Amendment to the Governance Rules

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback via the recent survey. The modified rules incorporating community feedback were endorsed by Council on Tuesday 7 December 2021.

We received some feedback from you asking how signatures will be verified. Council will verify signatures by only accepting online petitions that are reputable and use email verification processes.

There was also some feedback on the need to protect email addresses from identify theft. In accordance with Council's Privacy Policy, personal details (such as addresses, email addresses or signatures) will not be made publicly available.

Background

Council is looking to slightly modify its Governance Rules – the rules that describe the way it conducts its formal business – to accommodate the shift to a digitally based environment.

The Governance Rules, adopted in August last year, include references to Council’s Meeting Procedures, Election Period Policy and internal processes for managing disclosures of conflict of interests.

Most of the changes are relatively minor and relate largely to some tightening of the wording around conducting meetings virtually.

And, noting their rise in popularity, there is also an amendment proposed that would allow Council to accept online petitions. This will allow the community a further opportunity to provide feedback to council.

Acceptance would depend on a specific set of criteria including:

• A minimum of 50 signatures at the time the petition was provided to Council
• The name, email address and address/suburb or postcode of each electronic signatory as a minimum; and
• Content or signatures would need to be authentic and accurate.