MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire last week agreed to televise online briefing meetings that are held behind closed doors. The decision was made at the same time that council adopted a review of its public transparency policy.
It is understood by The News that councillors and the CEO Baker met the following day and discussed rescinding the motion they had adopted just hours before. Legal advice will be sought.
Debate at the council’s Tuesday 23 July public meeting followed a report from governance officer Diana Harris and acting governance manager Pam Vercoe that stated briefing and workshop documents were not intended for public release and often included confidential information.
Their report comes two years after council decided the policy should be referred to a “citizens panel” and “feedback” sought over a four week exhibition period from the “wider community”.
Councillors were told that most respondents thought the policy was “easy to read and understand”, although some concerns were raised about “the lack of explanation of the concepts of public interest and confidentiality”. However, the report by Harris and Vercoe states that no changes were needed as both “concepts” were explained in the policy’s definitions section.
Briefings are usually held in the weeks leading up to a formal council meeting and can involve councillors and officers engaging in candid discussions about upcoming issues.
“One of the challenges sometimes in discussions is that they are very wide ranging and they drift off into different areas … That is where it becomes more problematic as far as information that is made publicly available,” CEO John Baker said.
Officers provided information “but also respond to a broad range of what could be described as blue sky thinking about testing ideas and concepts”.
Cr David Gill, who said he had been trying for eight years to get more public access to council’s secret briefings and workshops, questioned why it had taken two years for the review of the transparency policy “which apparently doesn’t change anything”. He said there was no “real explanation of why briefings should be confidential, it’s just that they are”. “I’m looking to increasing the trust we have in our community, that they should know more about what happens with council,” he said. “People always suspect they’re not being told everything. The more we can let people really know … these meetings shouldn’t be secret.” Gill said the shire’s approach to opening up briefings to the public would be a model copied by municipalities throughout Australia.
Cr Lisa Dixon said opening briefings to the public would require councillors to be wary about topics in which they had a conflict of interest. Eight of the 11 councillors voted to make briefings public, despite some warning that publishing the information online could cause problems.
The mayor Cr Simon Brooks “supports transparency” but thought imposing new rules on briefings seven weeks before the October council elections would be disruptive. Cr Susan Bissinger favoured “full transparency” except when it impinged on freedom of speech. “We know what it’s like to have knives in your back, and the last thing you want to do is put yourself in a situation where every word you say is being scrutinised,” she said. Bissinger said officers would feel under pressure about what they said to councillors during briefings.
“Councillors cop it on the chin, but for officers it’s their professional reputations that could be on the line if all they have to do is say something that’s slightly controversial,” she said. “And, all of a sudden because it’s open and being streamed, it can be in the papers, and that’s the last thing that we want.”
The latest debate about council transparency and secrecy follows a December 2023 move by Cr Sarah Race for $200,000 to $300,000 to be spent on an online Transparency and Integrity Hub to “allow the shire to be leaders in transparent and open government” (‘Transparent council’ take 2, The News 11/12/23).
However, through a series of amendments, the final decision called for a report by March this year seeking a lower cost alternative and the Transparency and Integrity Hub to be referred to this year’s budget process (Budget next step to ‘transparency’, The News 19/3/24).
On Friday, the mayor, Cr Brooks said council had rejected the Transparency and Integrity Hub but had allocated money “to improve the performance of the shire website. As part of that project we will investigate features aimed at greater transparency”.
First published in the Mornington News – 30 July 2024
