At the the candidates information session on Tuesday 14th, the representative of the Division of Local Governmentmade a presentation and one of her slides was titles "What standards of behaviour are expected?"
She listed integrity, leadership, selflessness, impartiality, openness, honesty, accountability and respect.
I would have thought it is pretty clear that it would be difficult to give the present Councillors a pass mark on many of these. I certainly don't claim to be a paragon of virtue and I acknowledge that there have been times when I have fallen short of standards I have set for myself or that people are entitled to expect from me.
Let's just talk about a couple of these for the moment. Clearly respect has been lacking - we have one Councillor who openly says she has not talked to a fellow Councillor for 4 years and numerous code of conduct complaints. We have personal attacks based on the qualities of a Councillor's father. So there are quite a few instances of lack of respect.
Let's look at two others that go together - openness and accountability. If we don't have openness how can people be held accountable? There are too many instances where "so called" commercial matters are used to make decisions in confidence. The ratepayers need to know how decisions were arrived at so they can feel confident in the processes used.
It's time for some changes and especially for Councillors to "lift their game".
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