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Council

Community participation in Council and Committee meetings

Attendance at Council meetings

Council meetings are open to the public and anyone may attend to observe. Attendees may be asked to leave the room if Council need to consider a confidential item.

Public question time

Public question time allows members of the public to ask a question at a Council or Committee meeting.

Members of the public are invited to ask up to 3 questions per meeting. Questions must be received in writing by 12 noon on the Monday before the scheduled meeting in order to be answered at the meeting.

Please submit your question(s) via one of the following methods:

  • Email: send your request to publicquestiontime@campbelltown.sa.gov.au
  • Post: mail your request to Chief Executive Officer, Campbelltown City Council, 172 Montacute Road, Rostrevor SA 5073, with correspondence marked Attention: Public Question Time.

You are welcome to attend the meeting to read out your question(s) and hear the answer provided if you wish to do so.

Public question time rules

The public question time rules are extracted from Council's Code of Practice for Meeting Procedures.

  1. The Council will allow approximately 15 minutes for Public Question Time.
  2. People wishing to ask up to a maximum of 3 questions at any meeting must provide them to the Chief Executive Officer in writing (by mail to the Chief Executive Officer, Campbelltown City Council, 172 Montacute Road, Rostrevor, SA 5074 or email to publicquestiontime@campbelltown.sa.gov.au) by 12 noon on the Monday before the Council meeting.
    1. The person must include their full name and suburb in the request, and ask their question in a manner befitting of a public meeting environment.
    2. Staff will make the best possible effort to provide an answer to questions received at the meeting, which the Chief Executive Officer (or nominee) will read out, and both the questions and answers will be recorded in the meeting minutes.
    3. If an answer to a question cannot be provided at the meeting, the question will be taken on notice and an answer given in the Agenda for the next meeting of Council. The person will be advised accordingly.
  3. Where a member of the public has submitted a written question(s) in accordance with clause 31(K)(2) and is present at the meeting where their question(s) is to be addressed, they will be provided the opportunity to read out their question, should they wish to do so.
  4. The Chief Executive Officer, in consultation with the Presiding Member, may refuse to allow a public question to be accepted, recorded or answered if it, in their opinion:
    • Impinges personally on any Elected Member or Staff Member of the Council, or relates to an Elected Member or Staff Member’s private life
    • Has been (or a similar question has been) answered in the last 12 months, through public question time, a deputation or via Council correspondence to the person
    • Has been made publicly available on a Council website
    • Is vague, irrelevant, insulting or improper
    • Contains defamatory remarks, offensive or improper language
    • Is considered to be debating or discussing Council matters
      Members will be advised accordingly if a question is refused.
  5. Except where a matter would normally be dealt with by Council on a confidential basis or is being dealt with by Council on a confidential basis (in which case, the question will be refused), questions may relate to all aspects of Council business.
  6. People in the gallery shall not enter into a debate or any other discussion on questions asked and answered, and the Council will not enter into debate or discussion with the person/s asking the question.
  7. All proceedings shall be at the absolute discretion of the Presiding Member.

Deputations

A deputation is a verbal way of presenting a matter to Elected Members at a Council meeting.

If you would like to appear and provide a deputation at a Council meeting, please refer to Council’s Code of Practice for Meeting Procedures, which provides guidelines on the process and considerations for a deputation to be received.

To request a deputation, you must request one using one of the following methods. The request must include details of the topic to be discussed and state who will be delivering the deputation.

  • Email: send your request to deputation@campbelltown.sa.gov.au
  • Post: mail your request to Chief Executive Officer, Campbelltown City Council, 172 Montacute Road, Rostrevor SA 5073, with correspondence marked Attention: Deputation
  • In person: personally hand your request to a Staff Member at Council during business hours.

The Mayor will consider the request and you will be advised as soon as possible as to whether your request has been approved.

Timeframe

For a deputation to be delivered at the next Council meeting, the request (including any presentation/documents intended to be discussed at the deputation) needs to be received by 5 pm on the Wednesday (5 clear days) prior to that Council meeting.

Unless of an urgent nature, deputation requests received with less than 5 clear days until an ordinary Council meeting may be presented at the following ordinary meeting of Council at the discretion of the Presiding Member.

Other things to note

A person making a deputation cannot discuss the same topic more than once in twelve months.

If a deputation is accepted, the person making the deputation is reminded that their deputation must not:

  • impinge personally on any Elected Member or Staff Member of the Council, or relate to an Elected Member or staff member’s private life
  • be vague, irrelevant, or potentially insulting or improper
  • contain defamatory remarks, offensive or improper language.

Each deputation (whether by a person or multiple people) will be provided with a maximum of 5 minutes to present their deputation, plus time for questions, with the presenter(s) being advised of the time limit at the time when the deputation approval is granted.

Petitions

A petition is a document with the names, signatures and addresses of a group of people who have a common issue of concern or idea to bring to Council for consideration.

If you would like to present a petition for Council to consider, please refer to Council’s Code of Practice for Meeting Procedures, which provides guidelines regarding timeframes and other essential information required for it to be accepted by Council. For further assistance, please contact our Governance team on 08 8366 9222.

As a minimum, both written and online petitions need to include:

  1. A clearly typed or written request or submission for your petitioners to consider signing. The petition needs to state that it is a petition for consideration by Campbelltown City Council.
  2. The first name, surname and physical address (including house number, street and suburb details) of each person who has signed the petition.
  3. A signature of each person signing the petition.

It is preferred that the head petitioner (the person responsible for the petition) provides their contact details to staff when submitting the petition so that they can be contacted if needed.

The petition needs to be received by Council in one of the following ways for it to be accepted:

  • Email: send your petition to petition@campbelltown.sa.gov.au
  • Post: mail your petition to the Chief Executive Officer, Campbelltown City Council, 172 Montacute Road, Rostrevor SA 5074
  • In person: personally hand your request to a staff member at Council during business hours.

Timeframe

Petitions received by Council by 5 pm on the Wednesday (5 clear days or more) ahead of an ordinary Council meeting will be presented at the next ordinary meeting of Council.

Petitions received with less than 5 clear days until an ordinary Council meeting will be presented at the following ordinary meeting of Council.

Other things to note

Petitions left in cafes, meeting rooms or other locations will not be collected by Council staff. In addition, petitions cannot be left at Council facilities for signing, and any petitions found within service areas, in meeting rooms or at Council facilities will be discarded.

The head petitioner is reminded that for a petition to be accepted, it must not:

  • impinge personally on any Elected Member or staff member of the Council, or relate to an Elected Member or staff member’s private life
  • be vague, irrelevant, or potentially insulting or improper
  • contain defamatory remarks, offensive or improper language.