HORSHAM Rural City Council's meetings will not be live streamed online due privacy concerns.
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Councillors passed a motion at the council's May meeting on Monday to not pursue live streaming options.
The council also passed a recommendation to adopt a new policy that allows audio of meetings to be recorded and available for download from the council's website.
The decision was contrary to a resolution made at a meeting in November 2017. The recommendation suggested that "future meetings are streamed live via the internet, once suitable technologies have been established to facilitate that occurring".
At the time, councillors David Grimble, Alethea Gulvin, Josh Koenig, Les Power, Mark Radford and John Robinson voted in favour of the motion, while Cr Pam Clarke voted against.
All councillors present at Monday night's meeting - Crs Clarke, Gulvin, Power, Radford and Robinson - voted against pursuing live streaming.
Cr Gulvin said she was glad the council had supported the change from the previous resolution.
"At the time I chose to go with the previous resolution, however privacy was something I was concerned about," she said.
"Privacy is a really big issue with all the things we have in our society currently. It's disappointing that we can't provide access to as many people (as we'd like), but at the same time, people have other ways of hearing about what's happening at council."
Cr Clarke said privacy was also a major concern for her.
"We did have grand ambitions to have it live streamed, but it is a huge cost and there are some privacy concerns. I think that this is a good outcome; everything we say will be recorded and put online for people to access," she said.
In her report to the council, governance and information manager Kerrie Bell said there were potential issues around privacy, consent, copyright and defamation when recording or live streaming public meetings.
Ms Bell said there were still a number of risks associated with recording audio from the council's meeting.
"Council may be exposed to legal action that may result in financial loss and reputational damage from a range of causes," she said.
Ms Bell said the risks identified included:
- Legal exposure relating to inappropriate behaviours of those in attendance: Councillors and officers need to take care not to make defamatory statements which could give rise to a civil action. Councillors and officers are guided by their respective Codes of Conduct. Members of the public are advised that they may be subject to legal action as a result of their inappropriate and/or unacceptable behaviour and/or comments.
- Technical issues beyond council control: Whilst every effort will be made to ensure that audio recording is available, technical issues which may include the availability of internet connection, quality of recording,device failure or malfunction, power outages or the unavailability of social media platforms may lead to reputational damage to Council.
- Legal exposure relating to breach of privacy and defamation: Members of the public need to be aware that as this is a public meeting, their voice or comments may be captured and published in the recording.By attending a public meeting of the Council, attendees are consenting to being recorded and published.
The cost of the audio recording equipment is $908.
Ms Bell said recordings would be available free of charge to download from the council's website, however the policy allowed for a nominal charge for staff time and equipment if audio copies of meetings were requested by the public.
See Horsham council's May agenda below:
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