Recording a fail: what the Shire of Toodyay’s electors meeting really revealed
OPINION
Transparency in local government shouldn’t be controversial and in 2026 it shouldn’t even be a question.
Yet at the annual meeting of electors, residents had front row seats to an argument between the chair and a resident about what was or wasn’t said at last year’s meeting.
The reason?
There was no recording.
If it matters record it and make that information easy to find:
From January 2025, shires have been required to record their council meetings, and this helps to create an accurate public record, including a record of what the shire does well.
At this elector’s meeting, the manager of finance delivered an interesting presentation that outlined issues the shire had identified and fixed.
He talked about the money saved, in what was a positive story about the responsible management of public funds.
Yet there is no record of that presentation on the shire’s website.
When The Herald asked for those details so our readers could be informed about those savings, the shire president told us to find it ourselves.
He said, “the executive manager provided examples in his presentation at the annual electors meeting, all of which are documented in previous minutes of ordinary council meetings.”
That response may have technically answered the question – but does directing our readers to trawl through a year’s worth of old minutes really serve the public interest?
The information we asked for was already available in a document that could have easily been emailed.
Instead, we were told to comb through the archives of past council minutes without dates, page numbers or agenda references – to reconstruct what the shire had already presented on PowerPoint slides.
Transparency should not require detective work.
Hit record for the record:
In this case, recording matters because public meetings are not private conversations – they are part of the official democratic record.
The shire’s website notes there is no legal requirement to record the annual meeting of electors and although that is technically true – it misses the point.
Good governance is about doing more than the bare legal minimum.
Recording this annual elector meeting didn’t require a new policy, new equipment or extra funding.
It just required the shire to wheel out the same recording equipment it uses for council meetings or even a mobile phone at a push.
Instead, the room was left listening to two conflicting versions of the same event with no ability to review a recording.
And this incident summed up a broader problem on display that night.
An open forum with the floor closed:
The annual meeting of electors is a forum for residents to ask questions, raise motions, and discuss general business.
Apart from this editor, only ten ratepayers attended and only two questions were submitted to the shire in advance.
No motions were raised or voted on, and no questions were asked about the annual report.
So, there was time and there was space.
Yet when a ratepayer tried to ask questions from the floor, she was told she couldn’t, because her questions needed to be sent in before the meeting.
Instead of allowing her questions to be heard – and answered or taken on notice – time was spent reading out legislative provisions explaining why they could not be asked from the floor.
Ironically, it would have taken less time to hear her questions.
When the shire president formally closed the meeting after 20 minutes, he then chose to speak to those remaining in the room.
Unsurprisingly, the ratepayer who was not allowed to ask questions chose not to stay and listen.
If you deny someone the right to be heard, they will naturally disengage.
Democracy can be messy: questions can be repetitive, they can be uncomfortable and they can test patience.
But respectful leadership requires a tolerance for scrutiny – especially at a meeting designed to give ratepayers a voice.
Toodyay residents are capable of forming their own views, but what they saw at this meeting appeared to focus more on procedure than participation.
Ratepayers deserve genuine engagement and they deserve respect.
At the very least, they deserve a meeting where someone presses ‘record’.