Move to curb City Hall ‘scourge’
Plan to stop developer influence on council
A REGISTER of meetings between Geelong property developers and the city’s councillors and senior executives would be created under a councillor’s plan to solve the “scourge” of developer interference in local government.
Cr Anthony Aitken on Tuesday signalled he would recommend the register be implemented in Geelong, as the council voted to release its Draft Public Transparency Policy and Draft Governance Rules for community feedback.
A REGISTER of meetings between Geelong property developers and the city’s councillors and senior executives would be created under a councillor’s plan to solve the scourge of developer interference in local government.
Cr Anthony Aitken on Tuesday signalled he would recommend the register be implemented in Geelong, as the council voted to release its Draft Public Transparency Policy and Draft Governance Rules for community feedback.
Cr Aitken said it was a “significant glaring omission” in the new transparency policy that it didn’t take the opportunity to address “one of the scourges of local government, which is the unnecessary healthy relationship that exists between property developers that are trying to push their own interests, councillors who are trying to get re-elected or elected, and officials that have actually taken bribes or other things to influence decision making”.
“Property developer relationships with councillors and senior executives of local government has actually been the biggest problem in local government for about the last 20 to 25 years,” he said.
“Geelong itself has a history of problems with property developer contributions, and election campaign donations, and we’ve actually recently seen the sacking of the City of Casey primarily under that.”
“I think there’s a real opportunity to try — from a Geelong sense anyway — some social leadership in this issue of transparency, and creating a new register, and that register should actually be a list of meetings that councillors and senior management have with property developers within the boundaries of the City of Greater Geelong.”
The council on Tuesday voted to release both the Draft Public Transparency Policy and Draft Governance Rules for three-week community consultations.
The city is required to adopt the key policies by September 1, under the Local Government Act 2020, which received royal assent in March.
The draft transparency policy describes how council information is made publicly available, including registers of interests, summaries of campaign donation returns, meeting minutes and other council documents.
The Draft Governance Rules are split into eight chapters providing a framework for how the city conducts meetings and makes decisions.
The chapters include Governance Rules Framework, Meeting Procedure for Council Meetings, Meeting Procedure for Delegated Committees, Meeting Procedure for Community Asset Committees, Joint Meetings of Councils, Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest, Miscellaneous and Election Period Policy.
GEELONG ITSELF HAS A HISTORY OF PROBLEMS WITH PROPERTY DEVELOPER CONTRIBUTIONS, AND ELECTION CAMPAIGN DONATIONS ...“CR ANTHONY AITKEN