Cardinia councilors unanimously approved banning a former mayor from meetings for the rest of the year after an angry outburst from the gallery, which was provoked by claims of unlawful practice by Cardinia Shire.
At the end of the council meeting on Monday, 20 October, the council passed a motion to ban former councillor and mayor of Cardinia Shire Bill Ronald from attending in the public gallery for a period of three months.
Corporate Services Manager Wayne Mack said the resolution was to ensure a safe environment for all participants.
“Council remains committed to ensuring council meetings provide a safe environment for councillors, staff, and community members, and that meetings are free from aggressive or inappropriate behaviour,” he said.
The matter arose from a loud outburst three hours earlier at the beginning of proceedings, when Mr Ronald disrupted the meeting and claimed his actions stemmed from frustration over what he described as the unlawful editing of residents’ questions before official meetings and within the adopted minutes.
The final question, asked by Mr Ronald’s associate, Henk Heeremans, on the matter of the Heritage Springs Lights, was edited to remove an example and a critical comment regarding the council’s actions.
The video recording, which does not clearly capture audio from the public gallery, shows that moments after question time formally ended the meeting was disrupted.
Though his words are indistinguishable, Mr Ronald can be heard from the gallery and Mayor Kowarzik calls him to order.
A call to order must be given before further penalties can be imposed. Mayor Kowarzik allows Mr Ronald to speak out of order for a short period before requesting him to leave the meeting.
“It’s highly inappropriate,” Mayor Kowarzik is heard saying during the exchange, which lasts about five minutes and includes the council briefly adjourning.
After the meeting, Mr Ronald said the outburst was provoked by frustrations with the council editing community questions over the past several meetings in a way that he believes unlawfully changes the substance of the queries.
“With respect to community questions, Council’s Governance Rules state that submitted questions should not contain any commentary or preamble on the matter,” Mr Mack said.
As per amendments to the Governance Rules in June last year, the council now has the power to edit community questions from their original wording before they are read out at meetings and recorded in the minutes.
The purpose of this new clause was to help facilitate council processes by eliminating the insertion of opinion in questions.
Mr Ronald believes the practice violates established human rights law on freedom of speech by recording a question in the minutes — a legal document — differently from how it was submitted.
Mr Heeremans has had his questions edited in recent meetings and has raised similar concerns in correspondence with the council before October.
All the questions relate to the matter of the Heritage Springs lights. In the recent meeting, his questions were edited to remove an example of heritage lights on Main Street, Healesville, as well as several assertions critical of the conduct of the council and energy supplier AusNet.
In the September council meeting, Mr Heeremans submitted the following question regarding the Heritage Springs lights, transcribed here in its original grammatical form:
“Council’s letter to residents – Replacement Program, states alternative lights will match original street lighting, 4 of the new lights are black and don’t match the existing green lights. Are black lights safer than green lights? and why the colour change from the 3 new ones just up the road which are green?”
The question was read before the meeting and recorded in the minutes as:
“Are black lights safer than green lights? and why the color change from the 3 new ones just up the road which are green?”
In community feedback to last year’s amendments to the Governance Rules, a resident questioned the removal of preambles as unfairly eliminating the ability to provide a reason for their question, particularly for, but not limited to, people with autism spectrum disorder.
A response from council stated that if the preamble is “reasonable and provides context,” it will be read. If it is “not relevant” or used to “state a point of view,” then it will not be read.
Two other questions from Mr Heeremans were edited. A request for “dates and content” added to a question was removed. A reference to a quote from the council’s interim CEO that appeared in the Pakenham Gazette regarding the Heritage Lights was also removed from a related question.
This is the first time in recent memory that the council has banned a member of the public from council meetings.
In the June council meeting last year, Mr Ronald was removed by Mayor Kowarzik after refusing to remove a Heritage Spring original lamp fitting he brought into council chambers. He did not receive a ban.
He will be free to attend meetings after 20 January 2026.
