Discussion about closed workshops during Motueka Community Board meeting
During the last Motueka Community Board meeting there was a discussion about workshops and that they are held behind closed doors. Board member Hutt shared the view that she “felt more comfortable if it [a workshop] was held in a private settings”. Because in workshops behind closed doors she could speak freely.
Hearing these kind of statements is frustrating, because having workshops open to the public or behind closed, is in our opinion not a decision for elected members or Council staff to take, instead it is an interpretation of statutes, in this case Section 17 of the Local Government Act 2020, which states the the business on a local government level should be conducted in an “open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner”. Having closed workshops is not in line with these principles. That’s what the Chief Ombudsman determined last year when he did an investigation into local council meetings and workshops.
The discussion during the last Motueka Community Board makes us believe that the majority of community board members have not read the report of the Chief Ombudsman from October 2023. To address the issue that the Tasman District Council does not follow the clearly stated expectations from the Ombudsman (“opening workshops to the public by default”), we
gave a speech in a council meeting
talked briefly the Mayor
had several phone calls with the Office of the Ombudsman
filed 2 complaint with the Chief Executive
However, the Tasman District Councils keeps its position that the public is excluded from all workshops. The Mayor made it clear that there is no room for negotiations to even only open some of the workshops to the public. Therefore, we had to file a formal complaint with the Ombudsman, which can be read here.
Community board member Graham said during the meeting: “That’s where the downside of our workshops not being open to the public is, we are not taking community along [in decision making process]”.
The exact same issue was mentioned in the report of the Chief Ombudsman. Further, the Chief Ombudsman did not accept the argument that closed workshops are a safe space to ask silly questions out of the public eye. This is against the view of some community board members that they like to have closed workshops to “speak freely” and have “frank and free conversations”. The Chief Ombudsman wrote:
“Another reason put forward by councils for closing workshops was to provide elected members a ‘safe space’ to ask ‘silly questions’ out of the public eye. I do not accept this argument. Councillors are elected to public office, a position that demands accountability. They should be prepared for a level of scrutiny and even reasonable criticism from those they represent. The questions and concerns councillors have are no doubt shared by many of their constituents. It may be valuable for the answers to these ‘silly questions’ to be heard by the public.”
Councillor Dowler brought up an example of land purchase in Motueka that “had to be confidential”, and in consequence a workshops was necessary so that the public is excluded from the discussion. Mr Kirby also mentioned that workshops are used to have “confidential discussions”. Even though Mr Kirby may well accurately describe current practice, we strongly oppose the view that this is what workshops are intended to be. There are good reasons to have “confidential discussions”. However, instead of having them in a closed workshops they need to happen in a confidential session of a regular meeting with the public excluded. For meetings there need to be true and accurate meeting minutes. It goes without saying that a land purchase would require thorough record keeping alone due to the significant amount of public money involved. According to Councillor Dowler’s example this appears not to be the case because the discussion was held in a workshop, not a meeting.
Councillor Walker said that individuals or certain community groups “may have some knowledge, skill set or experience that they could kind of share and help us make us more rounded and information decisions”. In short, public participation, which is mentioned as a purpose of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (“to enable more effective participation by the public in the actions and decisions of local authorities”)
Councillor Walker also said: “Regularly we have councillors that sit in the chambers and say, for this next workshop would we be able to open it to the public? We keep getting shut down on that.“ She asked “how do we get some movement over in the chambers in Richmond?”
There are 3 options:
having a majority of elected members to vote in favour of a resolution that workshops are open to the public
file a formal complaint with the Chief Executive or Mayor that the Tasman District Councils does not follow the expectations of the Chief Ombudsman
file a formal complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman (or write an email informing the Ombudsman that you support the complaint that we filed)
Interestingly, the discussion around workshops did not appear on the agenda but was started in response to what was said in public forum. So, there was definitely no element of theatre involved which Councillor Maru rightly called out when things are firstly discussed in a closed workshops to then be discussed anew in fornt of the public eye.
It was an authentic and genuine discussion about ups and downs of having closed workshops. This gives the public the chance to understand different viewpoints. We would love to see more of this and wish at the same time that elected members become more knowledgable about their role, its limitations and the processes underpinning this work in public office. We strongly believe that this has the potential to cure the perceived unease of being seen by the public eye during a workshop.