Next week’s Alpine Shire Council agenda carries a recommendation from the Chief Executive, Doug Sharp, to adopt the draft Code of Governance without alteration.
My submission was the only one received.
Mr Sharp summarises my submission in very selective fashion. He completely fails to address the major points I made regarding dissent and briefing sessions.
Justification for the code is given that a respected consultant, Ron Exiner, ticked it off as complying with best practice.
Well, all I can say in reply is that it’s a sad day for democracy. I read Exiner’s "Good Governance Guide" today and feel that he rationalises the existing bad practice of closed briefing sessions.
It remains my view that if a council prepares an agenda, requires councillors to attend a meeting and prepares reports for the meeting, then it must legally be a meeting as defined under the Local Government Act. Just because it’s called a briefing session doesn’t mean it isn’t a meeting.
If it’s legally a meeting then it must be open to the public except for reasons defined in the Act concerning confidentiality, etc.
That said, Exiner does qualify his endorsement of briefing sessions by saying that debate, questions, reports and explanations should be repeated in full open council meetings so the public can understand the decision-making process.
That aspect is missing from the operations of Alpine Shire and the intent of its governance code.
The rest of Exiner’s document makes no mention of controlling dissent, which is a prominent feature in Alpine’s code. Council should release the consultant’s full comments on the draft, but I expect this is unlikely to occur.
Finally, this is the second submission I’ve made to council that has been totally rejected. Why bother inviting submissions and why bother making them?
