MEETINGS OF CITY COUNCIL.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20790, 25 February 1933, Page 10

MEETINGS OF CITY COUNCIL.

RIGHT OP THE PUBLIC TO ATTEND. INTERESTING ENGUgH CASE. The action of the Mayor of Ohrotchorcli (Mr D. G. Sullivan, M.P.) in declaring the council in committee owing to the unseemly behaviour of some of the occupants of the public gallery while! a m&tter was under discuesio? at the meeting of the council on Mon4»y night, lias raised the question of what •rights, if any, the public haye in the matter of attending meetings of the council. A representative of "The Press'' was told by one of the occupants of the public gallery that during the period that the public was excluded he clrew up, roughly, a petition that the public should be readmitted, and this was signed by several of those who had been excluded. The council still in committee when the petition WHS dealt with. As far as has been ascertained there is no instance in New Zealand of the right of the public to attend meetings of city or borough councils having been raised, and apparently tfie only English case on the subject is thst of the Tenby Corporation v. Mason, which is reported in 77 L.J. Ch. at page 230. Jollife in his Local Government in BpF®iJghßi PSf*" lislicd in 1928, has a note to section 61 of the New Zealand Municipal Corporations Act —a section which refers to the minuteß of the prpcecdijigs qi tho council-—in which he states that "there is no provision in the Act that meetings of borough pouncils are open to the public," ana he cites Tenby Corporation v. Mason in support.

An English Oasg. The headnote to the ease is:—"Meetings of the borough council of a municipal corporation, incorporated under the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, are not public, and a person, not being a member of the council, has Po right to attend such meetings either as a menj: ber of the public genprftjly, or as a burgess and ratepayer, or as a representative of the press," The judgment was that of Mr Justice Kekewich and is stated to be the last given by him before his of Appeal, where it was ijphel<J. The action a declaration that the eouncil of the borough of Tenby had a j-ight to exclude sll persons who were pot ■ members of the council, from the meetings of the council; and also for #n injunction restraining the defendant (Mftson) from trespassing on the plaintiff's property, ana from entering the council chamber during the meetings, iind from being present at the meetings, without the permission of the council. Some Interesting Points. Several interesting points were dealt With the judgment. Tenby i» a municipal borough and seaport ip Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a population of 4100. The defendant ww a b»?' gpss and ratepayer and *lso the profirietor of the Tenby "Observer," and n assertion of his alleged right he attended a meeting of the council on March 11, 1907, mi refused to Je&vo when requested by the Mayor, and fis hut threatened to repent the alleged trespass, the council brought the action. By resolution, arrived at in 1895, the council per®ittc4 persons who were representatives of newspapers to be present at meeting# of tbp council, subject to the right of th.e council to expludo them on necessary occasions. As the. outcome of ft report of tho proceedings of the council which appeared in tljo Tenby "Observer," the council re* solved that defendant "be informed that fcd will not be permitted to attend again personally as a reporter to his own paper until he proves hiwself to the satisfaction of the council to be fin evident shorthand writer." ' Mr Justice JCekewich, -in his judgment, said that defendant claimed the right a reporter, but he actually meant as & buS-gess. He could not deduce from the affixing of a notice Of the council's meeting to the door of the Town Hall any intention on the part of the legislature that the public should have the right to be admitted to the meetings; "and, indeed," he added, "1 should infer that tliis is the limit of publicity which it was thought desiriibJe. . . I can And no reason in the character; or constitution of the meetings, or, indeed, in the nature of the business to be transacted thereat, which would justify the conclusion that they mudt necessarily be public." In the Court of Appeal one of the judges, Sir Henry Buckley, in concurring with Mr Justice Kekewich 'a judgment, remarked that prima facie a constituent hfcd no right of access to the meetings of a deliberate body. In the present case the corporation was, in & sense, a public body . . governing the affairs pf those members of the public who wore burgesses of the borough, hut was not public in the largest sense of the word. "It is more analogous," he added, "to the Board of the London and North-Wcstern Railway Company, or the Benchers of an Inn of Court, governing domestic affairs. . , It seems to me that a burgess is not entitled to say: 'I will go ia. and I will hear yoar deliberations.' . . . The

council had no 'intention of excluding the public from knowledge of what they were doing. There is no question of public policy. Newspaper reporters are admitted freely; but this particular gentleman, as far as I have been able to gather from the facts, was not a sufficiently efficient shorthand writer to produce reports of their proceedings which they thought satisfactory, and they objected to his coming because the outcome of his work did not do them justice."