Perth Voice Interactive

ALL councillors and staff should have mandatory police clearance, a working with children card, and undergo mandatory “safeguarding” training to prevent abuse and neglect, Stirling councillor Elizabeth Re reckons.

Cr Re says the raft of measures is to “improve transparency and the culture across the organisation.

“You’ve got to clean up the sector,” Cr Re says.

Neglect

Safeguarding courses teach people to keep kids safe by being on the lookout for abuse and neglect.

In 2022 then-councillor Keith Sargent was arrested for possessing child exploitation material, as was a council staff member. Mr Sargent admitted he had been watching the material on and off for years, and was sentenced to 14 months prison.

Cr Re says safeguarding training would minimise the chance of that kind of thing going on undetected. 

“Safeguarding courses are becoming more common for volunteers,” Cr Re says, and if it’s good enough for volunteer organisations then Stirling should do it too. “I just volunteered for the Women’s World Cup, and as part of that I had to do a safeguarding course.”

Cr Re says she wouldn’t seek a ban on employing staff who had a criminal record, but thought it was important that it was out in the open. 

She said she’d recently heard of a staff member who’d been driving around without a licence ‚Äîhe’d lost it for drunk driving.

“It doesn’t stop you keeping a job, but you need to come true.”

Her three notices of motion go to the next council meeting for a vote.

At the August 15 meeting where she raised the idea, mayor Mark Irwin seemed weary of the flood of notices of motions, which are ideas for actions councillors can submit at will.

There seems to be a huge surge in these motions ahead of the election: 13 notices of motion were voted for that night – everything from a plan to install a telescope at the beach to putting new benches at Inglewood Triangle – and 10 new notices of motion were raised. 

Mr Irwin said they were eating up too much staff time and he might disallow some motions if councillors couldn’t show they’d put in their research and carefully considered their idea first. 

“The amount of notice motions coming in is exorbitant and extravagant,” Mr Irwin said.

by DAVID BELL