Wānaka councillor and former deputy mayor Lyal Cocks raised concern about the council’s approach to transparency at last week’s Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) meeting (Thursday April 27).

Seven out of ten agenda items were ‘public excluded’ and part of an additional item was also public excluded.

Lyal questioned mayor Glyn Lewers and chief executive Mike Theelan about why so many of the items were public excluded, saying: “I don’t believe we’ve got strong enough justification...”

“We leave ourselves open on transparency.”

Lyal Cocks PHOTO: Supplied

The public excluded items included the appointment of the chair of the long awaited new Wānaka Airport Liaison Group.

Read more: Airport committee chair to be announced

Council staffers recommended the item be public excluded as it “would be likely to result in the disclosure of information where the withholding of information is necessary to protect the privacy of natural persons, including deceased natural persons” (under section 48(1) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987).

Lyal said the chair of the new Wānaka Airport Liaison Group had already been considered by a council subcommittee and any issues had been addressed there.

Mike Theelan said it was “a fairly unusual agenda in that we have a preponderance of ‘P.X’  reports”.

He said the council’s advice was to be careful when dealing with the privacy of natural persons and it was best to allow discussions to take place in private.

“We do scrutinise carefully when there are requests for P.X,” he said.

Lyal was the only councillor who voted against the items continuing to be public excluded.

“I support greater transparency as to what we are doing in council and therefore questioned the justification for some of the items being addressed with the public excluded,” Lyal told the Wānaka App after the meeting. 

He said he accepted the CEO’s explanation for some of the items.

“By raising the issue I hope the staff will take onboard, that the priority must be for business to be addressed in a transparent manner.”

QLDC spokesperson Sam White told the Wānaka App the chair of the Wānaka Airport Committee would be announced “in the next few days once all remaining formalities have been completed”.