YourDarwin data insights unless otherwise stated up to 31st March 2023.
Our Elected Members lead for our community and our organisation delivers on the elected members directions, together we strive to ensure our community is connected and integrated in both the decision making process and organisational performance collectively for the betterment of our city.
Councillor Expenses
Elected Members are an important part of connecting with the community and also engaging with the community at many levels, this ensures that each elected member has the opportunity to represent the whole community. Within the organisation elected members not only attend Council meetings to meet with compliance under the local government act, they also participate in many committees that drive the direction of the organisation and support our strategic direction.
Our Elected Members are sincere in their approach and take seriously their responsibilities and in doing so are open and transparent in sharing the expenses accrued while representing our community. Our open and transparent actions with promoting and visualising these expenses hope to not only offer transparency but also an opportunity for our community to investigate these actions to better support our elected members and organisation in collaborating and engaging for the future.
Expenses by Councillor
In this graph the details of each individual Councillor is represented and the ability to review is available for all of the community. It is important to recognise that this data is only representative of our current elected members and further detail will be provided to baseline previous information from past representatives in the next YourDarwin update this year to provide a baseline indication for our communities reference.
Expenses by Type
In this graph the expenses by type are visualised noting the following categories:
Base - which refer to operational meeting attendances, Electoral - which refer to the procedural processes for election activity.
Deputy Mayor - which refer to higher duties transferred to appointed elected members in an acting role while the Lord Mayor is unavailable.
General or Other – which refer to meetings and obligations attended to outside of the procedural activities, these can include and not limited to attendances at representative meetings with community and stakeholders, invitation events etc.
Council Decisions
Prior to the 22nd term of Council, the average number of decisions made by Council annually was between 500-600 each year. During the 22nd term of Council, Council abolished many of its executive committees and reviewed its delegation framework. This resulted in the removal of administrative items from Council agendas and improving Council’s response to town planning matters and the NTG Development Consent Authority (DCA) for Darwin.
The percentage of 2020/21 decisions initially made in open session was consistent with 2019/20 at 72%. In accordance with Council Policy 030, Governance Council undertakes a review of confidential decisions six monthly. 111 decisions were released as part of the review processes in 2020/21. At 30 June 2021, only 5% of Council decisions remained in confidence. Most decisions that remained in confidence were due to personal information, commercial in-confidence, or because Council was legally obligated to retain a matter in confidence.
% of Decisions By Type
The types of decisions made by Council can be provided in different forms, noted within the above graph are the specific types of reports presented to Council and numbers of decisions based on these types of reports. Important detail for our community to assess and investigate a cumulative approach to how decisions are presented and made at Council.
The types include:
Action reports detail recommendations put to Council on the basis of the information provided within the report, these are common for offering debate and shared perspectives during the Council meeting and provide and opportunity to democratically arrive at an agreed position collectively.
Receive and note reports are presented to Council to provide information to Council that is aligned with program or procedural information that does not require a decision from Council but is required to be endorsed as received for the purposes of the information within.
Notices of motion are put by elected members procedurally and offered for endorsement by Council – these are not organisational presentations but are often followed by an organisational report at the next Council meeting. Similar with general business, this information is provided for the reference of the elected members, organisation and the community – information that attains to the attendance and representation at external events are an example of this type of information tabled in this section of Council.
Matters of public importance include relevant issues and information that have arisen outside of the agenda presented and note for inclusion by the Council.
Council business is thorough, constructive and participatory in its governance and provides an opportunity for the community to better understand the organisation performance on a routine basis, our Council meets every second tuesday for official meetings and every tuesday in between for briefing sessions of upcoming business.