Paul Mercurio ‘incredibly uncomfortable’ with council meeting prayer
About 70 per cent of peninsula people call themselves Christian but that hasn’t stopped a push to dump the prayer from council meetings.
South East
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An urgent bid by freshly minted Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors to scrap the prayer at the start of meetings has been shut down.
First time councillor Anthony Marsh wanted to replace it with an affirmation that would better represent community diversity.
“The current practice of reading the prayer in its current form … does not reflect the religious diversity of our community and does not foster or promote a genuinely inclusive environment,” Cr Marsh said.
A prayer has been read at the start of each meeting since the start of local government in the region about 150 years ago.
Cr Marsh emailed councillors within 48 hours of being sworn in to tell them about his desire to have the prayer removed.
He said the only way to have the matter included at the first meeting was to introduce it as urgent business.
Speaking at Mondays meeting Cr Marsh said it be unreasonable to defer the matter to the next meeting on December 8.
“Should we not address this tonight it would continue to endorse an outdated and non inclusive item of our council agenda,” Cr Marsh said.
Cr Paul Mercurio agreed that the matter was urgent and should be resolved as soon as possible.
“I would feel incredibly uncomfortable if we don’t talk about this issue tonight and sort it out because I don’t really wish to sit on a council that does the prayer.”
However, Cr Hugh Fraser said including the item as urgent business was an abuse of council procedures and rules.
“I deplore this absolute procedure,” he said.
Cr Antonella Celi said the matter should be listed “reasonably, fairly and transparently” on an agenda for a later meeting.
“This isn’t about individual councillors’ opinions this is about procedural matters that the community can also learn about and understand about what this council is doing,” Cr Celi said.
“The ink hasn’t even dried on the oath of affirmation, especially on the word impartial.”
The vote to include the item as urgent business was lost by six votes to five.
Those in favour were all first time councillors including Cr Marsh, Cr Mercurio, mayor Despi O’Connor, deputy mayor Sarah Race and Cr Kerri McCafferty.
Not all the new councillors supported the move with Cr Debra Mar, Cr Lisa Dixon and Cr Steve Holland joining long standing councillors Hugh Fraser, David Gill and Antonella Celi voting it down.
According to the 2016 Census 70 per cent of shire residents identify as Christian.
The next largest group those with no religion or secular beliefs (21.4 per cent), non-disclosed religious affiliation (4.5 per cent), Buddhism (2.1 per cent), Hindu (1.7 per cent) and Islam (1.4 per cent).
Many councils including Melbourne, Yarra, Port Phillip, Darebin, Moreland, Moonee Valley and Whittlesea no longer include a prayer at the start of meetings
Others such as Frankston, Bayside, Nillumbik, Hume and Wyndham have kept the tradition.
