Council seeks to make community consultation more transparent

Council has welcomed the development of new guidelines aimed at improving transparency during community consultation periods.

Under the Local Government Act 2020, Victorian councils are required to undertake community consultation on certain documents and decisions.

However, the City of Melbourne is looking to enhance this process by moving away from seeking public support for projects when they are open for consultation.

At the Future Melbourne Committee meeting on August 19, it was requested that the current review of the consultation process consider introducing new guidelines to support meaningful and informed public feedback.

The proposed guidelines aim to explain and clarify council documents and proposals in an objective and neutral manner.

Cr Dr Olivia Ball said that while community consultation was an important democratic process, there was room for improvement.

I’m asking our media professionals to seek not to convince the public that council’s ideas are great when they are subject to public engagement, but to go that little bit further and think about the task a little differently.

Cr Dr Ball believes the council should communicate in a way that takes into account the public’s viewpoint by presenting new proposals in an objective and impartial way.

She emphasised that community engagement should not be about gaining public support for council proposals but rather about gathering genuine, informed feedback so the community can form its own views.

While the creation of new guidelines was unanimously supported, a number of councillors raised concerns about the feasibility of the changes.

The head of the Innovation Portfolio, Cr Andrew Rowse, said he had concerns about practicality, but noted that council officers would be the best people to explain any issues or implications of the proposed changes.

He added that he supported the potential changes due to their goal of ensuring that the public was well-informed and actively providing feedback on council policies and initiatives.

Cr Mark Scott also raised concerns, particularly regarding how “objective” communication would be interpreted in practice. He noted that it would be interesting to see how this concept was applied moving forward. •