Project background: 

Good governance is fundamental to Yarra City Council. Governance Rules are heavily informed by legislative requirements in the Local Government Act 2020.

All Councils are required to have a set of rules that govern how Council Meetings and Delegated Committee Meetings are conducted.

At the Council Meeting on 26 November 2024, a motion was put forward looking to “commence community engagement to amend the Governance Rules to repeal the requirement for residents to submit a question in advance for public question time at Council meetings in Rule 53.” This motion was passed during that Meeting. 

A report was presented to the Council Meeting on Tuesday 17 December for Council to endorse the revised version of the Governance Rules for engagement and the engagement approach to understand community sentiment on the proposed change to public question time mentioned above, and the proposed change of requiring a person asking a question to provide their contact details for the purpose of any necessary follow-up response to the matter raised. 

The final document was presented to Council for adoption on Tuesday 8 April 2025 alongside the results of the engagement for a Council decision. 

What did we ask?

Respondents were offered the opportunity to review the revised Governance Rules and answer two questions:

• Do you agree with the following proposed changes to the Governance Rules? Please indicate your level of agreement from ‘Strongly disagree’ to ‘Strongly agree’.

• Repealing the requirement for community members to submit a question in advance for public question time at Council Meetings 

• Requiring a person asking a question to provide their contact details for the purpose of any necessary follow-up response to the matter raised (for example, where a complete response may not be able to be provided at the Council Meeting) 

• Do you have any additional feedback on the proposed changes?
• If this question was answered respondents were asked to indicate which of the proposed changes their comments referred to.

What did we hear?

A summary of the feedback is available below:

Figure 1 – Results from Question 1 of Governance Rules 2025 consultation (94 total responses).

Beyond their level of agreement, community members could provide additional feedback on the proposed changes. 43 comments were provided. The comments have been analysed and broken down into recurring themes.

Key themes relating to the change “Repealing the requirement for community members to submit a question in advance for Public Question Time at Council Meetings” include:

• Desire for prepared responses

• General support for the change

• Support for a combination of prepared and questions in the moment

• Concern that the Council Meeting will become too long

Key themes relating to the change “Repealing the requirement for community members to submit a question in advance for Public Question Time at Council Meetings” include:

• General support for the change

• Support for using contact details to verify residents and ratepayers

• Request for the ability to provide contact details confidentially

• Comments that were unrelated to section 53 of the Governance Rules

• Request to make the requirement for contact details optional

Further information on the themes and individual feedback can be found within the Engagement Report.

Read the engagement report.

What came next?

At the Council Meeting on Tuesday 8 April, Council adopted an amended Governance Rules with changes for community members to ask questions as part of public question time.

Previously, community members were required to submit their question up to 24 hours in advance of the Council Meeting. In the line with the feedback we received from the community, we have removed the requirement to submit questions in advance as part of public question time.

The person asking a question will also be required to provide their contact details for the purpose of any follow-up response to the matter raised. We want to assure the community that these contact details can be provided confidentially and in accordance with Council’s Privacy Policy.

Visit the project page.

To read more about this consultation, please visit the Governance Rules 2025 project page.