By Parker McKenzie
Yarra Ranges Council has called on the state government to take action on recent disruptions at council meetings throughout Victoria after the public gallery was closed by the council until May.
At the Tuesday Yarra Ranges Council meeting, councillors unanimously voted to submit a motion to the Municipal Association of Victoria’s (MAV) state council on Friday May 19, calling on the Victorian Government to “actively work with the local government sector and other relevant stakeholders to develop state-wide measures to manage and prevent disruptive and unsafe behaviour,” at local council meetings and “coordinate a response to the expanding and increasingly aggressive cohort in the community that have been targeting local councils in recent months.”
Yarra Ranges Mayor Jim Child said in his terms as Shire of Upper Yarra President in 1985 and as Mayor of Yarra Ranges in 2012, 2013, 2021 and 2023, he has never seen “such continuous disruptive and aggressive behaviour that has been playing out in council public galleries.”
“The purpose of this late motion is to see the whole of MAV membership support to call on the Victorian government to actively work with the local government sector and other relevant stakeholders to develop statewide measures that support councils to manage and prevent disruptive and unsafe behaviour,” he said.
“Yarra Ranges Council is committed to reopening the doors of the public gallery once again but can only do so with increased support and a coordinated sector-wide response to ensure the safety of staff, councillors and the broader community.”
On 31 January this year, Yarra Ranges Council adjourned its meeting due to injections from the public gallery and called the police when those in attendance refused to leave the Civic Centre building in Lilydale.
Before councillors spoke and voted on the motion, Yarra Ranges resident Belinda Bernardini, who is a founder of the fringe-community group My Place Yarra Valley, spoke against the motion.
She said an alternative recommendation would be “to look at altering your undemocratic governance processes so that outcomes accord with the needs of the community rather than that of bureaucrats.”
“Mayor Child has been, in my opinion, a large contributor to the discord in the gallery. He has personally been quoted in the media labelling My Place members as anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers and right-wing conspiracy theorists,” Ms Bernardini said.
“As the founder of My Place Yarra Valley independent of any My Place in the country, and as a vaccinated resident who has personally been to Auschwitz and many other World War II historical locations with a healthy distrust of government, I wholeheartedly refute all these allegations.”
After a decision was made to close the public gallery in April, Mayor Jim Child said members of the group hadn’t come to terms with the Holocaust, after My Place founder Darren Bergwerf told ABC’s 7.30 program he didn’t know if the genocide occurred because he “wasn’t there.”
Ms Bernardini said the agenda item suggests that there has been a significant amount of serious incidents that warrant intervention from MAV and the state government, “yet in spite of this council calling the police and employing security guards, there has not been one arrest.”
“Not one person has been forcibly removed from the council building nor has there been any damage to council property,” she said.
“Council doesn’t seem to understand that the problem isn’t with the residents, it’s with the system.”
Members of My Place Yarra Valley and My Place in the Hills, offshoots of Mr Bergwerf’s My Place Frankston group, have been attending council meetings to protest Yarra Ranges Council adopting 20-minute neighbourhood design principles in recent development plans for Monbulk and Warburton. Yarra Ranges Council no longer takes questions “relating to 20-minute neighbourhoods or their alignment to the principles associated with the United Nations” during meetings.
Deputy-Mayor Sophie Todorov said Yarra Ranges Council has had its “very own evidence-based experience of having meetings disrupted since 31 January.”
“We couldn’t even get through the acknowledgment of country without verbal comments and disruptions and interruptions through there. And we couldn’t even follow our own local government processes and governance rules,” she said.
“I too feel that it’s only come to this, that we now have to take this action for those behaviours and it also disappoints me to know that some of those threats from these people have been extended personally to counsellors and their families as well.”
The motion was passed unanimously.
