Adelaide City Council to vote on dumping meeting prayers

Only one item on Adelaide City Council’s long list of pre-meeting traditions could remain after a push to simplify proceedings.

Adelaide City Council would dump a compulsory tribute to war veterans, a prayer and the acknowledgment of one of the city’s most important figures under proposed new meeting rules.

Its proposed new Meeting Procedures would scrap a silence for war veterans, a Christian prayer and an acknowledgment of Colonel William Light while retaining the Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Meeting.

Under the current “standing orders”, meeting preambles are; “1. Acknowledgement of Country, 2. Acknowledgment of Colonel William Light, 3. Prayer, 4. Veterans memorial silence”.

But the new Code Of Practice for Meeting Procedures, the running order is; “1. Acknowledgement of Country, 2. Welcome to Meeting”.

The missing items have been replaced with: “Council may determine, by resolution, to include a prayer or other statement during the meeting’’.

The change is in sweeping new meeting procedures which also require councillors to sign a form before each meeting revealing all conflicts of interest.

Also wafflers could be thrown out by the mayor while meetings would be limited to three and a half hours.

The changes are designed to improve the bitterly divided meetings which characterised the previous council.

Light's Vision at Montefiore Hill. Picture: Keryn Stevens

Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith said; “The previous manual was a bulky document comprising all council processes and procedures with references to legislation”.

“Council wanted an abridged handy document to just give meeting procedures and standing orders.

“This document will now be reviewed and adopted.”
The Council’s Finance and Governance committee voted unanimously on Tuesday to defer the report for more discussion.
Cr Mary Couros questioned why the traditional introductions to meetings were being taken out of the document.

Meanwhile one councillor, the former head of Bike Adelaide has been reported to the State Ombudsman for an alleged conflict of interest, a suggestion he strongly denies.

Cr David Elliott successfully moved that the council abolish a cycling committee that only met twice in 18 months.

Lord Mayor of Adelaide, Jane Lomax-Smith. Picture: David Mariuz

Adelaide City Councillor David Elliott. Picture: Supplied

The working committee was formed in late 2021 with council and cycling industry representatives, and was blamed for the failure to come up with a new council cross-city cycling path.

Cr Elliott said the reason he was elected was to improve Adelaide for cyclists and other road users.

“I have not been made aware of any such complaint,’’ he said.

“I had no conflict of interest to declare.

“I was elected on the basis that I have been a strong voice for progressing safe active transport options for the city.

“There’s certainly no personal gain from my advocacy for safer streets.

“This new council has agreed to get on with delivering projects that improve the city for more people; the Working Group was broadly seen to deliver no additional value to Council or the community.”