Watcher now most watched

I WONDER where Four Oaks Ward councillor Paul Richardson is coming from.
He is a new councillor, but was a council watcher for at least two years before his election.
Despite his preoccupation with council expenditure he persistently asks for reports on issues that everyone knows the answer to and is costing the council a fortune in officer time and redissemination of the information. That aside, he was asked during the Tuesday 7 February council meeting to apologise to a councillor for insulting comment, the second such incident in as many weeks. The first apology was by direction of a council minute and that’s ‘heavy’ stuff.
To follow this, Edrington Ward councillor Mick Morland demanded and received an apology from Cr Richardson. Cr Morland rose after closure of a debate on a successful motion that the council hold a series of forums to explain the Federal Government’s new industrial relations legislation. He said his family name had been besmirched by Cr Richardson’s comment.
Cr Morland said when asking for the apology that Cr Richardson said during the debate that ‘rich people like Cr Morland don’t care about little people and he walks all over them’.
Cr Richardson said: “I apologise.”
That’s easy, but the damage has been done.
The 7 February in camera committee meeting was to relook at the original apology, but there was more.
The committee moved: “That the council writes to the Executive Director, Local Government Victoria advising concern that Cr Richardson has breached the provisions of Section 77 of the Local Government Act in releasing confidential information to the media and requesting an investigation be conducted as a matter of urgency.”
With Cr Richardson these days it’s a case of ‘watch this space’.