Closed door sessions cause concerns

• Published date: 16 April 2021

When I call him from Rotorua, he’s two double-shots into the day and his mind is sharp — or perhaps it’s that Knight has been thinking about local government’s issues with transparency for a while.

“It’s a known and troubling black hole in the transparency framework,” he says, almost before I can ask the question.

“Deliberative committees are where the action is and we should not put the spurious label of a workshop on it to avoid the public gaze.”

He says the issue is widespread.

“[Local Government Minister Nanaia] Mahuta should be really concerned by this.”

The law has established a “really good regime” around meetings, “making sure they are done transparently so the public can engage in them”.

Workshops are in a kind of no-man’s land for local government law. Because formal decisions aren’t made in them, the public doesn’t have the same access rights as they do for most official meetings. However, they’re still a place where direction, debate and discussion can take place that lead to formal decisions.

“The problem comes because those workshops have been almost made systemic. Rather than being the exception, they have become the rule.”

It’s “raw and naked debate” that gives democracy its legitimacy, he says. If the public sees the full process, they’re more likely to tolerate a decision.

“Hiding in the shadows ... is problematic. It’s not the ethos of local democracy.”

But maybe that “raw and naked debate” is a little too raw and little too naked for those in the business of organisational reputation risk management?

The answer, from Massey University’s head of public relations Dr Chris Galloway, may be a surprise.

“The justice system is based on open justice. That means justice is not only done but is to be seen to be done. The same is true with democracy. The default should be that it’s an open forum unless there is a good reason for it not to be.”

Galloway speaks slowly and clearly, with careful thought between each sentence.

Reputations are “built on perceptions of trustworthiness“.

Doing things behind closed doors, justified or not, can have a negative impact on the perception of councils, he says.

Poetically, Kāpiti District councillor Gwynn Compton is in a closed-door briefing when I message him, via Twitter, asking if he’s free to chat.

In November last year, Compton called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry on local government that would represent a wholesale reassessment of how the sector worked.

Compton says closed-door workshops “fuel a sense...