Democracy dies in the dark. Open Noosa’s reason for being is to further transparency and help formulate a shared vision for the Noosa Shire. In this Facebook post, Cr Ingrid Jackson, writes of the latest setback in her long campaign to open up the Council to greater public scrutiny. Cr Jackson has been fighting tirelessly on behalf of the community to increase public understanding of how decisions are arrived at and to reduce the chance of collusion and background deals. She has met with some, but far from total, success. At the most recent Council meeting, Ingrid took part in deliberations by speaker phone from Europe.
by Cr Ingrid Jackson
My motion to have Planning & Environment Committee and Services & Organisation Committee meetings video recorded and available for public viewing resulted in a tied vote (3 to 3), but the mayor used his casting vote as chairperson to vote against it. That majority vote is the decision of Council not to video stream those two committee meetings.
This was the speech I gave in support of my motion:
I have received lots of positive feedback about the live streaming and video recording of Council meetings, from both residents and ratepayers – the latter being the ones who fund Council.
I am of course delighted to see the number of views of the council meeting videos –over 4,400 altogether now, and it’s good to know that council staff find it useful too, including those no longer having to waste their work time sitting in Council meetings waiting for their turn to present.
Thank you to Councillors for recommending we go ahead with my motion of bookmarking each item on the videos. Now people will be able to click and watch the items they are interested in without having to search through hours of video.
I also appreciate that the CEO has recommended my motion that Council publicise the availability of live streaming and meeting videos. I do this on my own Facebook page and believe this is something Council should be doing to keep Noosa Shire people informed.
The Queensland Information Commissioner calls this “push communication” – it’s about getting information out to the people, not waiting until they come and look for it.
I am disappointed that the CEO has recommended not videoing the Planning & Organisation Committee and the Services & Organisation Committee.
I consider all committee meetings worthy of videoing for viewing by residents and ratepayers. At those portfolio committees, many incisive questions are asked, explored and answered. Those items which are not referred to General Committee for debate usually end up being voted on at Ordinary Meetings as a group of items in ‘omnibus’ motions, so they never get an airing in the meeting videos. But they are still important decisions.
Council should be moving in the direction of being more and more open and transparent.
Council now has the equipment to video record Council meetings held in different locations around the Shire – the first one was in Cooran. It would be a simple matter to set up the same equipment in the Council Committee Room. While this would not allow live streaming, the videos could be uploaded to Noosa Council TV for later viewing by Shire residents.
Another option is moving these smaller Committee meetings into the Council Chamber where the live streaming video equipment is already set up.
I believe that transparency and openness with residents and ratepayers is a priority, and the technical solutions are a secondary matter.
To watch the debate, go to Noosa Council TV on YouTube and under ‘SEE MORE’ click on 1:19:39 – Item 5: Review of Council Meeting Live Streaming & Video operations, here:
Council has come a long way towards transparency in just a short time. There may be more to do, but changing attitudes and accepting new things takes time, so I say ‘well done’ for what has been achieved by you, your fellow councillors and Council staff so far. Some may have been dragged kicking and screaming, but it seems there’s general acceptance now of much of what you originally proposed.
I do think we need to consider both the positives and the negatives, not just accept that total transparency is a good thing. Words like integrity, honesty and trust are thrown around along with an assumption that there is a direct relationship between transparency and innocence; but in practice transparency doesn’t rule out bad behaviour, it just drives it further from the public view (Keith Jackson’s ‘shadowmen’ have nothing to fear from videoing of Council meetings). An overemphasis on transparency can also leave the door open to fear, manipulation, bullying and abusive criticism that can stifle public debate, especially on social media. It can also turn into scrutiny and feel like surveillance if it’s not combined with a culture of reason, acceptance and trust, things that at times seem sadly lacking in Noosa local politics.