A COLUMN originally banned from Frankston Council’s ratepayer funded newsletter has been published in their November/December edition.
Cr Glenn Aitken had a column criticising the code of conduct banned from the Frankston City News earlier in the year. A vote at a public council meeting in September confirmed that the column would be published.
The column reads that “far too often, in all levels of government, elected members unforgivably lose touch with reality and adopt a snarling or highly superior attitude, ultimately failing the people they were elected by. This is precisely why, successive opinion polls have demonstrated politicians are held in low public esteem.”
“I have seen appalling conduct at both open and closed meetings. It is also fair to say, I have had the pleasure to see courage, tenacity and compassion,” Cr Aitken wrote.
In addressing council’s code of conduct, Cr Aitken wrote that is can be a “toxic product” if put to “bad purpose.”
“Whilst the intent is good and there are benefits about its purpose, misused, it can become, figuratively, a wild and fearful forest of shadows and growling creatures; a kind of jungle, infested with insidious vines, far-reaching tentacles, that to even be touched by are gravely injurious to one’s well being,” he wrote.
“Put to bad purpose, the code of conduct is absolutely toxic. It sadly can be manipulated and is already, I think, a document in desperate need of review and reform.”