Hannah Hammoud
Councillor Maria Kerr stormed out of the Brimbank council meeting on October 17, after she said her motion to introduce a regular public forum meeting was ‘hijacked’.
In July this year, Cr Kerr raised a notice of motion to allow residents to ask live and unscripted questions of councillors through a proposal to establish a regular public forum meeting for the community.
However at the most recent meeting, council said it would not be introducing public forums at this time leading Cr Kerr to raise an alternate motion suggesting that a monthly, one hour, online forum be created.
Before Cr Kerr could speak to her alternate motion, Cr Ranka Rasic put up an amendment to change the forum from monthly, to quarterly, and require that submissions be made one week prior to the forum ultimately undoing the ‘unscripted’ intention of the original proposal.
“My original alternate motion is being hijacked … why does someone else have a precedence over my original motion?” Cr Kerr asked.
Packing up her things, Cr Kerr said, “I think the community has seen enough”, before walking out of the meeting.
Cr Kerr said she found it “absurd” that council could not dedicate one hour per month to speak with residents.
“I feel sad for the community, the community has lost out. It was absolutely appalling that councillors could not allocate one hour per month for community engagement,” she said.
“I could not sit there and be a bystander and see democracy be squashed.”
As Cr Kerr left the chamber, the council meeting was simultaneously adjourned for more than 15 minutes as residents seated in the gallery shouted ‘corruption’ and ‘sell-outs’.
As the meeting resumed in a much quieter fashion, both Cr Kerr’s original alternate motion, and Cr Rasic’s amended motion were debated amongst the councillors.
Cr Rasic said moving the forum to a quarterly basis would allow council to assess the volume of submissions, adding that if there was a high volume of submissions she would be happy to have the meetings take place on a monthly schedule.
Local resident Dianne Cappelli said that Cr Rasic’s amended motion added “no value” to the original proposal. She said residents are already able to submit questions to council via monthly council meetings and it would provide no benefit to have an additional quarterly meeting that also answered pre-submitted questions.
“If you are going to do quarterly online forums [then] just by virtue of it being quarterly there is also going to be a backlog of three month’s worth of submissions,” Ms Cappelli said.
“It is also not timely. If I submit a question now then I won’t get a response until three months. If the issue is something that’s happening right now in the community then I want an answer at that time.
“I am not happy with what happened at the council meeting and the community isn’t either.”
In Brimbank’s neighbouring municipality, Moonee Valley council is an example of Cr Kerr’s original proposal in action.
Moonee Valley council hosts a public forum once a month that allows residents to raise questions directly and without notice, unlike council meetings where questions must be submitted beforehand and are read aloud by council on behalf of the resident.
The Moonee Valley council website states that the public forums take place in a less formal setting than council meetings and provide another opportunity for residents to play a role in civic matters.
It took Brimbank council more than 40 minutes to reach a resolution which resulted in both Cr Rasic’s amended motion and Cr Kerr’s alternate motion being deferred to the next council meeting on November 21 where both motions will return for consideration.
