Bendigo council could livestream meetings but key vote and details yet to be sorted

The City of Greater Bendigo should have met last night to discuss a raft of issues requiring public scrutiny but cancelled because of laws forcing them to meet face-to-face.

That could change as soon as next Thursday when the state government holds a three-hour emergency sitting of parliament to deal with a raft of urgent problems that have cropped up during the pandemic.

If the bill passes both houses, Bendigo's councillors could ease its bottleneck after weeks of lobbying for state government action, mayor Margaret O'Rourke said.

They would consider either logging into a virtual meeting by the end of the month or tacking outstanding matters on to a meeting planned for May, she said.

"Planning matters are the most time-critical, obviously," Cr O'Rourke said.

"Other items that were on our April agenda can be pushed forward to the next month."

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The Mount Alexander Shire is yet to announce whether it will postpone next Tuesday's meeting, which would take place before the state government planned to sit.

The Macedon Ranges has already cancelled a meeting it would have held next Wednesday. It's next meeting has been penciled in for 27 May.

Bendigo's council is yet to decide exactly how online public meetings would work, Cr O'Rourke said.

"We want to be able to livestream council meetings, still, and hopefully that would be able to happen (with any changes made by state parliament)," she said.

Councillors are already meeting remotely using Microsoft Teams software for briefings but not to vote, Cr O'Rourke said.

"We will be talking to the (local government) sector about technology. So that detail will become a bit clearer for us," she said.

The public would still be able to ask the council questions, Cr O'Rourke.

They would likely need to submit them in writing before the meeting rather than stepping up to a microphone, just as they did during March's meeting when stage two restrictions forced councillors to close the public gallery.

If the livestream drops out, Cr O'Rouke would expect the meeting to stop until the broadcast could start again.

"Again, there would need to be a bit of testing that would need to happen and we would need to make sure all councillors are in locations where they could get good broadband," she said.

"There's always a risk of that happening, so we would have to work through the finer details."

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