By AIDAN KNIGHT

 

THE passing of proposed changes surrounding use of e-petitions by Latrobe City Council in their most recent (scheduled) sitting (Monday, May 26) presents several interesting arguments about the running of an efficient council.

The motion carried was one of alternative to an officer’s recommendation, following a public consultation period that was initiated on February 24, 2025.

The consultation asked residents to provide input on whether they felt council should remove capping on both word and page counts on petitions used by local government, and if such government should allow for use of more or different e-petition platforms – with ‘change.org’ being the main example being focused on.

‘Change.org’ is widely viewed as the most popular e-petition platform and is utilised globally on a wide range of political and social issues, allowing anybody to start a campaign to allow users to have their say with as minimal friction in the process as possible. It has however, been plagued by various concerns of data privacy, in which some users report the company’s selling of email addresses to “sponsored campaigns” even if there is no ‘opting-in’ recorded for the user.

The way change.org is set up also would allow anyone to sign a petition without verification they live in Latrobe City, or are even real people, which poses obvious problems for recording valid submissions and accurate data that truly reflects the voice of the people.

This presents some issues in the argument some councillors had in favour of adopting these proposed changes, and many residents would likely feel outweigh the ‘convenience’ of a more streamlined e-petition process than the existing platform in use by Latrobe City Council.

The motion was also attempted in the April 2024 council meeting, when local political commentator (and Gippsland FM radio host) Taylah Ling launched her own petition asking for this change.

Ms Ling’s petition had gained 102 signatures by that time, and was made to enable residents to have a tool to combine in force for issues they seek change in, if they felt council weren’t adequately addressing or overlooking.

Ms Ling wrote a Letter to the Editor published in the June 4 issue of the Express, stating “if you sent a change.org petition with hundreds or thousands of signatures to Latrobe City Council, you first had to send through a request to Latrobe City Council which could be rejected before a petition on their council-run facility was ever made”.

Via the 2025 public consultation, only 48 valid submissions were recorded, and 36 of these were opposed to the proposed changes.

Nobody has made any mention of how many submissions were invalid, or as to what that means in terms of this specific petition, which Newborough Ward Councillor, Sharon Gibson pointed out could be interesting to add to the context of the argument.

The motion was passed, despite the majority of residents who gave input voting against it, and Budgereee Ward Cr, Leanne Potter making a strong case against ignoring this as a “means of silencing the community”.

Ms Ling found this a particular point of interest in her letter, as Cr Potter was found to be involved in a petition made by her husband in 2024 campaigning for the removal of Ms Ling from Gippsland FM’s airwaves, for her own alleged “orchestrated campaign to harass community leaders in Latrobe City”, which was launched after the April 2024 meeting.

Regardless of the validity of either argument, the petition was made on change.org of all places.

Cr Gibson had continued to speak in favour, citing the adoption of similar changes in other councils, who seem to operate without issue in this sort of data collection format – although examples were not provided.

It should be noted that for the most part, councils encourage their resident to use the council’s official internal petition process over having one or more options of an external variety. This can prevent fragmented feedback, and reduces risk of external influence and loss of process control, so while having a proven platform such as change.org may present itself as appealing because of it’s ease of use by both council and residents, it does come with potential to undermine the democratic process for which it is intended. This leaves room for an issue to remain, should Latrobe City residents raise continued grievance with it, as several other councils around Victoria have more stringent guidelines to the petition’s clarity and minimum signature requirements.

One such council is Macedon Ranges Shire Council, who explicitly lists change.org as a banned platform, that is not included in their Governance Rules.

While there is no comprehensive list of the councils that do and don’t accept the site, it is often that this is the norm, as it is also in line with Victorian State Parliaments policy, but no longer in Latrobe City.