yet another sad day for democracy in Eurobodalla

The Beagle Editor, Is this Democracy Manifest?

Today marks yet another sad day. You may not see it or know that it is happening but there is a continuing deterioration of the standards of accountability, transparency and integrity displayed by the officials of the Eurobodalla Shire Council.

There should be a council meeting happening today – but, inexplicably, there isn’t – despite the range of major problems confronting our local community at this time.

There are no barriers to the council reverting to its two meetings a month schedule, and the council and its senior staff need to explain why they are avoiding accountability under the cover of the Covid pandemic.

Earlier this year, our council voted to change its schedule of meetings from two to one in order to reduce the Covid-19 risks to councillors and associated council staff. At the time of that decision, the legal arrangements in NSW for the conduct of council meetings still required councillors to be physically present in the council chambers for their meetings.

However, seven weeks ago, on 25 March, the NSW Government changed those rules to enable NSW councils to resume their normal meeting schedules by using internet platforms such as Zoom.

At the ESC meeting on 7 April, many in the local community had naturally expected that the General Manager would recommend to council to agree to revert to its normal schedule of two meetings per month. But when the agenda for that meeting was issued by the General Manager, it contained no mention what-so-ever of this matter.

In response, Councillor McGinlay flagged with the other councillors and with council staff that he would be bringing on an urgency motion at the 7 April meeting to restore the normal meeting schedule. After the listed agenda items were dealt with the occasion of Urgent Matters came up, Mayor Innes, knowing there was an intended Urgent Matter from Councillor McGinlay (only just an hour before being briefed on it) abruptly closed the council meeting without allowing an opportunity for Councillor McGinlay to formally put his motion to the councillors claiming she did not see his Zoom hand emoticon up. Despite his immediate protests, the Mayor refused to allow the Urgent Matter claiming the meeting had been closed. Video evidence clearly shows that the meeting had not been formally declared closed at all. When the General Manager and Mayor were requested to advise on exactly where the ruling states that a meeting that has been closed CAN NOT be reopened by the Chair when there has been an issue such as the one above denying Councillor McGinlay the opportunity to pt forward his Urgent Matter the Mayor responded in writing saying " "The Model Code of Meeting Practice for Local Councils in NSW, Local Government Act 1993 and Local Government (General) Regulation 2005 is silent on reopening a Council meeting after the completion of business. Therefore, there is no process to reopen a Council meeting after the completion of business." As the Model Code is silent on reopening it can also be suggested that the Model Code is also silent on closing. And as the meeting was NOT closed the Mayor, under the direction of the General Manager appear to have applied their own discretion to ignore Councillor McGinlay's matter.

This was obviously a very disturbing and worrying decision by the senior officials and mayor of our council. After suffering fires, floods and now COVID-19 why wouldn’t we want the most out of our elected officials to get us back to our feet?

Our ALP Eurobodalla Local Government Committee is therefore calling upon community members to demand that their elected councillors take immediate steps to return to the regular meeting schedule for the rest of this year in the interest of the health and prosperity of our shire. Anything less is totally unacceptable in a representative democracy such as ours. If this does not occur, the Minister for Local Government must be asked to intervene in the operations of this council.

Matthew Findlay

ALP Eurobodalla Local Government Committee