By Luke Voogt
Geelong’s administrators have tightened controls on future councillors commenting publically.
Administrator chair Kathy Alexander said the council’s updated media policy removed “the notion” of any councillor other than the mayor being a spokesperson.
The policy prohibited councillors commenting on “key City announcements”, “controversial” matters or council “outcomes” without mayoral approval.
“Without this delegation, no other councillor can engage with media on behalf of council,” the policy reads.
The administrators also scrapped councillor portfolios while adopting the revised policy, effectively limiting councillors to commenting publically only on non-controversial ward matters.
Dr Alexander said portfolios provided councillors “too much opportunity” to challenge the mayor’s spokesperson right, in breach of the Local Government Act.
Councillors could express differences with a council position only if they first made clear it was their personal opinion.
The media policy followed Local Government Minister Natalie Hutchins appointing two monitors to watch over councillors following the October elections.
On Wednesday Dr Alexander and Ms Hutchins buried the administrators’ Clever and Creative Future 30-year vision for subsequent councils in a marked time capsule at the base of steps to City Hall.
Former mayor Darryn Lyons laughed as he described the new media policy as bearing hallmarks of the “socialist” Andrews State Government.
“Are we in North Korea or Geelong?” he said.
“People should be able to comment on whatever they want to comment about except if it’s to the detriment of Geelong and its people.”
Mr Lyons agreed the mayor should primary spokesperson for council, stating that councillors had deliberately undermined for a political gain during his tenure.
But he described the latest update to the media policy as “toothless b*****t”.
“They can gag people as much as they like,” he said, “they’ll just go to the media behind the mayor’s back and the media department’s back.”
Council hopeful Michael King described the policy as reasonable but said Geelong’s new council should approve it after elections in October, not the administrators.
“I don’t think it gags councillors. As long the media covers council meetings in an open arena those issues will be reported.”
Fellow candidate and sacked councillor Ron Nelson questioned the “unelected” administrators’ decision to scrap portfolios.
The former major events portfolio holder said he would take up the matter with the Local Government Minister if elected.
“It was never a problem for me in the past, so I’m not sure where they’re coming from with that.”
