Tonight’s Council Meeting included the finalised Governance Rules, which outline the conduct of Council meetings.

Reforming Council’s Governance Rules was a key priority of mine, as I wanted to the City of Port Phillip to embrace best practice in its conduct of community meetings.

Governance Rules – Final approval

The updated Governance Rules finally introduce time limits for Councillors to ensure debate remains focussed and impactful. This change brings consistency to Port Phillip City Council Governance Rules aligning the Council with best practice, and is only fair given time limits exist on public question time.

Following a successful alternative motion, the Governance Rules will also require Notices of Motion that commit more than $80,000 or substantially affect service delivery, to require a report on potential ramifications.

This clause, which was removed from the draft Governance Rules, is consistent with recommendations issued by IBAC into the conduct of Councillors and Council Meetings.

Lastly, the Governance Rules return deputations to the City of Port Phillip. A deputation will provide community members with a formal mechanism to raise matters before Council as part of of the Council meeting.

I introduced deputations when I was on Maroondah City Council in 2010, replicating what was available at Port Phillip at the time.

Unfortunately, deputations were removed from Port Phillip by the former Councillors back in 2022.

Deputations are now back, as we should ensure our community has a platform to formally engage Council in discussion in a public and transparent manner.

Strengthening Port Phillip Governance

Strengthening Governance was a key priority of mine and I am pleased that following the adoption of the Governance Rules we now have:

• Time limits on Councillors
• Consistent application of public question time
• Deputations to support substantive dialogue between Council and the community

Agenda and minutes of the Port Phillip Council meetings are available at Meetings and Agendas – City of Port Phillip