The Sunshine Coast Council faced its first important character test last Thursday and failed.

It was disappointing to watch the goodwill that was clearly evident only a few weeks ago disappear in such shameful silence.

The mayor Bob Abbot had the right to expect better of his colleagues who chose a project that he had worked hard over 10 years to deliver, as the vehicle to make their malicious and unenunciated point.

After an 11-2 vote at a general committee meeting on the Monday in favour of additional funding to cover a potential cost blowout in the Cooroy library project, the mayor nor anyone else should have felt the need to be on the phone shoring up the vote protecting a facility desperately needed in the northern hinterland.

Mr Abbot knew from the committee meeting about councillor Chris Thompson’s reservations.

And councillor Anna Grosskreutz did at least rise to her feet to speak to his clumsy motion to re-examine the project. She had also voted against the project in general committee.

But there can be no doubt that someone was very busy on the phone last week.

And there can be no doubt that not one of those who determined to scuttle the project had the intestinal fortitude to knock on the mayor’s door, pick up a telephone nor draw him aside to tell him so before they went into a public forum to humiliate him.

The Cooroy library project had been carefully funded through a combination of land sales, state government grants and savings over time by the old Noosa Council.

With the clock ticking on a $3.5 million state government grant that was contingent on the project delivering fibre optic capacity to enhance business opportunities in the hinterland, any delay has the capacity to kill the project.

Certainly a motion that called for it to be put out for tender to be redesigned, regardless of Mr Thompson’s claim of support for a library with a total cost of $7 million, was potentially fatal.

That the motion contained the qualification that it be redesigned to a scale similar to the Beerwah library was an exercise in envy that seemed ignorant to the fact the southern facility actually has a larger floor plan than that envisaged for Cooroy.

However Mr Thompson aside, last week’s vote wasn’t about libraries, or funding, nor due diligence.

It was instead about fragile egos and weak characters being exploited in a power play that has put aside any chance that, in the short term at least, this council can shake off the corrosive habits of the past.

The matter is now the subject of a rescission motion with the decision to be tested at next Monday’s special meeting to consider future Local Growth Management Strategies.

It can only be hoped that at least one of the councillors who raised their hand in last week’s graceless abuse of trust, will reconsider.

Christian Dickson for one, instead of remembering being roughly put in his place by the mayor two weeks ago, would do better to consider the words that he chose in arguing the need for the whole community to fund the $2.2 million restoration of just the top two water bodies in the failed Chancellor Lakes system.

Mr Dickson rejected any talk of a levy to cover the cost arguing that money had been allocated by the old Maroochy Council.

“We all pay rates,” Mr Dickson said. “We have issues everywhere. Not everyone benefits but everyone pays.’’

Indeed.

The Sunshine Coast community voted overwhelmingly for change earlier this year.

Anything short of a unified regional council with trust and reciprocated respect as its key character traits will not have the capacity to hold off a state government and powerful development lobby who would deny it.

The community wanted leaders who could guide change and deliver policies that recognise and respect their aspirations. It wanted a council that worked as a team, not one driven by factions and egos.

It wanted a council that worked for the community, not councillors who work every opportunity to advance their own ambitions.

There will always be those who remain vulnerable to the exploitation of ignorance, fear and envy.

Last Thursday it became evident that vulnerability extends to this community’s leadership group and that despite this community’s best efforts to flush out of local government those who would exploit it, there remains within its ranks those with that capacity.

And that is a real shame.