Code of Governance
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, referred to here, 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?
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
