Foster denies media access to briefing

Wellington Mayor Andy Foster has defended his decision to exclude media from a normally public city council briefing, saying he did not have enough time to consider the request.

Foster refused to allow media to join the council’s online Zoom call yesterday morning because he was not advised beforehand of their intention to tune in.

The meeting was one of the council’s regular ‘‘pre-briefings’’ before a full public meeting two days later. It is regularly attended by the media.

Having obtained a link to the call moments before the meeting kicked off, Stuff’s request to join was denied by Foster on the basis it was too late.

Stuff had hours earlier requested access to the briefing from the council.

‘‘As chair of this pre-council ‘Q and A’ session, I received the request for media attendance literally as I began the meeting,’’ Foster said.

‘‘That is nobody’s fault. However ... that gave me no time for discussion with councillors and management about doing so, and they clearly did express a range of views around the importance of transparency and of free and frank advice.’’

The briefings are not technically meetings under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, but are considered part of the decisionmaking process, and it has become standard practice for them to be open to reporters.

City councillor Iona Pannett said media had had access to the briefings for more than a decade.

‘‘There is no reason to change this practice now that we are holding meetings by Zoom.

‘‘In fact, in light of Covid-19, it is even more important that the public and media have access to these meetings to judge how the council is responding to this crisis.’’

Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons also said excluding media was the wrong call.

‘‘In my view, the council should welcome the public and media to council pre-briefings under lockdown in the same way we did prior [to the lockdown].

‘‘It is an important matter of transparency and Zoom meetings offer us the technology to do this easily.

The legality of excluding the public from the meetings was questionable considering that there were no personal privacy or commercial sensitivity issues, Fitzsimons said.