Newcastle Council’s ruling Labor bloc has voted to relocate the council chambers out of City Hall to the controversial new council administration centre being built in Stewart Avenue, Newcastle West.
The proposal was listed as a confidential item in the 24 July council meeting agenda, without any forewarning that such a move was even being considered, ensuring the relevant business papers were kept under wraps until after the decision had been made.
The purportedly confidential papers were released the day after the decision, with only two paragraphs redacted.
The Local Government Act clearly indicates that confidentiality on a matter to be considered at a council meeting should be applied only to the extent necessary to preserve the relevant confidentiality, privilege or security.
But councils throughout NSW regularly abuse this, and exploit (or deliberately create) a modicum of legitimate confidentiality related to a small part of a larger potentially controversial item to hide entire reports and recommendations that are not legitimately confidential under a veil of secrecy until the relevant council decision is a fait accompli.
Newcastle Council has been at the forefront of this odious but regrettably common practice for many years under successive political administrations.
It’s usually a sure sign that senior council staff are worried that the case they are arguing has dubious merit, which might be exposed under the gaze of public scrutiny.
Putting a stop to it would be a doddle for any elected council with a half-serious commitment to open and transparent governance, but we haven’t seen such a beast in these parts for a very long time.
The current Labor Lord Mayor, Nuatali Nelmes, led the charge in support of the staff recommendation to relocate the council chambers, dutifully supported by her six Labor colleagues.
In a 7-6 vote, all the non-Labor (Independent, Liberal and Green) councillors voted against the recommendation on the grounds that the associated cost estimates (which remain confidential) were both too high and too vague, that the current chambers are a more appropriate council meeting place, and that the case for moving the chambers is not persuasive.
The staff report argued for relocating the chamber primarily on the grounds that the 1.6km between the new administration building in Newcastle West and the existing chamber would “create work inefficiencies and be counter-productive to the intended objectives of the relocation” of the council administration.
Watching the webcast, I found it hard to disagree with the dissenters, particularly when the main argument for relocation was essentially that it better suited council staff to have the chambers and Lord Mayor’s office close by.
Both the staff report and the contributions of Labor councillors to the council debate were silent on anything to do with local democracy, which is usually better served by creating and maintaining an appropriate distance between elected representatives and the council administration.
Moving the council chambers into the city administration space is a bleak illustration of the extent to which the current Labor bloc has drifted into (or even actively embraced) administrative capture - all, of course, under the usual guise of “teamwork”.
What fascinated me most in watching the debate was that even those who spoke against the proposal made no reference to the fact that such a momentous decision was being made without any community engagement or input.
Council chambers are the main arena of local democratic governance, the primary space in which – for better or worse – our elected representatives perform their key collective role as members of our city’s governing body.
It’s both a practical and deeply symbolic space, and much can be gleaned of a council’s history and organisational culture by observing the décor, spatial layout and seating arrangements of its chambers.
Notwithstanding the endemic abuse of confidentiality to shut out the public, it’s primarily a public space, where members of the community have an often exercised legal right to attend and witness local democracy in action.
I’m no nostalgic traditionalist, and I’ve been critical in the past of aspects of the current Newcastle Council chambers.
But the space has operated as an elected council chamber since 1929 and has a rich cultural history that belongs to the whole city community.
The meetings that take place there draw from and participate in the living heritage and symbolic gravitas that it has come to embody.
A decision about its future deserves more respect than to be slipped into a council meeting under dubious confidentiality, and dealt with in a single meeting without a skerrick of community input.
In a healthy local democracy, it should be second nature for elected representatives who are the temporary custodians of such a space on our behalf to at least think to consult with their community on such a significant decision about its future.
If the case for moving the chambers is genuinely persuasive, most of the community would support it, and local democracy would be healthier for the shared ownership of the decision.
Alas, not a single councillor stood up and said “given the nature and significance of these chambers and what is being proposed here, shouldn’t we at least let our community know what we’re thinking of doing, and ask them what they reckon?”
The staff report released the following day proposes handing the existing chambers, Lord Mayor's Office and Lord Mayor's Reception Room to the Museum “for future heritage curation, preservation and reuse for commercial purposes”.
The first council meeting in the new chambers/administration building is expected to be held around February 2020.
