The policy is to allow Council to comply with privacy requirements relating to the tape recording of Council's meetings, however the recordings will not be available until the Minutes are ready, which has become a month. The previous Palerang Council prepared the minutes fortnightly to be ready for bi-monthly meetings.
The decision to allow recording was made last November, and equipment has been tested since the February meeting.
The November resolution stated, "Council will record its Ordinary meetings for the purpose of accuracy of the minutes only..."
The April report noted that "While this is the stated purpose for recording the meetings and therefore the tapes cannot be used for any other purpose, the recording becomes a "document of Council" and as such can be accessed by any person under s.12 of the LGA and the FOI Act. Under the FOI Act and the PPIPA, [Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act], a document of Council that contains personal information about any person, may only be released either: with the permission of the relevant third party/ies, or if permission is not forthcoming, with the offending part removed."
The report continued that "In both cases, Council must recognise that if a person seeks access to the recording, processing of the request has the potential to impact quite significantly on administrative staff time for listening to the tapes, determining whether statements made by Councillors, staff or the public are in breach of the PPIPA, contacting affected third parties where possible to seek permission to release, and deleting sections of the tape where required prior to release.
It was estimated that it would take Council staff around six hours to edit the tapes.
Signage is to be clearly displayed at all Council meetings, indicating: that the meeting is being recorded, the purpose for such recording and that the recording will be available to members of the public under the Freedom of Information Act 1989 or s.12 of the Local Government Act 1993 once the minutes have been finalised.
The recordings will be available to members of the public under the Freedom of Information Act 1989 or s.12 of the Local Government Act 1993 once the minutes have been finalised, and all speakers will be requested to confine their remarks to matters relevant to the issue at hand and refrain from making personal comments or criticisms about any person whether present or not.
However, until the Minutes of each Meeting are finalised, only those Council officers involved in preparing and ensuring the accuracy of the minutes are to have access to the recordings, which means that they will not be available to the media to verify the accuracy of statements.
The recording equipment cost $36,000 including the capability to vote via the system and the laptop to run it.
The electronic recording of votes however has led to some confusion as the public and councillors couldn't clearly see where the votes had gone. The system also does not allow for an abstaining vote.
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