Board of Inquiry report lays bare secret meetings and lack of transparency at the council

THE former Glenorchy Council became swept up in a culture of secrecy which was at odds with its stated intention to be transparent, according to the final Board of Inquiry report.

Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein has tabled the long-awaited Board of Inquiry report. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

THE former Glenorchy Council became swept up in a culture of secrecy which was at odds with its stated intention to be transparent to the community it was elected to serve, according to the final Board of Inquiry report.

After Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein tabled the long-awaited final report into State Parliament, the Mercury can reveal more details of the investigation, which highlights the need for the next council to be far more open and accountable to the public.

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The Mercury has campaigned for more transparent government decision making for the past four years through its Your Right to Know campaign.

The scathing final report found that the discussion of “numerous items in closed [sessions] which could reasonably have been dealt with in open council belied council’s stated intention to be transparent in its activities and accountable to its community”.

The board found that its use of closing the council meetings to members of the public meant the council was not “not fulfilling its primary obligation to be accountable to the community and transparent in its decision making”.

The board said it observed numerous occasions where agenda items were debated behind closed doors “where it was not apparent why they could not have been discussed in open council, in the presence of the public gallery”.

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It listed seven specific examples where the “board did not consider that this needed to be discussed in closed council”.

These included:

AN UPDATE from the committee dealing with the Tolosa Park/Eady Street Master Plan;

A MOTION regarding the process for and appointment of the mayor to the Local Government Association of Tasmania’s General Management Committee;

DISCUSSION of an open day at Chigwell;

A BREAKDOWN of employment costs versus budget;

A DISCUSSION on waste management costs;

A QUESTION regarding budget savings which the board said “were relevant to the citizens and ratepayers of Glenorchy and ... should have been dealt with in open council”.

From left, Stuart Slade, Harry Quick, Kristie Johnston and Peter Brooks during a special meeting of the Glenorchy City Council in June last year.

The board also found that the council “demonstrated numerous examples of inaccuracy and/or failures of basic meeting procedure”, saying many of the aldermen — some of whom had been on council for many years — had little idea about proper meeting regulations.

It said that minutes of meetings had been “deliberately” altered to remove the record of “such a significant occurrence as the suspensions of aldermen” and by doing so “council breached one of the fundamental principles which should and must be upheld by aldermen”.

The report found a 15-minute window for the public to ask questions did “not allow the community adequate opportunity to question its elected members”.

And limiting these questions to only items on the agenda “did not facilitate the capacity of aldermen to know how to act in the best interests of their community, and does not demonstrate accountability to their community”.

Glenorchy commissioner Sue Smith has since reversed this policy.

The board also was highly critical of the reliance on workshops to deal with matters behind closed doors which “contributed to the perception that there was a lack of transparency and accountability in council’s governance procedures”.