Hear, hear… it’s democracy at work!

CR LETICIA Laing is entitled to her opinion, even if her criticisms of Cr Les Larke’s Notice of Motion at last week’s council meeting were largely irrelevant.

As many in business will know, you can get your accounting practices right and still go broke.

Cr David Rooks is entitled to publicly criticise another councillor’s actions, if for example he believes that councillor is wasting everyone’s time, provided he’s prepared to have a bit of that coming back the other way.

And Cr Les Larke is entitled to question the shire’s policies and practices in relation to the appointment, cost, effectiveness, and reporting on the use of consultants, even if some of the other councillors consider his methods tedious at times.

All three of these councillors were elected by the voters to represent them at the council table. They’re entitled to have their say on our behalf, even if we don’t all agree with what they have to say or how they go about it.

In fact, that’s exactly what we want them to do. The worst thing a councillor can do is sit there and say nothing or simply sing from the administration’s hymn sheet.

So, good on Crs Laing, Rooks and Larke for having their say on Cr Larke’s Notice of Motion. And good on Cr Larke for having a crack in the first place.

Cr Ron Bauer chipped in saying that while he wouldn’t have worded the motion the same way, he acknowledged that if Cr Larke was trying to make the administration more accountable for the money they spent on consultants, he was happy to support it.

Cr Rochelle Halstead joined in, trying to isolate exactly what information Cr Larke thought was missing from the existing financial reporting.

It was a good discussion. There should be more of it!

In the end; Crs Kent, Bauer and Larke voted in favour of hearing more about the $2 million council is spending annually on consultants and Crs Tessari, Halstead, Rooks, Laing and Whelan voted against it – that’s democracy at work.

And we’re told Cr Larke is now getting the information he previously asked for directly from the administration. Happy days.