Gone, too, are any obvious signs of the time spent in the chair by Mr Pisasale's replacement, Andrew Antoniolli, who was suspended in May this year a day after he was charged with fraud by Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission.

But as the city's new boss Greg Chemello sits down in the chair Mssrs Pisasale and Antoniolli once occupied, he says tackling the cultural legacy of their era is high on his to-do list.

Taking control of a city of more than 1000 square kilometres with a ratepayer base of around 200,000, and improving the culture within its 1200 strong workforce, will not be easy, but it’s a job the new interim administrator of the troubled Ipswich City Council is relishing.

After spending his 35-year career in the shadows, Greg Chemello was last month unveiled to the media as the face of state intervention in Ipswich, ready to wield his sweeping new powers to reshape the city.

His post ends on March 28, 2020, the date of the next local government elections, when he will return to his role of general manager of Economic Development Queensland.

While his critics - mainly disgruntled former councillors - saw his appointment as a sign of a dictatorship, others have hailed his arrival as the first promising sign of real repair since the departure of its two mayors.

An optimistic Mr Chemello said he was confident the fortunes of Ipswich City Council could be turned around.

“My job is to steady the ship and to lift rocks up and tell the public what I find,” he said.

“We are going to rebuild this council - that’s what I’ve been telling staff.

“We’ll be famous in 18 months’ time, but not for the reasons we’re famous now.”

It might be a lofty ambition, but Mr Chemello said he wanted Ipswich “to be the best example of local government in Australia” - the council others would turn to when they wanted a template for best practice in procurement or other council policies and procedures.

“We want to be an exemplar local government, and I want other councils to copy us,” he insisted.

Two weeks into the job, Mr Chemello had already heard complaints from “a handful of staff” who had produced new information about alleged past misdeeds.

“[We’re] still looking under the rocks of the past,” he said.

Mr Chemello said he was encouraging staff to put aside their misgivings and bring complaints into the light.

“I know there will still be historical concerns about misconduct,” he said.

“[That’s why] I’ve been encouraging the staff to bring those issues out, [so that I] can deal with them openly.

“I’ve said to staff, if they were concerned about repercussions in the past, don’t be concerned now. We will deal with them.

“We are collating [complaints] now, and I will be in a position to get back to staff in the next week or two about those issues and explain how this is going to work.”

He insisted the complaints, or a flavour of them, would be put on the public record and the media would be briefed.

His administrator powers also extended to sacking staff who might have been involved in illegal or inappropriate activities.

“I’ve been pleading with people to bring [their complaints] out now, not in 16 months’ time when I’m almost out the door," Mr Chemello said.

“By then, I won’t have had the time to fix it. So, I want them brought out now.”

His first day behind the desk was met with a mix of “relief combined with trepidation” by long-suffering council staff.

“There was relief because they’d had a very difficult couple of years, and then a difficult couple of months during the ‘show cause’ period,” Mr Chemello said.

“Some had trepidation. What does being in administration mean? What happens to our jobs, and so on.

“There was concern about the unknown, but I didn’t take it personally.

“There is no manual for this. There is no guide book on how to do administration of councils. I wish there was, but there isn’t.”

As administrator supported by five advisers from consultants KPMG, Mr Chemello fully replaced the role of mayor, councillors and committees.

“I am not acting mayor, or an acting councillor. I replace the councillors and mayor in terms of decision-making, but I also do not pretend to know and understand and represent the views of various interest groups in the way an elected politician would,” he said.

An administrator does not get involved in the operational running of the council, either. That job is left to chief executive officer, Sean Madigan.

“I’m trying to carve out to staff what I’m not,” Mr Chemello said.

“I’ve said to them - give me a couple of weeks with my five advisers to determine exactly how this is going to work.

“We’ll get a clear map of that soon, and then we’ll publish that.”

He was at pains to explain that he needed honesty and transparency from the staff and in return, he would help them “rebuild”.

“Claims of misconduct will still be dealt with by the CEO, and any misconduct complaints against the CEO will come to me,” Mr Chemello said.

He dismissed claims by former councillors that the community would have no voice if they were sacked.

“The community still deals with council the way that it always did,” he said.

“If people have a concern about a council operation they used to ring the call centre or walk into the local division office (now rebranded as community offices).

“They can still do that. It’s the same staff who answer the phone, and the same staff who sit behind the community office desks.

“It’s not politicians who fix potholes.”

There would be no round-tables or community reference groups during the period Ipswich City Council was in the administrator’s hands.

“There is no ‘100-day plan’ ... I won’t be doing a ‘vision’ for Ipswich, but I will [produce] regular community reports about what we are doing as interim administrators,” Mr Chemello said.

And the Advance Ipswich strategy document will also still be in place because “it’s still a good document”.

Mr Chemello’s diary was crammed with appointments over the coming weeks as he planned to meet with everyone from Ipswich Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Phillip Bell, to industry reps, local MPs and staff.

His days will largely spent determining the future of Ipswich City Properties, the council-owned business that issued the contracts for the redevelopment of the Ipswich Mall.

“ICP is the only company left standing, as it were, and I have undertaken to staff to give them a decision on what will happen as soon as I can,” he said.

Mr Chemello would also spend time fixing out-of-date processes and modernise delegations that had seen his office flooded with unnecessary paperwork, such as minor development applications that could be processed by planning officers.

One person he would not need to meet soon was Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe - the man who appointed him to the position.

“I am not beholden to the Local Government Minister. There will be no reports to the minister,” he said.

“I don’t have a boss as such, but Governor-in-Council can sack me if they don’t like what I’m doing.

“I’m here to work for the benefit of the long-term interests of the people of Ipswich.”