Inner West Council to webcast

The five-month-old Inner West Council has announced that as of December, they will be live webcasting their Council meetings.

Richard Pearson, Administrator at the Inner West Council said that the decision to webcast was made to ”get more people involved with council decisions and increase transparency within council”.

Having been in existence since May this year, Mr Pearson said that local engagement was critical, and that it had “become obvious that we needed more people involved and engaged with what council is doing.”

“There are more than 185,000 people living in our local government area, it’s a modern form of engagement that both state and federal government use to broadcast, so why shouldn’t local government be webcast as well?”

This announcement from Council comes as a shock to many, including City of Sydney Councillor Angela Vithoulkas, who said that given the age of the newly-formed Inner-West Council, the City of Sydney is lagging behind.

Cr Vithoulkas said that some councils, including Victoria’s Dandenong Council, who have been doing live webcasting for 13 years, have managed to make the process work.

She said “like anything, webcasting can be as high-cost as you make it. If we are considering the Rolls-Royce of solutions, that can be quite expensive. For trial purposes, there are low-cost options where Council could roll webcasting out.”

The introduction of something that Cr Vithoulkas said is a “very basic concept now” and needs to happen as soon as possible.

Cr Vithoulkas also said that unlike launching WiFi across the city, which combats with other levels of government, webcasting is within the domain of Council: “it’s now a matter of just getting on with it” she said.

Rhea Liebmann, a spokesperson for WestConnex Action group said that the reasons for the Council deciding to start webcasting meetings is an “attempt to try and appear more transparent, particularly since the amalgamations and opposition to WestConnex.”

Despite this, Ms Liebmann told City Hub that although this move towards transparency is a good thing, more needs to be done to listen to the community.

“I do think it’s a good thing, the more transparency, the less behind the scenes deals that will be done. It’s better than nothing, but not enough at this point. A lot more needs to be done to listen to the community. Transparency is critical but means nothing with no democratic process underlying it.”

The price of webcasting has long been something that Council’s have hidden behind in an attempt to avoid upgrading to webcasting. Mr Pearson said the webcasting is going to be conducted via YouTube, and “it’s not expensive – a few thousand dollars at the most.”

“We deliberately tried to find a budget cost, and one that would ensure we could find something that would not drop out, but the advice I got was that YouTube can live-stream Council meetings, and that’s our first option. We can start looking at other options if it doesn’t work, but I have every confidence that it will.”

The impact of the live webcasting of Council meetings remains to be seen, however Mr Pearson said that he believes the “meetings won’t change at all, it will just open local government process up to a broader spectrum of people.”

The Lord Mayor’s Office was unavailable for comment in time for publication.