I attended the Wandoona Shire council meeting and the mayor blinked sideways

I attend every ordinary meeting of the Wandoona Shire Council. I have done so since 1997. I sit in the public gallery, which is four plastic chairs against the back wall of what used to be the old baby health clinic, and I take notes. I am usually the only person in the gallery. Occasionally Keith Rowbotham attends, and sits at the other end, and we do not speak.

I want to say at the outset that I have no particular axe to grind with this council. The roads are what they are. The bins are collected, mostly. I am there because I believe in local democracy and because the chambers are air-conditioned and the meetings are on Tuesdays, and Tuesday nights in Wandoona are, as readers of this site will be aware, a time when it is better to be indoors with other people.

Item 7.3: Kerbside collection, revised schedule

The meeting of 19 November was proceeding normally. Apologies, minutes, declarations of interest (none, as usual, which I note), correspondence (a letter from Mr Rowbotham about a culvert, taken as read). We came to item 7.3, a proposal to move the Dulacca Street collection from Wednesday to Thursday on account of the truck.

The Mayor, who I shall not name, as I don’t believe it is necessary and as my lawyer, who is also my nephew, has advised against it, was reading from the officer’s report. The report was long. The Mayor was reading it in full, in the voice councils use for things nobody will object to.

And then, on the words “fortnightly recyclables”, the Mayor blinked.

Sideways.

I want to be very precise about this, because precision is what separates a ratepayer from a crank. The eyelids did not come down. Something came across. From the outer corner inward, quick, like a windscreen wiper on a car you weren’t expecting to have one. Both eyes. Simultaneously. And then the Mayor continued, “will be collected on the alternate Thursday,” without the slightest pause.

I looked at Keith. Keith was looking at his culvert letter. I looked at the General Manager. The General Manager was looking at the Mayor with an expression I can only describe as tired, and that is the expression that has stayed with me, because it was not surprise. It was the expression of a man who has seen the sideways blink many times and has made his peace with it, probably at a salary.

I raise it in public question time

Public question time at Wandoona Shire is ten minutes at the end and you have to have submitted your question in writing forty-eight hours in advance, which I had not, as I had not known forty-eight hours in advance that the Mayor was going to blink sideways. I raised this with the chair. The chair, who was the Mayor, said that I could submit a question for the next meeting. I asked whether the Mayor could confirm, for the record, that the Mayor had just blinked sideways. The Mayor said that was not a question that had been submitted in writing. I said it was now, and I wrote it down and held it up.

The Mayor looked at it for a long moment. Then the Mayor said, “Noted,” and closed the meeting, four minutes early, which has never happened.

What I am not saying

I am not saying the Mayor of Wandoona Shire is a reptilian. I am a ratepayer, not a scientist. I am saying that the Mayor blinked sideways during the item on bin collection, that the General Manager did not react, that the meeting closed early, and that when I looked up “sideways blink” on the computer at the library the first result was a lizard.

I am also not saying that this is unusual. Anyone who follows these matters knows that the situation in Canberra is considerably further advanced and that nobody has thought it worth remarking on for years. I merely note that it has now reached shire level, and that this is, in my view, the sort of thing that should be in the minutes.

It is not in the minutes. I have checked. The minutes record that item 7.3 was carried unanimously and that the meeting closed at 8:26 pm. They do not record the blink. They do not record my question. They record that “a member of the public was present”, which I was, and which the lizard also was, if that’s what it was, which I am not saying.

Follow-up

I submitted my question in writing for the December meeting. The reply, which I have attached, states that “Council does not respond to questions regarding the personal characteristics of elected members” and refers me to the Code of Meeting Practice, section 4, which I have read, and which does not mention blinking in either direction.

The Dulacca Street bins are now collected on Thursday. I will be at the February meeting. I will be sitting in the chair nearest the Mayor’s end, and I will have my glasses on, and I will have submitted a question in writing forty-eight hours in advance, and the question will be, simply, “Again?”

Document U8MC-13-0308. Status: DEVELOPING. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.

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