All City of Canning council meeting recordings have been made available to the public online after council voted to make the change.
The recordings can be found here.
At its September 19 meeting council adopted a recommendation to make audio recordings of their ordinary council meetings available within 72 hours of each meeting, which it said was in the best interest of residents who were unable to attend meetings.
Speakers will also be installed in the public overflow area of the chambers for especially busy meetings.
Recordings will not be streamed live, but council will investigate making it possible in 12 months.
Councillor Christine Cunningham brought the motion and said it was time the council made its meetings available to all residents.
“I’ve been waiting for this since I was elected to council,” she said.
“It’s not as ambitious as it could be, but we are stepping up and following the lead of others who are heading into online streaming.”
Ms Cunningham acknowledged it would cost ratepayer dollars to make the changes, but research had shown residents in other cities valued it.
“It will cost a little bit of money, but I was looking at the statistics for the City of Vincent this morning and they have over 100 people tuning into their council meetings online.”
Canning councillors have been able to access recordings of meetings but until now members of the public were unable to access them.
Online recordings and live streaming is not uncommon in cities across Western Australia.
The City of Gosnells has audio recordings available to the public on request, while the Cities of Joondalup and Perth have audio recordings readily available on their websites.
Live streaming is already available in Bunbury, Greater Geraldton, Joondalup and will soon be available for the Shire of Whyndham and East Kimberley.
