News · Councils · Hunter-wide
Parliament struck down the council meeting code. The department could not remake it for four months, so it wrote a regulation instead
Every council in the Hunter now has to livestream its meetings and keep the recording up for at least a year, and councillors other than the mayor are barred from meeting staff before a meeting to talk about anything on the agenda. None of it required a council to change its own rules, because the regulation simply overrides them. It exists in this form because the upper house rejected the government’s meeting code in May, and the law then stopped the government replacing it for four months.
The sequence matters more than any single rule, so take it in order.
The government prescribed a new Model Code of Meeting Practice for NSW councils in 2025. On
26 May 2026 that regulation
was disallowed by the Legislative Council
. Disallowance is the parliament striking a
regulation out, and the Office of Local Government’s own circular sets out what followed:
the previous 2021 version of the Model Meeting Code now becomes the prescribed version
,
and councils were advised to rescind the resolutions by which they had adopted the 2025 one.
Then the constraint. Under section 8 of the Subordinate Legislation Act 1989,
a new model code of meeting practice cannot be prescribed in the 4 months following the
disallowance
. The department could not simply write the code again.
So it did something else. The Local Government (General) Amendment (Meetings) Regulation 2026
has therefore been made to secure some of the policy objectives of the 2025 Model Meeting
Code
. That is the circular’s own description, not our characterisation.
What actually changes for a Hunter council
| Measure | Detail |
|---|---|
| Livestreaming | Meetings of councils and committees whose members are all councillors must be livestreamed.Recordings stay on the council website for the balance of the term or 12 months, whichever is longer. Joint organisations and county councils are exempt but may opt in. |
| Councillor contact with staff | Councillors other than the mayor or a chairperson of a meeting are prohibited from meeting staff before meetings of the council or committees of the council to discuss matters that are or will be listed on the agenda.Questions may still be asked, but this information must be provided in writing and, if practicable, published on the council’s website before the meeting, unless it is confidential under section 10A. |
| Expulsion powers | Councils must resolve, at the first meeting after each ordinary election and after adopting a new code, to authorise the chair to expel for acts of disorder. A councillor who does not remedy an act of disorder may be expelled from successive meetings until they take the necessary action to remedy the disorder. |
| County councils | May now meet with some or all members attending by audio-visual link, provided all members can hear each other. |
The part a council cannot opt out of
The regulation does not wait for anyone to adopt it. Any provision of a council’s
meeting code that conflicts with it is void and of no effect to the extent of the
inconsistency
, and only that provision rather than the whole code. The circular is explicit
about the consequence: councils do not need to amend their code of meeting practice for the
new provisions in the Amendment Regulation to apply
.
So a resident reading their council’s published meeting code may be reading a document that is, in places, no longer operative. That is worth knowing before you quote one at a councillor.
One Hunter council has objected
Upper Hunter Shire Council considered the regulation at its meeting on 27 July. Its own
published recap records that Council is expressing concern regarding the prohibition on
Councillors meeting with council staff prior to meetings to discuss matters that are or may
become agenda items
, and that it will be issuing a seperate media release in response to
this item
and would seek amendment. The spelling is the council’s.
We have not seen that media release, and we do not know whether other Hunter councils have taken a position.
Our view, labelled as such
The livestreaming requirement is the clear public gain, and it is the one residents will actually use. The contact restriction is harder, and reasonable people will land differently on it. Requiring answers in writing and published before the meeting is a genuine transparency improvement over a corridor conversation nobody else hears. It also removes the informal channel by which a councillor gets across a complex report, and a councillor who cannot ask a question quickly is a councillor more dependent on the report as written.
What is harder to be relaxed about is the route. A regulation the upper house rejected has been substantially reinstated, in part, by a different instrument, during the very months the law says a replacement code cannot be prescribed. That may be entirely lawful and the circular is candid about the intent. It is still a thing worth watching, and the four-month clock from 26 May runs out in late September.
Sources
- Office of Local Government, Circular 26-09, Local Government (General) Amendment (Meetings) Regulation 2026 (PDF, 25 June 2026, read 5 August 2026): the disallowance and its date, the reversion to the 2021 code, the four-month bar under the Subordinate Legislation Act, the stated purpose of the Amendment Regulation, all four measures, and the voiding of inconsistent code provisions.
- Upper Hunter Shire Council, Council Meeting Recap July 2026 (published 28 July 2026, read 5 August 2026): Council’s stated concern about the prohibition on councillors meeting staff, and its intention to issue a separate media release and seek amendment.
- Office of Local Government, Circulars to councils (read 5 August 2026): the circular index, including the earlier 25-20 and 26-02 circulars on the 2025 Model Meeting Code.
Sit on a council, or read this differently? Tell us and we will check it against the circular and log the outcome here.