Guide to making a submission below. The more of your own words you use the better. 

Kind Regards,

Matthew

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1. Email council@cgd.vic.gov.au by next Friday, 26th July and preferably bcc: me (matthew.kirwan@cgd.vic.gov.au)

2. Use email subject line:

YOUR NAME – Feedback on Meeting Procedure Local Law

3. Give your name and address, or at least your suburb.

4. IMPORTANT: Preferably, request to be able to speak to your submission at a verbal hearing. It’s going to be those that are prepared to speak for a few minutes to Councillors on the evening of Thursday, 15th August that are going to make the most impact and influence Councillors, more than just email submissions.

5. What are the key issues to put in your submission?

ISSUE	ISSUE DESCRIPTION	WHAT YOU COULD SAY IN YOUR RESPONSE
a) An 8 min limit on Councillor question time.	Currently there is no limit and yet public Council meetings still rarely go for more than 2 1/2 hours. Councillors serve us best by having no limit on how many questions they can ask in public on resident or policy issues. The 8 minutes is for questions and answers and the only extension is at the discretion of the Mayor and only to be allow a final question to be answered. This only allows three short questions to be asked and answered	That Councillor question time should stay unlimited so Councillors can ask as many questions as they need to at a public Council meeting to serve and represent the public and hold the Council staff to account.
b) Not implementing verbal question time	Residents should have the ability to ask questions themselves, not just have them read out by someone else. The 2017 3 month trial of this at Greater Dandenong had no issues and many Councils across Melbourne have been introducing it – include Knox and Monash nearby	That the public should be able to ask their own questions for themselves as many Councils are slowly introducing. They should be able to participate in local democracy directly
c) The banning of online petitions without an alternative being provided	Online petitions are the way of the future and prohibiting online petitions created with popular websites like change.org from being accepted as valid petitions because it doesn’t collect street addresses and email addresses – without providing an alternative – is old fashioned and not keeping up with the times – particularly for a Council that has a Digital Strategy!	Until Council provides it’s own online petition software, petition software like change.org should be allowed and new numbers of signatories recorded at each meeting.
d) All rescission motions need a seconder’s signature before the night.	Rescission motions allow controversial matters to be voted on again at the next public meeting. This proposed change is good only for pressuring Councillors not to consider going ahead with rescission motions. There has been no problem to date so why change anything? Why are they being treated differently to any other motions? If something is important to the public and needs to be voted on again why should that be discouraged?	The process for rescission motions should stay the same and no signatures should be needed before the night so Councillors are not pressured to not put them forward