Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:16): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Local Government, and it concerns the Surf Coast Shire Council’s new councillor code of conduct adopted on Tuesday. The Local Government Act 2020 requires, at section 139, each council to develop a councillor code of conduct. We can all see why that might be a good idea. What concerns me, however, is that it might also become an instrument of control which unduly restricts councillors from discharging their duties as they see fit. Councillor codes of conduct will be developed by officers and voted on by a majority. It is hardly impossible to imagine therefore circumstances where those councillors in the majority and perhaps even the officers who depend on them for employment could use the codes to enforce conformity and suppress opposition. I am not saying this is inevitable, but it does concern me.

I have looked through to the Surf Coast shire document and have found, for example, at pages 9 and 10 that being fit to conscientiously perform the role of a councillor will require councillors not to engage in behaviours including having a negative attitude, undermining the reputation of fellow councillors or the council or resisting and discouraging innovation and new ideas. What if they are bad ideas? Can they still not be resisted? Councillor Heather Wellington of Surf Coast shire clearly agrees. She is quoted today as saying:

I am most concerned that the code suggests we should never criticise the council organisation in public, we cannot speak to the media without notifying fellow councillors and the CEO—that is unworkable and oppressive …

In an ideal world of course these restrictions would not be abused to gag anyone, but in an ideal world we would not need a code of conduct. The action I seek from the minister is for him to take the time to look again, with the real world and his own extensive experience of local councils and councillors and with their personalities and preoccupations in mind, and to produce some guidance which makes clear that councillors cannot have these codes of conduct used against them by self-interested majorities who simply want to suppress criticism from elected colleagues.