The Secret Life of NIG

Back in early December 2010 I rather ambitiously, some might say naively, made the following suggestions to the Norfolk Island Government (NIG) as a means of finding some common ground with the Norfolk Island community on the way ahead in our new arrangements with the Commonwealth;

1. Mail out to all residents on Tuesday December 7th 2010
2. Call for submissions from organizations and/or individuals
3. Closing date for input, Friday 22nd Jan 2011
4. Review all submissions
5. Tabulate all
6. Cross reference all with all current NIG policy positions
7. Explain why a particular course of action will/will not be followed
8. Provide all the above with final submissions as evidence of having considered the views of stakeholders

All of the above are pretty standard consultative procedures. At an earlier time I had suggested to the NIG that ACT Governments public consultation protocols might be a good model for the NIG to follow.
It is therefore disappointing to see that the public's involvement in the processes that presumably are taking place at the moment, has been minimal. We have had a couple of radio broadcast and a few press releases which, while they reference the fact that there are discussions proceeding with the Commonwealth, reveal little of the substance of those discussions.
Is it surprising that the NIG would conduct itself in this way? No unfortunately, it is not.
When you stop and think about the way the NIG does business it is apparent that it comprises some seriously flawed arrangements.

Much of what the NIG does is secret. There are secret Executive Member  meetings (the so called "cabinet" meetings), secret MLA's meetings, secret Airline Board meetings, to name a few. There are other secret meeting held too but I can't say too much about those as they are secret. More recently the Assembly decided that having meetings of the Assembly monthly was too hard and changed this to 6 weekly meetings. No change to the schedules of the other secret meeting though (unless this is a secret).

One interesting aspect of  these meetings is that mostly they leak. In fact, if a secret meeting of the Norfolk Island Government didn't leak, it probably didn't happen.
The secret MLA's meeting held weekly is a meeting that ought to be open to the public.
This is a meeting that discusses all manner of business and policy (so I believe). It has no role as a legislature. Public servants attend these meetings quite regularly but are sworn to secrecy. If the Norfolk Island government was a council these meetings would be public and lets face it, a council is what the NIG ammounts to and should probably be.
So how about it NIG, why don't you, from this point on, make MLA's meetings open to the public. Then maybe the records of the meetings wouldn't need to be secret anymore and It might help to restore confidence in the system.