The Council Agenda stated the following.

Council has drafted a detailed response to the Minister by way of Council’s submission and in this submission document of 130 pages Council has identified actions that need to be taken by Council to implement further good governance actions above and beyond anything as called for within the Monitor’s Report.

These actions will be called. THE SOUTH GIPPSLAND SHIRE GOOD GOVERNANCE ACTION PLAN and will include the following:

Part 1: SOUTH GIPPSLAND SHIRE’S COMMITMENT TO THE SEVEN PILLARS FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE, and:
Part 2: ACTIONS TAKEN AND PROPOSED FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE

The ‘South Gippsland Shire Good Governance Action Plan’ is part of the Council Submission to the Minister for Local Government and as such the document will not be available until released publicly by the Minister at a future date.

Clearly it could not be supplied as an agenda attachment but in any event that is not relevant since the document was clearly referenced and was in Council’s possession. Council then went on to say that because the document was not attached to the agenda that it did not exist and therefore could not be released or brought back to Council or acted upon.

Reading the agenda executive summary above, it is clear that the word “release” refers to when the Minister for Local Govt released the Councill Submissions. This has now occurred after the successful VCAT application by this newspaper so all that is left is for the Council officers to enact their required actions.

Council then stated that the Good Governance Plan brought in by the administrators in Dec 2019 overrode the proposed one from the May 8th meeting. After saying it did not exist, they are now saying that it did for purposes of being replaced! This is incorrect. Council can replace a policy that has not been adopted already! Playing ducks and drakes springs to mind. How should they conduct themselves on this matter?

Proper Governance.

Council officers should enact the Council resolution without question. It is not their place to pick and choose which Council resolutions they comply with. They must bring the Good Governance Action Plan from the Council Submission document recently released by the Minister for Local Government Office to the next Council meeting and allow the Councillors (administrators) to decide its fate. Once it is brought to the Council meeting in February 2021, the Councillors (Administrators in this case) are free to reject the document if they wish.

The other way in which the original decision can be overturned is to bring about a rescission motion so that the original resolution is overturned. Now this would be brought to the Council meeting as an officer report and the administrators would decide whether to rescind the original motion or not.

However, in this case, the local laws at Council say that this rescission motion can no longer be done since the original motion of May 8th was already acted upon by when the Council submission was sent to the Minister’s office.

So, an example of very inappropriate actions from Council and another exemplar of how good governance is merely a couple of words at South Gippsland Shire Council nowadays.