Politics Opinion

Colac Council creates chaos by controlling media criticism

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A storm in a coffee cup has brewed between the Colac Shire Council and the Colac Herald (Screenshots via YouTube, Facebook)

Controversy has erupted after the CEO of a Victorian shire council shut out the town's local newspaper from reporting on council matters. Rosemary Sorensen reports.

THE COLAC HERALD, in Victoria’s southwest, appears to be an excellent independent local newspaper, which is no small thing at a time when many country papers are losing staff or closing down.

And so, it appears to be a puzzling move by the CEO of Colac Otway Shire Council to accuse the Herald of ‘lack of care or respect for the people at any level in my organisation and a willingness to generate and allow ongoing harm to them which cannot be tolerated’.

CEO Anne Howard made that accusation in a letter to editor Alison Martin, adding that the Council would henceforth only respond to the Herald’s questions on matters that relate ‘directly to safety of the Colac Otway community’.

Effectively, the town’s newspaper was banned by the Council.

What had caused this angry reaction? It was a story that had been printed, then posted online by the Herald and subsequently circulated on community social media, where it generated what is being described by both sides as “ugly” comments about council staff.

The focus of the story was a group of men who meet regularly for coffee on the footpath outside a shop in the tiny town of Beeac, north of Colac; approached by a council staff member, they were told that there’d been a complaint and they needed to move on.

Martin, in an editorial, clarified that the complaint was about someone having to walk on the road to get by the group and that the paper had monitored and deleted the responses to the story when it was posted online, but a community Facebook group had allowed the comments to let rip.

This, apparently, is what incensed the CEO, who, according to the excellent report by the ABC’s southwest Victoria reporter, Olivia Sanders, doubled down on the draconian decision to ban virtually all requests for comment from the newspaper that had offended them.

Martin’s editorial was also circulated on the Otway Community News Facebook page by one of the Colac councillors, who pointed out that the decision to refuse comment to the Herald was made by the CEO without councillor consultation. A hot mess now confronts the council of this shire.

Martin, in her editorial, wrote about something basic — at least it was basic, back before mainstream media sloughed off the burden of impartial adherence to facts and became propagandists. She wrote about the important role of the media and its right (indeed its duty) to report on governance — in this case, on the Council of Colac Otway shire.

Apparently, the Herald was advised in February that the Council expected 48-to-72 hours notice for enquiries — which she didn’t feel was acceptable in this case, where no response was received to the newspaper’s query by their print deadline.

Two to three days to reply to an enquiry from the local paper? Good grief! Something is very wrong here.

This storm in one CEO’s coffee cup has escalated and spilled onto the Council, which must deal with the embarrassment and damage. Council CEOs are well-paid professionals — a councilwatch website, CEO Salaries | Council Watch Inc, listed the CEO salaries for all Victorian shires from the 2021-22 annual reports, where the highest was $550,000, the lowest $140,000, with Colac towards the lower end at $260,000.

Anyone who has worked with a council will know that patience is required and that a two-to-three-day response to an email is often the standard policy. You’ll also know, if you live in a regional area, that it’s very common for townspeople to bag the local council. They don’t fix the roads, they don’t put up the right Christmas decorations, they raise the rates but do nothing.

Local newspapers and other media are very dependent on council news to fill their pages, to maintain readership and as their best source of information. And alongside council “issues” – a demand to take down a footpath obstruction, a refusal of a building permit, a change in library opening hours – there is much space given to not just the sports results but also community events and initiatives backed by councils.

Frankly, the relationship would, under normal circumstances, be described as cosy: in towns the size of Colac (approximately 10,000), the local paper and council are never far apart. Whatever has gone wrong at Colac is, you’d guess, going to throw shade not on the Herald, but on the Council’s CEO.

The core issue here is how government (or government-backed) organisations (from a shire council through to a state library or an orchestra) deal with challenges to their authority at a time when media, too, is dealing with incursions on to its own territory by social media, which is also increasingly manipulated both by vested interests and big money as well as the loss of inhibition and the rise of malice.

This is when the qualities of leadership become clear and crucial. To be able to respond to evolving challenges is, surely, why the remuneration of top-tier management has increased so much over the past decades and why those people who can act with precision when a crisis arises are admired (and, you’d suppose, in demand).

This is certainly not to belittle the CEO whose decision to write a letter accusing the local paper of being willing to ‘generate and allow ongoing harm’ has brought both her and her Council unwanted attention. It’s an isolated incident that, nevertheless, highlights the way social relationships have shifted quite quickly and how previously established protocols for those relationships have fundamentally changed.

As experts debate the announcement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the Government wants to legislate a minimum age for social media use, the deeper, broader, even more dangerously divisive and damaging consequences of the way the internet is (mis)used are rising like wraiths at the banquet.

Banning the newspaper from asking questions of the Council as a punishment for “generating” offensive criticism is the same kind of thinking that has the PM banning children from using social media. Yes, there’s awful harm done to children through the usage of social media, but banning kids is blaming them for the harm.

In the case of Colac, asking – indeed, seeking to ensure through prohibition– that a newspaper doesn’t report criticism of the Council is unfair and not good for the community. In the case of the entire country, prohibiting the use of otherwise poorly monitored, rampant new media which is also widely used in supportive ways (rather like the kerbside coffee gatherings in Beerac) does also seem not just unfair but also, frankly, unworkable.

Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival. You can follow Rosemary on Twitter/X @sorensen_rose.

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