Almost half of the 2010 Municipal Inspector’s report concerned itself with council ‘minutes’. Councillors were cautioned to ensure that an independent minute taker was present at councillor only meetings; that all minutes include resolutions. The drawback was that there was no ‘breach of the Act’ even though minutes were doctored, changed, amended repeatedly.
Two years later, nothing much has improved in this area. If anything it has got worse. Advisory committees now often come under the umbrella of ‘records of assembly’ so all that is legally required is noting those present, the subjects discussed and if there are any conflict of interest declarations. The Pools Steering Committee is the perfect example of this. Even worse is that a perusal of the records of assembly feature numerous ‘amendments’ and the deletion of phrases. The most frequent advocate for this is Hyams. The Sport & Rec meeting of several years ago is clear testimony to how much is censored and left out.
Then there’s the question of consistency of reporting. The Environment Committee has arguably the most ‘extensive’ minutes, although when a community rep on this committee lamented that the minutes needed to be far more expansive, she was told that minutes aren’t Hansard. In contrast, other committee minutes such as the Pools Steering Committee are lucky to consist of 100 words most of the time. There simply is no consistency, no procedures, and no mechanism within Council’s Local Law Meeting Procedures which ensures full transparency and accountability for all meetings.
One way of doing away with this problem of accurate reporting is simply not to hold any committee meetings. The Finance Committee has been allowed to evaporate, as has the Roads Special Committee, the Racecourse Advisory Committee, the Animal Management Committee, and so on and so on. The latter 2 have not met for over a year we believe.
Such is governance in Glen Eira. Secrecy is all and accountability the poor relation. What minutes are published admittedly do not have to be the equivalent of Hansard, but they must be a truthful and accurate account of what went on. We assert that this principle has been flagrantly abused.
Glen Eira Debates 
July 18, 2012 at 9:00 PM
It’s unbelievable that there were no records of assembly published at the last council meeting. There should be at least two sets of minutes for each meeting (one prior to the formal chamber proceedings) and then the in camera meetings. I think that there’s also a regular weekly meeting for councillors. That would make it at least 5 sets of minutes each 3 weeks that have to be published. No advisory committee meetings appeared either even though the consultation group met weeks earlier on the community plan. In this day and age of emails its a pretty lousy that it takes months to get things out. Maybe they’re just hoping that people will forget all about it and not read the stuff when it makes a belated appearance.
The other thing that has never been spoken about is all the negotiations of the c60 gang meetings. There’s been the formal stuff, but never any minutes about their informal meetings which they must have had plenty of times. Under the law these would be called briefings or whatever you like but minutes had to be kept. Where are they?