Weddin Shire Council hosted their ordinary monthly meeting on Thursday, 20 February where they voted to endorse the Mayoral submission as outlined in the report to the Office of Local Government for consideration in the Consultation process in regards to the draft Code of Meeting Practice.
The Office of Local Government provided a consultation draft in December 2024 of the new Model Meeting Code on their website seeking submissions by February 25, 2025 The reform of the codes and procedures governing how Councillors gather, debate and make decisions was flagged by the Minister for Local Government as part of the discussion paper issued in September 2024.
Weddin shire Council's General Manager Noreen Vu said the Minister for Local Government has a strong interest in changing their code of meeting practice.
"He is proposing a number of recommendations with the new code of meeting practice," she said.
Ms Vu said this draft paper is focused on the conduct within the council meetings and there are a number of points in the draft they propose they agree with as they see there is no harm in terms of the changes being put forward.
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However there are some strong provisions in there, Ms Vu said, that she believes Council should put put in submissions that they disagree with.
Ms Vu said some provisions which she believes Council disagree with includes every time a person or councilor speaks they should stand to address the room.
Another provision, Ms Vu said Council disagree with are the rules around notices of motion being put to Council without firstly going through the staff to be able to provide staff comment expenditure of budget especially if it is a motion that requires expenditure of budget.
"I see it being counterintuitive especially if you have a council that says the resolution ends up reading that you send the report back for staff to fill out the expenditure it kind of delays the purpose of actually tabling the report," Ms Vu said.
One of the things Council should also be objecting to, Ms Vu said, are the reasons for Councillors to dial in to Council via audio-visual link has been completely restricted down to carers responsibility or illness.
Ms Vu said this would limit Councillors from being able to dial in to a Council meeting remotely if they had to go away for work or if they were restricted from travelling into town due to a natural disaster such as flooding.
"I think that's quite an issue I think given that a lot of us, especially from a unified front from a rural area, there's always going to be issues with being able to get to a council meeting especially if you're a farmer as well. So that there is something that we object to."
Ms Vu said a provision which she didn't pick up in the table, but wanted to flag it would be added into the Council submission, was around the code that council could choose which staff members attend the council meeting.
"As you're aware Councillors can't direct staff and we do our meetings in the evenings. It would be, I guess, a breach of what I consider the local governmental board in terms of councilors instructing staff to come out of hours to a council meeting," Ms Vu said.
Weddin Shire Council Mayor Paul Best said it's something they have got to put submissions into this and while it takes up a lot of time for the staff doing these sorts of things, but it's the only way they can have their say on them.
Councillor Wezley Makin asked even though they submit this objection to all these things, along with multiple councils, it doesn't mean they're going to take them on board.
Ms Vu said this is correct.
Another submission Ms Vu said she should have flagged earlier was that the Minister has a strong view on removing the pre-briefing
Ms Vu said this would take away the opportunity for counselors to ask questions for clarification especially if they use acronyms and Councillors don't want to be asking them in the public space.
