Yesterday, I blogged on the fact that Victoria had tabled its' legislation to enable the Municipal Auditor-General which you can find here
One thing I forgot to mention and it is beginning to be a disturbing trend for local government law...
Victoria will allow, subject to legislature approval, a local government (municipal council or regional district) to go behind closed doors' to consider the draft performance audit report of the Municipal Auditor General of which it is subject as per draft Section 90(2)(e) of the Community Charter which says:
A part of a council meeting must be closed to the public if the subject matter being considered relates to one or more of the following:
(e) a review of a proposed final performance audit report for the purpose of providing comments to the auditor general on the proposed report under section 23 (2) of the Auditor General for Local Government Act.
If approved in the Spring of 2012 - Municipal Councils/Regional Districts will be able to close meetings to the public under 19 different aspects of Sections 90(1) and 90(2) of the Community Charter and this is not good for our local democracy, given local governments should only be meeting behind closed doors under the traditional 3 L's - labour (staff), land and law...
No comments:
Post a Comment