Council gets it wrong

ANY honest person involved with City Hall will tell you there have long been and still are cultural and performance issues among some of the staff at Geelong council.

Former mayor Darryn Lyons says he was driven crazy by the ineptitude and laziness of the media department in the council at that time.

Some will say “Lyons would say that — he was probably bullying them”. But it is interesting to note that even internal critics of Mr Lyons — and even some who claim they were bullied by him — also roll their eyes when they talk of the media department at the time being dysfunctional and impossible to access out of hours.

To be fair, there have been personnel changes since then and there may be some excellent new talent.

But the fish rots from the head and the media policy the council is clinging to — where they publish their answers to our inquiries sometimes before we do — certainly stinks of old City Hall bastardry rather than a progressive and respectful approach to communications.

This hostile media policy has been a cause of national headlines and its extension has now been criticised by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

If the council has any interest in speaking to Geelong it should invest in doing so through this organ, which has been the city’s voice since 1840.

Some of the old stagers may have a personal stake in this abomination of a media policy but it beggars belief that some of the new brooms are resisting sweeping clean.

It is a crying shame that new CEO Martin Cutter, who was well respected by some in Melbourne, has not taken the opportunity to clean up this embarrassment of a policy.

The council under Mayor Bruce Harwood has not been bad. We have had worse and we have had worse in recent memory.

We live in hope some of them will take an interest in this important issue and take a leadership stand on it instead of doubling down on a bad bet.