Perth Voice Interactive

BAYSWATER councillors will have to declare any community social media pages run by themselves or their spouses, in an effort to deter “inappropriate usage of community social media platforms for political purposes”.

The motion by Cr Elli Petersen-Pik narrowly won majority support at the July 25 meeting with support from mayor Filomena Piffaretti and Crs Dan Bull, Catherine Ehrhardt, Giorgia Johnson and Sally Palmer.

Facebook community pages have become increasingly influential in local politics in the past few years, prompting concerns that shadowy administrators have the power to censor political opponents or critics.

“I raised this motion following many complaints that I have been receiving from residents about their concerns regarding the inappropriate involvement of some councillors around this table when it comes to the management of community Facebook groups or pages, directly or via their partners,” Cr Petersen-Pik said at the July 25 meeting 

“Some of those community pages have been used for political and personal purposes, including self-promotion or promotion of specific councillors or candidates, blocking residents from accessing those community pages, and removing any ‘unwanted’ public scrutiny of specific councillors or our local government.”

The motion requires councillors to declare involvement in “any social media account” that is “specifically relevant to the City of Bayswater” and it’d be recorded in a publicly available online register.

He said there was keen community interest in the idea as many had been banned from popular local pages.

“Almost 90 residents, from all suburbs around the City, signed a community petition to support this motion,” Cr Petersen-Pik said.

Among yes-voters was Cr Ehrhardt, whose husband runs a hugely popular local page “Maylands Community Notices and Chat Group 6051”. 

That page has peeved some locals who got banned under its strict ‘no politics’ rule introduced in the past couple of years, which sees members booted if they talk about a political issue or refer to elected members (Voice, July 22, 2023).

Peeved

Cr Ehrhardt says she hasn’t been involved in running that page for “years” now. Cr Ehrhardt said that while she supported the register, she suggested other family members running pages could also be included. But she stopped short of pushing a formal amendment so it’s just councillors and spouses who have to declare their pages for now.

Cr Petersen-Pik said to his knowledge, this was the first such register in WA.

They beat the Town of Cambridge by a couple of hours: Later on Tuesday night Cambridge councillors voted in a similar register based on the same wording as Cr Petersen-Pik’s motion.

Cr Petersen-Pik said he now hoped the state government would introduce legislation around elected members managing community social media pages.

by DAVID BELL