New disclosure policy for Aurora gets DCC nod

THE Dunedin City Council has signed off on a new information disclosure policy for one of its companies.

Aurora Energy put forward the policy amid concerns it had begun exercising an exemption granted to electricity companies, allowing it to ignore official information requests, after splitting from sister company Delta.

The new policy — to be inserted into Aurora’s statement of intent — set out how the company would respond to requests for information not already disclosed, drawing heavily on the first two sections of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act [LGOIMA].

At Tuesday’s full council meeting, councillors signed off on the policy without questions or a word of debate.

Cr Aaron Hawkins, who had earlier expressed disappointment at Aurora’s stance and suggested the company could be compelled to comply, expressed his support for the new policy after Tuesday’s meeting.

‘‘It’s reassuring to have the commitment to transparency set as policy, making it less dependent on the attitude of future staff or directors, and has come a long way from sticking to their exemption from LGOIMA.

‘‘As with all of these things, we’ll wait and see how it operates in practice, and if it looks like window dressing then we’d want to revisit it.

‘‘I’m optimistic that it won’t come to that though.’’