Since becoming Mayor, Jamie Hyams has not exactly covered himself with glory in his chairing of meetings. This is most surprising given his legal background and obvious penchant for a little pedantry.  With these credentials, one could be forgiven for hoping that the general running of such meetings would have proven to be far more in line with good governance. However, old habits and ties obviously die hard as evidenced at the last council meeting.

Hyams did not disallow what we strongly suspect were several requests for reports that did not adhere to the ‘no surprises’ policy of Council. In other words, there was no requisite written notice.

He declared a matter as Urgent business without putting it to the vote in the first place, and secondly, the ‘urgent business’ referred to was the VCAT decision regarding the Penhalluriack Code of Conduct matter which occurred weeks earlier and hence could not have been deemed as urgent business according to council’s local law – ie. the event/circumstance/situation did not eventuate between the printing of the agenda and the night of the council meeting.

It thus looks like residents are in for more of the same – sham governance; sham accountability, and no transparency. For the winner of a ‘two-up’ competition (versus being ‘elected’), this is not an auspicious start to his mayoralty!