Perhaps now we’re getting somewhere

The Invercargill City Council’s media protocol will lose its shadowy implications if the council just fixes its focus.

It’s heartening that the door has opened for this to happen.

The council’s governance group chairman and external appointee, Jeff Grant, has acknowledged that it’s open to councillors to amend the freshly approved protocol to ‘‘get to a stage where we all agree’’.

The chance should be seized. All that needs revisited – and it seriously does – is the paragraph that offends the principles of free speech by having elected members agree that when interviewed they ‘‘focus on council issues and activities . . . rather than the actions or decisions of other elected members or staff’’.

That plainly imposes an expectation that people who may have important criticisms of the conduct or competence of others in significant roles refrain from focusing squarely on these when they speak to the media.

Grant, chief executive Clare Hadley and councillor Rebecca

Amundsen, who chairs the working group overseeing the protocol, don’t see that. They take the view that ‘‘don’t focus’’ doesn’t mean you can’t make criticisms of the actions or decisions of other elected members or staff. They point to the assertion elsewhere in the protocol that members have the right to share their differing opinions with the media.

Yes, it says that too. It’s the inherent contradiction created by the expectation that elected members focus elsewhere that creates the problem.

Grant says that in no way do the protocols stop councillors stop councillors sharing their views. Trouble is, it would invite confusion, doubt, silence.

We must take issue, too, with frequent references to the power that the media wields. The real power surely sits with the people elected to represent democracy.

We’ve been running stories about how perilous the security of democratic freedoms can be. The perspective of international student Ida Bagus Gde Narindo Giriputra, from Indonesia, is a useful one. His homeland has yet to fully emerge from from the sour legacy of the Suharto regime and he understands that politicians do need to fit their words in awareness of who they’re talking to, but not at the expense of being able to speak about each other in public.

Here’s the bottom line. The very word ‘‘focus’’ refers to how clearly something can be seen. Remove the implication that councillors should divert attention away from one another’s performance and the council’s media policy is rendered serviceable.

Ideally the impetus for reviewing it should come not from the ranks of the four public dissenters – mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt, deputy mayor Nobby Clark, and councillors Lindsay Abbott and Marcus Lush – but the ranks of those who signed off on it, as an indication of responsiveness to public concerns.

We wait to see what action they will take.

Remove the implication that councillors should divert attention away from one another’s performance and the council’s media policy is rendered serviceable.