Community & Business
23 October, 2024
Complaints, closed doors, and transparency
Council and transparency
One thing became clear in the first twenty minutes of the meeting: transparency in this Council is not what it could be. The big reveal slipped out almost by accident, with councillors and the press informed during the meeting that a complaint has been made against Cr Ross Bartley. However, the register of complaints and councillor conduct on the SDRC website records no complaints at all during this term of council.
The issue of the complaint arose during debate of Cr Bartley’s motion to open Council information sessions to both the public and the press, as they were during the last Council.
“I think it’s about time we did open them up,” he told his colleagues in chambers. Cr Bartley pointed out that information sessions were not open to the public during the 2016-2020 council under Mayor Tracey Dobie.
“And that caused a lot of controversy.”
Meetings were again made public during the last council under Mayor Vic Pennisi but have since been closed again under Mayor Hamilton.
Cr Bartley says that if the public and media have access to the information sessions, they will have a better understanding of the nuanced nature of many issues that councillors must vote upon before upcoming meetings.
“Thank you Cr Bartley,” Mayor Hamilton replied without enthusiasm.
Cr Wantling immediately declared a conflict of interest in the motion as his partner manages the Stanthorpe/Warwick Today newspaper.
“While I’d like to support the motion because I agree with you,” the Mayor began, “there will be opportunities for the information sessions to be open and everyone around the table [supports this].”
The Mayor then took a swipe at Cr Bartley.
“If you had, um, attended some of our recent council information sessions you would actually know there is actually a new policy being drafted that will come to the November meeting and personally I think the appropriate time to debate this motion is when the policy dealing with this issue actually comes before us rather than dealing with it in a piecemeal manner so I would be voting against the motion,” she concluded.
“Can I ask a question of you, Madam Mayor?” Cr Bartley replied. “Which information session did I actually miss because I’ve attended all of them – I did miss part of one…”
“Councillor session include information sessions and strategic sessions, Cr Bartley, so you’ve missed three strategic sessions,” the Mayor retorted.
“I want to be clear about that. I have not missed information sessions,” Cr Bartley insisted.
“That’s true, strategic sessions. I should have been clear that you have missed some strategic sessions,” the Mayor acknowledged.
Then the bomb fell.
“And madam Mayor, I must inform you that I cannot discuss anything regarding strategic sessions because there is a complaint [about me] in process with the Office of the Independent Assessor,” Cr Bartley said.
“Thank you Cr Bartley. Can we have someone else who wants to speak FOR the motion?”, the Mayor replied to a few beats of silence in the room.
The Town & Country Journal asked Cr Bartley about the complaint but received no response.
Back in chambers, meanwhile, Cr Wantling, despite declaring a conflict two minutes earlier, said “a lot of us ran on a campaign of being transparent.”
Cr Richters came to the rescue of the Mayor.
“Whilst I agree with the sentiment…we have been working as a council very diligently, in particularly over the last six weeks, to make sure that things that have been missed, policies that haven’t come before us that should have come before us, policies that didn’t exist that council are now adopting, we’ve worked very hard on that. Plus we’ve also worked very hard on our strategic position, as you’ve mentioned, the effect of passing this motion today would definitely mean that we’re opening up meetings to the public which, I agree Russell, we should be, and we should be transparent, and like you I campaigned very hard on transparency during the elections but I think the right way of doing transparency is making sure we have the right procedures and policies in place to make sure we know how we are dealing with and handling having open sessions to the public. So, I think the policy needs to come before a rule that would effectively mean we’re operating without any rules or guidelines."
Cr McDonald also agreed with the mayor. Information sessions should “have full attendance by all councillors; I think that in order we have to do our job, we have to have transparency, but for this item to be effective I’d like to see this item lay on the table.”
As a procedural motion, councillors voted on whether to let Cr Wantling’s motion to open information sessions to the public on the table.
In favour of letting the motion lie were Crs McDonald, Richters, Pidgeon, Dean, Windle and Hamilton.
Against the motion were Crs Bartley, Harslett and Wantling.
