, but even before that, it was so flooded that volunteers from Woodford were taking their boats to ferry people and food and smokes and all the other stuff, necessities of life, across from Woodford to Kilcoy. It was amazing to see the Woodford community set up like that, but all of a sudden we figured out there was no evacuation centre. There was nowhere for those people in Kilcoy to stay. So we had to open up that evacuation centre, and the community did it very, very fast, very quickly. Mattresses and pillows came from the prisons.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
It was amazing, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
They were looking for even a TV. There was nothing set up for a TV just to keep an eye on where it was going, what was happening in the floods.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And you got to remember this was back in a time when social media, it existed, but it wasn’t like it is today.

Adrian Raedel:
Not at all.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And Internet connectivity was even less than what it was today.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, well, in the hallway it was terrible. It was non-existent. We also had a big gateway. They had shut the gateway off. Remember how they completely shut it off?

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, that’s right.

Adrian Raedel:
So that lasted for days. That was exactly the scenarios we could-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
If I remember correctly, the Woolworths had only just opened.

Adrian Raedel:
Actually yes.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And they ended up contributing a whole lot of water because there was water for people to be able to drink.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, a whole pallet of water came, and inside the hall we set up a clothing and necessities, I guess, depot, where they put together packs and sent them out all over the place to look after people. But they needed food to feed all these people that were at the evacuation centre. I think at one stage it was up 40, 50 people staying in Woodford Hall. The community again, they put on barbecues. They cooked up meals, they dropped them off. IGA helped with food, Woolworths helped with food, and then at a point, council got to help contribute because there was nothing anywhere. So then council ended up having some of the food, just trying to help people get through that period. It was amazing.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah. You always light up whenever you start talking about any event where community comes together, and you physically see that. And we’ll talk about some more of that shortly, but what are some of the other sort of big achievements that you recall in your time as the council for Division 12?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, we’ve had some different events, but I’ve got to say probably one of my biggest achievements is probably the old Billy’s playground at Creek. That came about through-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, you bloody dragged me into that one as well, doing videos. I remember back in the day Jenny Roberts.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, Jenny Roberts and-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, Jenny. I’m not sure which one, but yeah, you had quite a few parchment people that were involved in this. You’re getting onto me. Come on.

Adrian Raedel:
So Jenny Bauer or Jenny Roberts, she saw me and said, “We need an all girlies playground. We don’t have one. There’s not one in Moreton Bay anywhere. There’s one at Landsborough, and at that stage it was-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You and I took a drive and went and looked at it.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, up at Landsborough there. The ladies want this amazing park, but we wanted to do one better. There was not one in Moreton Bay, and we had to find a location. We looked at a number of locations, and I guess the creek location is probably the most central we could get to Moreton Bay because the geographical centre of Moreton Bay’s just on the other side of the creek at [inaudible 00:23:48]. And Rotary got together and Jenny and myself and council and other community groups all got together to try and make it happen. In the end, we got there.
We had the Ryan’s contribute to it, the Rotary contributed to it. Council did the insulation and did a fair whack of it as well. To get that project going, we’re not talking small bills, and the community groups really that contributed, they just did an amazing job. I was going to do presentations at Lyons and at Rotary and talk to the other community groups just to show them the idea and see if they wanted to be involved, and to their credit, one of them did. Lyons, I can’t remember their spend, but it was 20 grand that they spent on different pieces of equipment that we installed as council.
But that park is going on, to see so many visitors through. Creek is a wonderful facility, but we weren’t getting the number of kids coming through, where they could learn about the environment, where they could about all of that stuff. So I went to the Friends of Creek, who at that stage were running Creek and had a big interest in it. And they were somewhat reluctant, and I get it. They were reluctant to put a playground in it, but the thing is if you get the brothers and sisters of people come to that facility, if you get the mums and dads learn that it’s there, then they’re going to come and do other activities there. And we saw that. They would come through the environmental centre and have a walk. It was quite amazing to see the transition across. After a little while, after it was there and we put it up, the Friends of Creek actually were very appreciate of that.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, it’s interesting that you figured that out because I remember reading an article some time ago about the coral reef, and it’s been widely reported that it’s been in decline. One of the things that experts have said is well, you need to create ecotourism. You need tourism because the more that people are actually coming out and enjoying this, the more they’ll care about it. The more you’ll naturally then end up with attention and funding to look after an asset like that. So that’s really what you found at Creek, yeah?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, that was the amazing part of Creek. The numbers of people going through Creek just skyrocketed after that playground went in. And then we added the lines in there with the coffee and off to the side, the little café, and that raises money as well. But it really does. If people have a coffee in their hand, and you go down and have a look, mums and dads have coffees. But it’s not just this mum and dad, it’s like three or four mums and dads who’ve got their coffees and there the Rotary are watching their kids. And they’re all talking about the community. They’re all having this interaction about, “How’s life with you? What do you do? How many kids? Where do your kids go to school?” All that stuff that probably doesn’t take place these days as much as it used to, and it’s pretty interesting to watch. And it has really put Creek on the map.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
What are some of the other things that you look back on now and you’re so happy to see that it’s delivered? The Rail Trail.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Because I got dragged into that. Actually I was working for 451 ITV, which is Scottie Lackman. He did an interview with you.

Adrian Raedel:
He didn’t.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And that was as the first stage of the Rail Trail got open. But there’s quite a backstory as to how that even-

Adrian Raedel:
Ah, yeah, that was-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I think you’re about to talk about state government again.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah. Depending on what happens on Saturday, I may need to work with some of these guys again, but that was an interesting story too. The state government, they kept this railway line to Werin. They pretty much got rid of some of the stuff and [inaudible 00:27:45] the parcels out to Woodford. So that’s going to be a tricky exercise to get it further, but it’s there and it can be done.
We had to convince the state that this would make a great rail trail, and they kept it there for Caboolture West to use as a transport corridor. So it just sat there, and the odd person would use it but it was very hard. You try to ride down a railway line and experience goes dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah. And I remember because I was silly enough to do that. You had little bridges where bits and pieces of it had fallen away, and if you were on a bike, you needed to be aware of those because you’re going to hurt yourself.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, yeah, and even walking. But anyway, we went to the state and said, “Look, this would make a great rail trail. We want to do it.” The state was somewhat reluctant. They wanted to keep it. Anyway, there was a change of government, and there was an assistant… No, I think it was a fill-in transport minister, and eventually after a long period of time, we got them to sign off on it. It was actually just lucky that that fill-in minister was who he was.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Who was he?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t tell you that. Nah, I probably should. Andrew Fowe.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Andrew Fowe, yeah, he got on board with you.

Adrian Raedel:
He’s the fill-in minister. He actually got on board and we got it through. That was the easy bit as it turns out because then we had to build it.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
This is true.

Adrian Raedel:
So we had to fund it and build it, and by that stage, the government had changed again. And the state government gave us funding to do up the case study for it, $150,000. So we did that, we finally got that, and then we figured out how much it was going to cost. People at that stage were apprehensive of spending all this money on the rail trail. “No one’s going to use it. No one’s going to use it,” was sort of what was being thrown at us. But you know what? It’s been one of the most amazing things that we did because the amount of people that use it. So you’ve got mums and dads who use it just for exercise, use it to walk, exercise and ride. You’ve got people who jump on their scooters and jam through there, and they screen to Caboolture, jump on the train, they go to work. You have people rollerblading. I’ve seen people rollerblading all the way from Caboolture to Wam.
But probably the other thing that’s more important is the kids come from Ranger Estate, and they’re invited to go to school. It’s not wearing on the highway. You’re using that, and it’s safe. Ironically, they just did a bit of a look at it, but there are people who live in Ranger, and it went. They have scooters like elderly people, mobility scooters, and they figured out that on a full charge, they can charge their scooter up and get from Wamuran to Caboolture. They can do their shopping, they can have a bit of lunch, do whatever they need to do, go and do their medical appointment, they can jump back on the mobility scooter and be back at home.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Safely?

Adrian Raedel:
Yep, and still be there in time. So it’s been amazing. That was never something that I actually thought about, but I guess mobility scooters have also changed where their charge lasts much longer.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Lithium batteries.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, it’s been amazing to see that these people are able to get out now. They’re not dependent on their relatives, they’re not dependent on taxis to come and pick them up where they maybe not be able to take the scooter. They just jump on and off they go. I’ve spoken to a couple. They just love it.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Caboolture West’s dirt’s been turned when it comes to Caboolture West. Let’s talk about it itself, but just out of interest, you may not have an answer for this, but with the rail trail, the state government wanting to preserve it for that, how does that actually work now going forward?

Adrian Raedel:
It has a long-term lease on it, so if it is needed for Caboolture West, then it can be used. So it’s still there, it’s preserved, it’s just preserved in a different way. Instead of it not being used, it’s being used. What it also means is down the track, if it is used for Caboolture West, part of the design or the previous thoughts were that there would be production incorporated into the design anyway, probably even to a greater level than what there are trail ways. But that’s a long way off, so the more we use it and make use of it now.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Caboolture West, I’m actually reluctant to talk about that until we talk about other stuff, but we might get it out of the way anyway because we got a natural segue to it. But Caboolture West, huge project, going to happen over many years. It has been happening over many years because that’s probably something that you actually just mentioned in relation to that all those years ago, when the rail line had been discontinued in its use out to Wamuran, back then they were earmarking even before they finished its use. Now we got to hold on to this. It’s going to be used out of Caboolture West. Remember the Caboolture council days and being in meetings with the mayor at the time, Joy Leishman, and no one hardly believed me.

Adrian Raedel:
That’s right.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And now we’re talking about Caboolture West back then. Fast forward, we’re here now. They’ve turned soil. In your view, what should Caboolture West look like?

Adrian Raedel:
We know Caboolture West is going to be there, but what we’ve got to be careful of is not about doing great developments for people who are moving in there. That’s one thing. Yes, it’s going to be great for those moving in there, but what we’ve got to make sure we do is make sure there’s a benefit to those that are still living here and those that are remaining here, those that live here now. It’s no good if we have these developments and the residents are only here now to put up with traffic. They have to put up with all this stuff. So infrastructure needs to be good now, it needs to be happening now, not five years down the track.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now as in already.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, already. It should be already designed, ready to go prior to people into those developments because if people have got to put up with the negative stuff of this development or of any developments, then they should benefit from the positives that come out of it too. It’s nice to have great, shiny things, but if you’re not looking after people who are here now, then you’ve lost something. You’ve lost that community, and you’ve lost that community feel.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You’ve got a planning degree now, and we’re going to talk about how that came about. But just in relation to Caboolture West and development in the Moreton Bay region, have we done well when it comes to developments?

Adrian Raedel:
No. I think we certainly can do better. Some of it’s about infrastructure, when it’s going to occur, and some of it’s about our green space. Incorporating good green space into these developments is very, very important, as much for the people that are going to be moving as the people who are here now because the green space is not only important for koalas and wildlife. It’s also important for people’s mental health, places for people to go and relax and enjoy and just reconnect with nature. So that’s where people who are here now need to make sure that that’s going to happen.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, absolutely. So in relation to moving forward with the Moreton Bay region, is there opportunity not just for those that are already here to not get impacted, but when you have a development… And we actually had an interesting conversation the other day because going back to the old Caboolture council, this is going right back. I think I was in primary school when I became aware of this. Caboolture Park shopping centre was being built, and they wanted a relaxation on their car parks. To get that, they built over what we know as Caboolture East over the other side of the railway line. They built the car parks there, they gave them the relaxation, and when you look at it now, it is actually so well utilised. Queensland Rail has an agreement with council. It’s still a council asset, but now, the other benefit of all the security and good parking that doesn’t cost anything to park there.
But from a broader perspective, can we leverage the developers coming along into the Moreton Bay region and building to actually uplift infrastructure that we already have? Is that a possibility?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, it certainly is true specifically in the areas like Caboolture West and Moreton South. They have to infrastructure those, and through those infrastructure agreements, council can require them by agreement, (it’s got to be by agreement), to upgrade infrastructure within the area. And it can be wherever it is shown that new residents going into their development will affect, whether that’s roads, parks, regional football fields, soccer fields, sports grounds. Council can ask them to contribute to that, and that can be in terms of [inaudible 00:37:23] themselves, or it can be in terms of funding it through paying infrastructure things that are over and above what they normally have to pay because they’re not even what’s called priority infrastructure.
We’ve got a planning scheme that is 10 years old essentially. When we came together as an amalgamated council, we have to bring together two plans and do a new one. That happened over a period of time, so there was consultation, especially in my area. We went out to [inaudible 00:37:55] with rocks just to make sure that they knew about St. Mary’s, and that happened twice in 2016 when it came in. So the actual information contained in the plan we see now is from about 2012.
And then going through the years of developing further, refining it further, before bringing it out in 2016. So that’s a long time ago, so we need a new plan scheme now that looks after residents now, that has the expectations of residents now. And planning scheme was always supposed to evolve for the time. It was a living document. It should be a living document, but the amendments that were envisioned to happen every year, so we have it happened in that regularity. I think we’ve got a document or a planning scheme that now needs just pretty much throw it out and redone.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
A reset?

Adrian Raedel:
A reset because it’s outdated, and that happens, as with everything. Technology moves on, planning schemes move on.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Learnings.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, we need to get back wanting what the community wants and their expectations and deliver a new planning scheme that suits us now and going forward. We’ve got to make sure that we try and look ahead as far as we can to incorporate what we have to do for the planning scheme.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now to get into some of the probably more uncomfortable stuff for you.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, it’s okay.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Jump straight in. Kind of like you make yourself accessible. Now you’re going to probably prove that, but I know you have proved it over the years. But let’s go there. You got charged with one count of official fraud and corruption. Can you take us through how that came about?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, it was to do with the general [inaudible 00:39:45]. I took an early position of the house. I was always going to take it.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now I just want to put a disclosure of my own on the record. This developer owns Kids Capers, the childcare centres, that you may see around the area. I’ve done work for those childcare centres, and I know there’s plenty of other businesses around here too that I know I’m connected with. They’re good local community businesses, family owned businesses, and they’ve done work for that business as well and some of the other subsidiaries. So just to get that out there so that there’s absolutely full transparency there. Keep going.

Adrian Raedel:
So I took the early position of the house. It was in development in Wamuran. It was an older house. It was the old house in the new estate. I guess the articles have said it was rent free, and that’s where they got it wrong because this house had been trashed. It was literally faeces on the floor. The squatters had been in, they’d smashed it all up. People had taken all the works, so there’s no oven. There was no pump for the water. At that stage, it was on tank water. The whirlpool stuff had gone. The stove top, the dishwasher, there is nothing in this house as far as workers go. It was a mess. It was trashed.
So I guess the deal, for a better term, or the agreement was that I would go in there, take an early position. We had an agreement that I was buying the house.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So you had a contract. You’re buying.

Adrian Raedel:
We had a contract. I was buying, but as the contract fell over-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now sorry. Just before we keep going with that, the contract, the value of the house, ultimately what you were going to buy it for, how did you come to an agreement as to how much that was going to be?

Adrian Raedel:
Yep, so we went and got evaluations. We knew how much it was worth because it was the exact reason as to what would’ve happened to it eventually. We didn’t want that to happen.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, I’m going to go a step further with this. You need a gulp? I’m going to go a step further and say that my dealings with said developer, in relation to the childcare centres, is that I have absolutely no doubt that friend, whatever the relationship is, even family, he would not let anything like that go below whatever he can get it for. And there is so much on the record when it comes to that. That’s just a characteristic of that person. I’ve worked with a lot of people like that, and you know that trait. I would’ve imagined that you were in that, so there had to have been absolutely, directly in relation to that, a mutual benefit.

Adrian Raedel:
Yep. So for me to take early possession, I had to make sure that I did up the house. I cleaned it up. I had to put in the goods that were missing and make improvements, and it had to have been on a level that would be approved to renting it because if someone didn’t occur for whatever reason, then he would get those and they would become his. And that would cover him for potentially the rental that he would’ve missed out.
Now it’s not what occurred because that wasn’t an issue, but it was reported differently, even though they rang me. The journalist rang me and spoke to me about it. I explained it all to them.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
And you spoke with them, which a lot of politicians these days would say, “You’re stupid.”

Adrian Raedel:
Yep, potentially I was, but it was about being accessible.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You talking to me now? Potentially you’re stupid.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah. No.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
No, keep going.

Adrian Raedel:
You’re stupid of being truthful because regardless of what happened to me, people wanted to know and people had a right to know about what’s happening in the surrounding areas, either to me, to them, or to what they know.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You mentioned the Australian, the article, and you took the phone call and you talked with a journalist. Did they get the story right?

Adrian Raedel:
No. No, in a number of cases, they got it wrong. So there’s a number of things in that article, the rent-free one, which is I guess the biggest one that people know about or people remember. It’s certainly not correct. If you add up the amount of dollars that I spent on fixing the house and getting that house to where it was, then these people would probably go, “It was probably cheaper to rent, to be honest.”
The other thing that came about, it was because it was owner possession, there was no connected water. There was no connected power.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You know what? You didn’t have power at the place, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
I didn’t have power at the place, so I didn’t have water and power for about seven or eight weeks.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I think you didn’t have, and I’m not sure about this, but I do recall conversations where you were saying it had Internet, showing this is where you didn’t have connectivity at all, did you?

Adrian Raedel:
No, the Internet was terrible. It was off the phone, trying to get it through the phone. At that stage, they hadn’t upgraded the towers, so the Internet was patchy at best out there. Yeah, no water, no power. So you can get a little wood from the Historical Society. There is a gas line, which a gas line that I [inaudible 00:45:25]. It’s empty from years ago.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
[inaudible 00:45:25] it came out of there?

Adrian Raedel:
No, well, I went and bought it so that I could have my place in council.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh.

Adrian Raedel:
I went and bought it so I could connect to gas, and I would iron my clothes with a gas iron for those weeks.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Where’d you sit?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, yeah, and then obviously it’s an antique, so I just [inaudible 00:45:38].

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh, that’s why you looked like shit then.

Adrian Raedel:
And then having no water means you don’t have toilet and you don’t have shower. It’s easy enough to buy stuff to drink. You don’t have fridge. So my showers, my dad was in Caboolture and I would go and have a shower there. I was a member of a gym, so I’d go to the gym.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh, you’re one of those. I’ve heard about these people.

Adrian Raedel:
You do what you have to do, the same as living in your shed when you have a business you’re trying to… But I obviously go and I would plunge a bucket into the tank and go shut the toilet so I could use the toilet. Don’t get me wrong. It was clean. The house was clean. We’d gone in to clean it. My sister helped me do that, but yeah, it was an interesting way. So was it a house, or was it a glorified tent? [inaudible 00:46:41]

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You may have already said this, but you’re sort of also providing security to the area too because there was all sorts of stuff going on. Look, I remember even back as a kid, that area, taking a bike down and around, and it wasn’t a well-attended area, not like you see it is now. The houses weren’t there. It was really scrub.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, there was no houses in there at all. There were street trees, and they just had a [inaudible 00:47:19] knocked off. So they’re just kind of there. They found it. They found it down around the corner at somebody’s house, but I guess it’s hard to prove. So they’re never going back. But the next one they put in, they straight painted it with pink paint.
But I, I guess, taking early possession of the house, I was there and I was keeping an eye on it. There was no other trees lost on the estate. A few died but no stolen ones.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So just before we close this bit off, because we need to talk about what actually happened as far as those charges go, but before you got charged, you got married. The house, you’ve gone backwards a little bit to talk about the [inaudible 00:47:52] of the house and such. You got married. I just got accused this morning of being the best man at your wedding.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, that was a new one to me.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, it was to me too.

Adrian Raedel:
That’s pretty funny because can I tell you no one knew? I shouldn’t say no one knew, just the celebrants.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I would’ve said, “F off,” but anyway.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, there’s the celebrant and then there was-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I was a best man at a wedding once, and I was shit at it. So you wouldn’t want me to do it.

Adrian Raedel:
We didn’t really have a best man or bridesmaids.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t asked to be a bridesmaid, but anyway. But right in the middle of this, it probably goes to I think some people think we’re a lot closer than we are because we’ve done a lot of stuff together, even not really necessarily… Like Farm Fantastics, we’re both at Farm Fantastics, Urban Country Music Festival. Some of them we did stuff fairly close together. Others we were just there.

Adrian Raedel:
In the same house.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, and at that time, we weren’t actually overly that close. That was just through circumstances, and you were doing your thing, I was doing my thing and whatever else. The wedding was a surprise, yeah?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, yeah. So we even put up in the front engaged.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Adrian Raedel:
At [inaudible 00:49:11] Wednesday before the Sunday. Our family found out on the night.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, because I had videoed this.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, you rented a camera.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I actually rented a car because-

Adrian Raedel:
We didn’t tell you.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
… once you’re in there, you’re going, “Hang on. Typical Adrian, something suspect here.”

Adrian Raedel:
Oh yeah. Now, now.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I know, I know. Then we figured out it was actually some other people, and we looked at each other and we actually both ran to our cars, grabbed our cameras going, “Shit, we’re going to miss this,” because I’ve always filmed stuff. Most major events have been captured in some way, shape or form. A lot of the filming’s been done through, just what I do, right? So got that. So I was busy with the camera anyway. I would’ve been an even worse best man than the first time. Yeah, good thing you didn’t ask me.
But okay, let’s jump back to the serious issues at hand. What ended up happening? Ultimately, you got charged, but where did it go?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, initially, got charged, and then that hung around forever or what felt like forever.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, initially they, and I don’t necessarily know all of these details, but my understanding is they essentially seized house for a better [inaudible 00:50:34] changed or-

Adrian Raedel:
That’s right. So get charged, they bring up again into the police station. You do the whole photo, fingerprints, DNA swabs. It’s very demeaning when you start to [inaudible 00:50:48].

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, when they did that, and I understand if you don’t want to go here. I’m not going to edit this. So just tell me if you don’t want to go there, but the night that they smashed into your house and they were after you, you guys had just come back. Typical, it’s what you do all the time. You were at a community fundraiser, and you had the funds to that community fundraiser.

Adrian Raedel:
So the safest place in our house at that time was probably our car because-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, you’ve described the house, so I can imagine.

Adrian Raedel:
It’s changed somewhat now, but it was in our car. So we had taken the funds because they wanted someone separate to the community out there, which we were helping out, we were all a part of, to bank it. So we were going to bank it on Monday for them. So we had those funds locked in the car. So then they came and raided the house as they do. So you get whatever paperwork they feel is necessary to, I guess, investigate.
So they went through the house. It then came time to come to the car, and they ask you, “Is there anything you need to disclose?” “Oh yes, there’s about $10,000 sitting in the car.” “Oh, right.”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh, no.

Adrian Raedel:
So then had to explain to them where it came from and what it was for and was nothing to do with anything as far as they were concerned. Ironically, what I found out from that was they had been following Facebook anyway. They knew that we were at the fundraiser the day before doing all of that work. And so, they were quite comfortable as to where that came from because on Facebook, we had kept the community up to date with exactly how much was being raised.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, well done.

Adrian Raedel:
So [inaudible 00:52:41].

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Do you think they had a bit of a shock when they actually got a look inside the house?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, at that stage, it’d been cleaned up and tidied up.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, right, right.

Adrian Raedel:
I think they got a bit of a shock as to they had to search the house, but it was a big jolt because it’s a fairly, including the garage that’s now been built in, it’s a big house and just having officers doing their jobs. We both had an officer there, and yeah, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but it certainly was a learning curve and one I think people don’t really realise unless they go through it in a similar charge.
I think the hardest part is that, so that happens, and Kerri had only… It’s no secret, our boys were from IVF, and Kerri had just undergone a transplant of embryo placement.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
A process.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, and we lost that there about a week later. So I’ll always think that that was caused by the stress of the police knocking on the door with their guns. Six or seven police surrounding the house and barging through the door. So I’ll probably never forgive them for that, but the outcome is I have two beautiful boys now that are fine.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now you were, again, it may not be across all of this detail, but you were extremely compliant to the extent that they gave you latitude to ultimately hand yourself in.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, they did. So they rang up about five weeks after the boys were born. So the boys had been born. They went to neonatal care, and they’d been out about a week I think, give or take. And they rang up and said, “We’re going to charge you with one count of corruption. When would you like to come in?” I guess that was a measure of respect from them, that I had been compliant, I hadn’t ducked anything. But they also didn’t agree with my first timeline, which was never. They knew what was coming and then what came. So I kind of got the same reaction.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
They didn’t get your humour, right?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, he laughed, and then he asked which was the real date. But they gave me time to, I guess, get my thoughts together and get everything sorted out that we needed to sort out. So I was able to clean the office out and have everything ready and go down voluntarily and hand myself in.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Now this is something where, I guess, there’s so many things you could’ve done at this point from a public perspective. You could’ve essentially just gone missing, but you actually did something else. You reached out to me and said, “This is the situation. I want to come out and let the community know, for better or for worse.” Probably stupid again, but whatever. You did that, but you actually fronted up for better or for worse. I remember putting you in front of the camera and your centrepiece now. We did a news article on that, and we broke the story. We actually broke the story that you’d been charged. From that, all of the major news organisations, they actually took our vision from that story, and that was let out to the community so that they could be informed on where you’re at.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah look, it was no good hiding it. We could’ve hidden away certainly, or we could’ve just ducked away and never come back. We could’ve, but again, it’s around letting people know and I guess letting people who want to know what’s affecting them, what’s affecting their friends, and what’s affecting other people in the community. And this was certainly one of them.
It wasn’t a very easy video to do. It wasn’t a very easy thing to do, and the days that ensued after that were hard to take as well. We had the Australian article that had been published, and then we now had the charge. And the trolls that were out there were quite amazing. Never quite seen anything as horrendous as how they came across. People who, I guess, weren’t my biggest fans went to town, and there was all sorts of comments made, everything from “corrupt”, which is fine, (I’d been charged but not proven), through to all sorts of things that I really don’t want to share here.
But not only against me but against my wife as well, and the sad part is, for me, that my kids who are just about getting to the point where they can Google stuff, will go, “Hmm, I’m going to Google mum and dad. I’m going to Google Adrian Raedel. I’m going to Google Kerri Raedel.” Or they’re just going to go, “I’m going to Google Raedel because that’s my surname.” And they’re going to see the rubbish that came about because of this.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So you say the rubbish that came about. Their case, ultimately, how did it go?

Adrian Raedel:
Well for me, it went really well because they presented no evidence, they had no evidence, so they dropped the case.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
The whole thing fell apart, and ultimately not just because of you, but an established pattern of behaviour with what the CCC was up to at the time. They ultimately ended up with the top guy’s head rolled.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, he went.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
He got him, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
So they had a pattern of behaviour where they were trying to knock off, I guess, where they thought they could. Council [inaudible 00:59:28].

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yep.

Adrian Raedel:
They thought, well, I don’t know what they thought, but what it appears to be where they thought they had an easy case. They could just go in there, and what they were looking for, I believe, is councillors who they thought would just go, “Yep, I’m guilty.” And they would be able to go and put a notch in their belt, whereas that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t guilty. I was never going to be guilty because I wasn’t. And that happened across the board where some of these went to court, communal hearings, and then got dropped after those communal hearings because as it turns out, that they were basing the cases on nothing.
Part of my case was based on favours from councillors that were [inaudible 01:00:03] not correct.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Floor, not correct in-

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, there was one transcript that they transcribed it to say, “He asked me to copy something.”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Uh-huh.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, in fact, it was, “He asked for the coffee.”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh, no.

Adrian Raedel:
We weeded that one out, and that was pretty much where their case absolutely fell apart because they thought I was copying confidential information. So there was absolutely nothing in it, and it’s disappointing because-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
People, when they think of corruption, and I get that there’s so many different forms of it, but normally people go, “Oh yeah, that financial guy.” What car do you drive now?

Adrian Raedel:
A Mitsubishi Outlander, 2010 model.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
How did you come to get that?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, actually I had a caravan that I was setting up as a mobile office. You’ve seen my offices. I ended up having to sell that so that I can buy the car.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, right. And it was a repo car or something, wasn’t it?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, it was an auction car.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Auction car, yeah, yeah.

Adrian Raedel:
It’s got bits. Yeah, it could be better.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yep. Just a stray question. Did you financially gain out of any of this?

Adrian Raedel:
No.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You made the comment that other people said to you, “You’re better off just renting.” You’ve sometimes done some things that people around you are going, “Why are you doing that?” But you did nonetheless and come out the other end. Like even your councillor, I used to see it. Whenever you turned up to events, you’re always… I don’t know how to put this, but you put so much into it.

Adrian Raedel:

[inaudible 01:01:51]

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, yeah, you put so much into the community events and that, and it didn’t seem to be council funds; it seemed to be yours as such. And I’m sure that those that have witnessed it have witnessed the same thing. And you open up your house every year for the Christmas lights, and you wanted to talk about the events like your Easter egg hunts and your other events that you’re getting involved. You’ve actually put on your movie nights and stuff like that, but it’s so much of your own contribution. If you actually look around, the others aren’t doing it, right?

Adrian Raedel:
No, not at all. So when we first thought about the movie nights, we had to figure out how to-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Even your shoes, they look like shit.

Adrian Raedel:
No, they do, don’t they? [inaudible 01:02:38] for the last week and a half.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
They’re not shiny. They don’t look expensive, they’re worn out.

Adrian Raedel:
They’re well-worn shoes. But there was no one doing some of this stuff. So we went out and we had to buy a movie screen, a projector, and you had to configure, well, back then it was DVD players.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
That’s right.

Adrian Raedel:
We went and did the first movie night at Elimbah at Morris Park.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Why did you decide you’d… You always did events, but why did you more and more take on these type of events?

Adrian Raedel:
Well, because it brings the community out. It brings the community out into our parks and green space, which they’re amazing spaces. And it goes back to you bring the kids out, mum and dads come out as well. That means that they can come ask you questions. It’s in a relaxed environment, so they’re not uncomfortable when asking so many questions, and I think if they see me setting up the gear or they see me standing behind a fairy floss machine or a popcorn machine and they see me putting in the hard yards, they don’t have any problem when you want to go, “Oh, give me a hand to put the marquee up.” And they help me put the marquee up, but while we’re doing it, they go, “Oh, did you know about the pothole in Camelspot Road?”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
It’s kind of back to accessibility, isn’t it?

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah. “I’ve got a problem that I want to talk to you about. When can we get together next week?” It’s a drain issue, or it’s a road issue, or it’s a whatever issue. And so many of my learnings or finding out information about the community comes from being at those events just because of people in the council are coming in and saying something to me or tee up for time. Sometimes they’ll come say, “Ah, look, now’s not the right time to talk to you about it. I can see you’re busy. You’re putting on a great event. Thanks for that. But can I talk to you because I’ve got this real issue with XYZ?” “Can you come and see me after a few days?”

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Which means you’ve already got a heads up in a sense. I imagine you’d go off and do-

Adrian Raedel:
I’ll try and find some research and try and figure out what it is. Sometimes I wouldn’t because they just wouldn’t go into it, and that was great too because you don’t necessarily want to know the answer before they ask the question. Sometimes it’s about them venting about whatever the issue is and then getting a solution for them, but they’ve already had that run in with not being able to do something. So they just need somewhere to just let it all out, and that’s part of the role of a councillor. It’s not always a fairy floss and snow cones and the sweet stuff. Sometimes you’ve got to take those hard hits on the chin to then be able to find a solution for some people.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
The Australia Times, I just want to chat about those before you come across them again. Sorry, this is when I was editing. This one has a claim. That podcast said that it is considered to be transparent, and we also offered this to the other candidates as well and the same thing, completely unedited.
But with the Easter egg hunts… Now in full disclosure too, we are and we have been, a part of us is joining adventure. We have come on board and over the years, we have provided PA equipment, help set up and all that sort of stuff. I can tell you right now we do that because the same thing, we’re on this journey, had the opportunity to really witness just how fantastic it is, the community coming out.
And we’re seeing that less and less. So again, you are running the Easter egg hunts again, and yeah, we’re on board as we always have been. I think we missed one year, which was last year, because we were overseas. And we are going overseas again, but it’s just after, so we’ll be able to help out with the fuel and all that sort of stuff. We’ve published stories in relation to the Easter egg hunts and all of that as well. So full disclosure there.
But just take us back to the very, very first one. It’s quite an interesting one.

Adrian Raedel:
So the very first one, a bit like the movie night, the very first one was at Caboolture in the park [inaudible 01:06:45].

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, right, yes, yes.

Adrian Raedel:
It was on Good Friday. I can remember it being on Good Friday because at the time we thought, ‘Well, we can’t do sausages.’

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh right, of course.

Adrian Raedel:
So we ended up doing a pancake cook-up. So here we are. We’ve gone out and we’ve-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Pancake cook-up like Danny Deckchair.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah, yeah. We’ve done chocolate eggs. So we’ve learned a lot since the very first one. Chocolate eggs and we hid them around.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Oh, you actually hid the chocolate.

Adrian Raedel:
We hid the chocolate eggs.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Adrian.

Adrian Raedel:
We had 20 kids turn up, so yeah, it was a good turnout for the first one. Now I get what we’re doing. We set up underneath the shelter that’s there. We have a little portable barbecue or hot plate sat on the picnic table, and that’s where we cook the pancakes. I’d already mixed up the pancake mix, so we had that pre-made. And then we set off the Easter egg hunt, off they went. It was very exciting because it was our very first one. We had 20 kids. Now we get 200 kids, and they just stampede or more. I think Elimbah had nearly 300 kids.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, wow.

Adrian Raedel:
And they stampede out and have a ball.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
It’s not just the kids, it’s the families. You get the families out.

Adrian Raedel:
The mums and dads, the grandparents that come out-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Parks are actually getting used. I mean, they do get used, but they’re really getting used to capacity, yeah?

Adrian Raedel:
Sure, for the community. So yeah, that first one was amazing because we ended up spending an hour and a half cooking pancakes, but yeah, that was fun. It was the start of something that turned out to be a 14-year journey.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You’ve already answered it, and I’m going to have to let you go soon because we’re over an hour we’ve been talking and I believe you need to get a break and whatever. Sorry, I apologise for holding you. Well, I don’t really apologise. You’re accessible.
So you’ve said if you aren’t successful in the election which happens this Saturday, that you’re still going to go ahead and do the Easter egg hunts. You did them when you weren’t elected anyway.

Adrian Raedel:
We did.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
So if you aren’t successful, what happens to you? Do you go away, or are you still going to be just getting involved in events and whatever else?

Adrian Raedel:
This is not your ending. [inaudible 01:08:57] Even before I was a councillor, I was Apex. We did community events. I helped with council events. I used to run like where they used to celebrate a volunteer. You have a Volunteer Day, all kinds of stuff. I used to go and volunteer for that. The [inaudible 01:09:14] breakfast of being able to cook scrambled eggs in the kitchen, that kind of stuff. So this is my community. I’m not going to hide. I’m not going to go away from all this. Sure, we’re a bit sad and that’s fine, but I will still be 100% behind the events that occur here.
We’ve got the wives coming out with their event. We helped with their [inaudible 01:09:31] last year. Even in that first year after the trudge, we thought, ‘You know what? We’re still going to put our Christmas lights on.’ And we did, and that’s when the [inaudible 01:09:48] around a little bit trying to take the house. And we sorted that out. We’ve kept the Christmas lights going because we really enjoy it. It gets harder and harder each year as I get older to rebuild it three times when the storms hit and wipe us out and knock over our Christmas tree and break up the marquees, but you know. But the Easter egg hunts and the movie nights and our Christmas things, they’re not going to go away. We love it.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Should you get elected, what do they get? What does Division 12 get if they elect Adrian Raedel?

Adrian Raedel:
I would hope that they get someone who-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
You’ve got a planning degree too. We were going to talk about that part. Anyway, yeah, you got that while you’re-

Adrian Raedel:
Yep, while I was [inaudible 01:10:37]. So it took three years to drop those charges, so I got my planning degree and I’m a qualified town planner. So doing that.
But what do they get? I guess they get someone who understands the planning scheme and how that works. They get someone who will ring them back. They get someone who will email them back. They will get someone who is involved in the community, whether that’s through different community groups, the Agriculture Farmers’ Hall or Lyons’, Apex, [inaudible 01:11:02], whatever. They will get someone who understands that we need to bring the sense of community back and that when you live in Division 12, whether it be Woodford, Wamuran, Burpengary, Elimbah, any of those places, we need to bring that sense of community back. I think we’ve lost, during amalgamation that we’re working on.
But then it all, I think, fell apart in COVID. We all stayed home. We all had to stay home. We weren’t interacting with anybody, and I think that sense of community really did plummet there. And no one’s worked hard to bring it back. So I’ll work hard definitely to bring that sense of community back.
But I will make sure that I represent the constituents and the residents of Division 12 to council. I won’t be there to represent council back to the residents of Division 12. The residents need representation.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
That got you in the shit quite a few times.

Adrian Raedel:
It always did.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
I guess it’s probably a bit of a lighter question. Is it worth it?

Adrian Raedel:
Look, if you’re not there to fight for your community. You’re not there to make friends in the room. You don’t have a party or to get on with everybody. You’re there to fight for your community. You’re there to make sure that your community gets its fair share.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, there might be times that there is give and take.

Adrian Raedel:
There is. There very much is, just about every day. Every day there’s a give and take with council. So whilst you’re not there to be friends, you’re also not there to hate each other because you have to still work with each other, and you need to be able to balance off work. Something that may be good for Division 1 that they really want, and there’s something there for Division 12 that they really want. You need to be able to find a way to work through that both communities get that, and that’s probably the hard fascinations of politics that people don’t necessarily see because if you’re not in it to fight for Division 12, Division 12’s not going to get anything. Let’s face it. There are times when you have to go in there and kick shins and try and get stuff out.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Take a stick in there and stick it up [inaudible 01:13:24].

Adrian Raedel:
And prove it’s going to work. But then there are times that you need to work with council and make it happen as well.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Adrian Raedel, thank you very much for your time at gee, well, it’s over an hour anyway. All the best with pre-poll and the rest of your week.

Adrian Raedel:
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for letting me come on.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Actually, just before I do let you go… Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I want to get this on the record to make sure. If you do get elected, do I get the same access and other journalists as we’ve enjoyed in the past?

Adrian Raedel:
Depends on how this podcast comes out.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Well, you know how it’s going to come out because I’m not trending it. It’s being published.

Adrian Raedel:
Yeah look, it doesn’t matter who you are, you get the same access as far as journalism goes. You can’t play favourites. It just doesn’t work. So if you’re a Mail, if you’re JtA News, if you’re the Sentinel, if you’re any of the mastheads around, you’ll get the same access, and that will be you can ring me up on my mobile, get me, and I’ll answer your questions.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Yeah, see, I keep getting more and more questions. I really do need to let you go, but it does actually take me to the access. It’s come to my mind. I’m sure it’s going to come up. Someone’s going to hear that and go, “Oh, you blocked me on Facebook.” Is there a difference because we have the same thing? There are those that will smash because where it has changed over the years and we’ve gone back quite some time really before social media was around, you broadcast information out. Now it’s very much a two-way conversation. Now that is very, very good in my view, but it also has some issues. And that is where people can become very passionate, and good on them for becoming passionate. You need passion in the community, but I can actually come at you with information that is not correct and is published the wrong way. And all of the councillors, previous, past, future, they’re blocked or will block. Trolls are a different category, right?

Adrian Raedel:
That’s right. So when you go to block people, it’s never, “I don’t care. I’m just going to block you.” It’s always a careful, thought about what have they done? If they’re a dead-set troll, I have no problem blocking those. If they’re a dead-set troll, they have said something that is, to tell the truth, that is very, very offensive. So I have no problem blocking them, and if they want to come back on the page, prove to me that you’re not a troll. There’s people that just want to interact and debate.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Does that stop them from your representing them?

Adrian Raedel:
No, not at all. No, no, no. If they come and see me, that’s fine. But they can give me a call. My number is everywhere. If one can’t find me-

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
That’d be a very, very first [inaudible 01:16:16]. I can’t find it. It’s already up on the billboard, yeah, taking the highway.

Adrian Raedel:
It’s not hard to get me, so if they want something, they are free to come and give me a call, send me an email. But to troll on Facebook is one thing that should not be allowed and the fake profiles. That’s another thing. Yeah, no, still represent them.

Andrew McCarthy-Wood:
Adrian Raedel, once again, thank you very much for your time. Get out of here.

Adrian Raedel:
Thank you. See ya.