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It was shocking

Yesterday our local council, the South Waikato District Council, had a meeting.

It was shocking.

I have never before witnessed such an attempt to subvert the democratic process in my life.

The tactics engaged in by the Mayor and one of his cohort councilors was outrageous and, in my honest opinion, corrupt beyond belief.

As a result of what I witnessed, I will be making a formal complaint to the Minister of Local Government and the Obudsman.

Of course I will also be making a video for the local community, highlighting the insanity that prevailed during that meeting.

The Mayor also demonstrated his fear of my efforts to keep our local community informed by way of my videos -- suggesting that I take things "out of context" and therefore misrepresent the facts.

He even suggested that he would be looking into introducing measures to ensure that this didn't happen in the future -- once again demonstrating his contempt for the very concept of free speech.

The reality is that when a meeting runs for three hours, few members of the public are going to watch the whole damned thing (even if the livestreaming is working) so I simply include the *relevant* parts of the meeting in my videos. If people want context they are more than welcome to watch the entire stream so as to ensure that I'm not misrepresenting anything.

The reality is that I can't put words in the Mayor's (or anyone's) mouth (words such as "For f*cks sake" in utterance at a female councilor who incurred his wrath during a public, livestreamed meeting). All I can do is report what *actually* happened to a public that, by a factor of two to one, simply didn't want him back in office anyway.

What happened yesterday was a new low for our mayor and one of his favoured councilors.

The normal practice for a council meeting is that motions are put before council, questions are asked and then a debate is held before a vote is made. This is how a free, open and democratic system works.

What happened in yesterday's meeting however was an utter subversion of that process.

Instead of a debate, a councilor (who ended up voting against every motion for which this tactic was employed), made a procedural motion before any debate could start. That procedural motion was that the vote be taken immediately -- effectively denying supporters of the motion any right to have their say and attempt to convince their peers to also support that motion.

Thus the debate element of the process was eliminated through what I consider to be a conspiracy between the mayor and the councilor who, three times in a row, put this "procedural motion" to go straight to the vote.

The councilor who put these procedural motions was Thomas Lee, the same councilor who, in the previous meeting, also put a procedural motion to set aside the same three motions, thus denying other councilors the right to even vote on them at that meeting.

As another side-effect of this contempt for the democratic process, the councilors were left utterly confused as to what exactly they were voting on. Were they voting on the procedural motion or the original motion, or perhaps an ammendment? Very poor chairmanship on the part of the Mayor didn't help this at all -- I got the impression that it was their intention to confuse and disorient councilors so as to push through their own agendas that would have seen the motions fail.

I shall be making a video which highlights exactly what went down at this meeting and the disgraceful way the Mayor and Councilor Lee conspired (IMHO) to try and once again sideline motions that stood to increase the levels of openness and transparency under which the council would be forced to operate.

Hopefully there will be censure handed down by the Minister or the Ombudsman in this case because unless there is, I truly fear for the rights of ratepayers in this district.

More to come on this!

Carpe Diem folks!

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