Redlands Council’s failure to livestream meetings

State of Origin in 2018 – image: MasterMind5991

Tonight is the decider of the 2022 State of Origin series. Thousands of people will watch the game at Suncorp Stadium. Millions more will view a livestream broadcast.

But imagine if the State of Origin was shown the same way that Redland City Council meetings are made available to the community.

Instead of seeing the big game live, fans would have to wait a day or two for the video to be released.

And in the meantime one side could control the flow of information by releasing propaganda stories about how wonderfully they played.

Discussions in Queensland Parliament have been made available on video livestream since 2011 and Australia’s federal parliament began live broadcasts in 2001.

Most of the larger local councils in Queensland livestream their meetings.

Some local government areas with very small populations such as Douglas Shire (population 12,519) and Mt Isa Regional Council (population 18,271) have worked out how to do livestream broadcasts.

Redland City Council meetings

With a population of 161,463, Redland City is the tenth largest local government area in Queensland.

Redland City Council was one of the first councils to make video recordings of its meetings publicly available. This started in 2015 after Redlands2030 began filming Council meetings from the public gallery.

Since 2015 the world and technology have moved on but Redland City Council continues to offer delayed broadcasts to its residents and (in March 2024) its voters.

Livestream for up to 12 viewers in Redlands

The Redland City Council website says that the public gallery “will reopen from May 2022”.

But the public are only offered the opportunity to sit in an adjacent room and watch a video feed of the proceedings on a TV monitor. Seating is limited to 12 people and “bookings are essential”.

So here’s a question.

If the Council can transmit a live feed of its meeting to a room next door, why can’t this live feed be made publicly available through the internet to any person in Redlands?

Livestream broadcasts of council meetings

Most of Queensland’s local councils with populations above 30,000 livestream meetings as shown below. Click on the hyperlinks for each council name to find out more about how they broadcast meetings.

Redlands2030 13 July 2022