2020-11-10 Services & Organisation Committee Agenda

SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                               10 NOVEMBER 2020


In summary, the changes:
   reflect the new provisions in the Local Government Act and Local Government Regulation
     as recently amended;
   incorporate required changes as set out in the State government mandated Model Meeting
     Procedures. These primarily relate to how inappropriate meeting conduct must be dealt
     with which our Standing Orders must reflect - see sections 45 to 46);
   reflect the changes to reasons why Council meetings can be closed to the public for
     confidential matters bringing our Standing Orders into line with recent legislative changes;
   confirm that Councillors can attend Committee meetings and Council meetings by
     teleconferencing. The process has been streamlined and recognises the new reality of the
     COVID environment;
   set out how conflicts of interest are to be managed; and
   updates and improves some of the existing provisions.

4     Model meeting procedures
Each council is required to adopt the State’s Model Meeting Procedures either as a stand-alone
document or to incorporate as part of their own Standing Orders. The State government has
recently updated the Model Meeting Procedures to reflect the new legislation. A copy of these
Model Meeting Procedures is at Attachment 3 for the information of Council.

We have incorporated the provisions of the Model Meeting Procedures into the relevant sections
throughout our Standing Orders. We had originally adopted the Model Meeting Procedures in
December 2018 and a recent check discovered that we hadn’t formally repealed that version
even though they had been subsequently incorporated into our Standing Orders. This is an
opportunity to tidy up that oversight and recommendation C addresses that issue.

5     Investigation Policy
The State government also mandates that each Council must have an Investigation Policy in
compliance with the approved version released by the State government. We originally adopted
this Investigation Policy in December 2018 in compliance with that requirement. However, the
State government has just released an updated version in September 2020.

A copy of the updated version of the mandated Investigation Policy is at Attachment 4 for the
information of Council.

There are not significant changes from the previous version. The purpose of the Investigation
Policy is to outline how a Council must deal with a matter that is referred back to it from the Office
of the Independent Assessor. This process occurs where a complaint is made about the conduct
of a Councillor to the Office of the Independent Assessor (OIA) and the OIA determines not to
investigate the matter itself but to refer back to the Council to undertake its own investigation.

Our Council has not yet had an instance of this but we still need to have the updated
Investigation Policy adopted in case that ever eventuates.

6     Guidelines for Councillor Briefing Sessions and Workshops
Every Council in Queensland undertakes Councillor workshops. They are called different things
in different councils – briefings, workshops, forums etc. They do have one thing in common and
that is that they are not, and cannot be, decision-making processes. There is no basis for any
council to make a decision in such a workshop environment. Only formal Council meetings can
make such a decision.




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