OPINION
A media release lobbed over the editor’s desk this week from the City of Casey, patting itself on the back for consulting the community on a range of projects and initiatives this year.
It pointed out that more than 4500 residents had shared their insights and expectations during 66 community engagements in 2025.
That’s commendable and a credit to the community engagement team but, sadly, our experience in keeping readers informed about matters of public interest in Casey hasn’t been as good of late.
We’ve had reporters covering the local government scene in this neck of the woods for well over a century and consider that work a vital part of the democratic process.
But we can’t help but feel we’re being stonewalled by the Casey communications team.
Early last week we had two reporters attend the special meeting to elect the mayor and deputy, as we have done for years.
No photography was allowed at the meeting and afterwards we sought out re-elected mayor Stefan Kooman and his new deputy Michelle Crowther for a chat and photo opportunity.
All pretty standard stuff; only this time they were off limits. The mayor was whisked away for official photos and an after-party, while the deputy was too busy for a chat and she would instead provide a statement. That arrived the next day and consisted of little more than a quote on what an “honour and privilege” it was to be elected to the role. Not much for the ratepayers to take away from that, I’d suggest.
The mayor did get in touch the next morning and let us know he’s contactable anytime.
By contrast, Cardinia held its mayoral election this Monday night and new mayor Brett Owen, elected for an unprecedented fourth term, and his new deputy Liz Roberts were more than happy to be interviewed and photographed afterwards. They may not have rolled out a red carpet for the attending press, but did roll out a special ’press gallery’ table and allowed the proceedings to be video recorded.
A tale of two cities, really.
Later in the week, we were alerted to a “community information session” at Bunjil Place over plans to develop the old Cranbourne Golf Club site into housing.
We registered our interest in attending (as everyone needs to do these days, even for regular Casey Council meetings) and were a bit taken aback when our request was refused.
We were told the session was restricted to council, the developer and the 50-odd objectors.
So how, we asked, do those in the community, outside those objectors, keep abreast of developments in this fairly significant development? A carefully-worded media release afterwards perhaps?
Our exclusion seems to suggest that council prefers a more controlled environment where the message can be massaged to fit the preferred narrative.
No pesky reporters taking the proceedings off message.
I would suggest allowing outside scrutiny from an independent and trusted media makes it less of an exercise in box-ticking and a more genuine community consultation, especially in the wake of the Operation Sandon controversy.
In our humble opinion, that is. We’ve only been doing it for more than a century.
– Garry Howe
