Kara Jung: Council gag orders are an affront to democracy

SA councils’ enthusiasm for gag orders forcing elected members to be little more than cheerleaders are an insult to voters who want honesty instead of spin, writes Kara Jung

• Onkaparinga moves to ban councillors from criticising council
• Marion councillor slams elected member ‘gag order’
• Adelaide City Council gag order revoked after backlash

Many moons ago, journalists could call the CEO, mayor, managers and elected members direct on their mobiles. They could ask their questions and their follow-up questions and get to writing the story.

I remember once upon a time a manager at Onkaparinga Council manager returning a call on the way to hospital — his wife was in labour — but he wanted to ensure we got a swift, accurate response. Oh, how times have changed.

Today’s journalists are too often forced to email questions that would then go through hours of spin before a heavily edited response is spat back out, often not covering the very detail you asked for.

The birth of social media, with its many benefits, also means organisations can sanitise their messages and post it on their pages while avoiding being accountable and transparent to news outlets asking perfectly reasonable questions.

But the latest media policies being pushed on councils across the country is frightening for residents and ratepayers who want to stay informed, hold elected members to account and get best outcomes for communities.

Last year, the newly merged Armidale Regional Council in NSW unveiled its first-draft media policy, which ordered councillors must be “supporting council’s official decisions” and “supporting council’s official release of information rather than releasing information independently”.

At the same time, new WA Local Government Association guidelines for councillors listed “risk factors” such as calling on members to not publicly criticise the work, the administration, the council, council members, employees or contractors or face a “breach of the Rules of Conduct”.

Earlier this year Adelaide City Council adopted a controversial gag order to silence its elected members from sharing some ideas and plans with the media. Thankfully widespread public outcry forced them to backflip on the decision.

Marion Council is considering introducing new rules controlling how its members communicate.

And now Onkaparinga Council is considering a new policy which would ban members from making comments that “criticise” council decisions or the administration under draft guidelines.

These are gag orders. They are an affront to a healthy democracy.

Councillors are there to loudly express their opinions and those of the people they represent — whether or not that ties in with what their council does or does not vote to do.

When new policies, developments or events are debated, it is an elected member’s responsibility to have their say and to be open and accountable with the people they were elected to serve.

Councillors are elected to represent their local community, not spout approved lines from management or the majority on council.

If not, then it’s just all spin, and once again the people lose their voice.