Rarely A Dull Moment - The AGM of Electors

Welcome back to our regular feature, Rarely a dull moment where we report on the highlights of City of Fremantle Council meetings and activities. We would have titled the feature Never a dull moment, but didn’t want to overpromise!

In the last RADM for 2025, Gayle O’Leary, our pioneering RADM reporter, said Cheerio to readers of her column explaining that after two years, she was hanging up her hat and looking forward to using her extra time to find other interesting tidbits to write about on FSN, noting that ‘there’s no shortage of those in Fremantle after all.’

Today, we are very pleased to announce and welcome to FSN Gayle’s successor – Jenny Archibald. Jenny will be well known to many Freo folk as a former Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Councillor of the City of Fremantle. Jenny obviously brings a wealth of experience to her new role as our RADM reporter and we are sure many Shipees will look forward to her regular RADM reports.

Jenny’s very first report focuses on the recent City of Freo Annual General Meeting of Electors held on 2 February. Here it is!

Credit Unsplash and The Climate Reality Project

Welcome to the very first FSN RADM update on our Fremantle Council meetings for 2026. First cab off the rank was the City’s Annual General Meeting of Electors held on 2 February 2026. A well-attended and politely debated 2-hour event with around 55 or more people and topics ranging from the state of the City’s financials through to AUKUS.

To kick the night off, the CEO and the Director of City Business presented the 2024/2025 financials along with an unqualified auditor’s report. Overall, the financials are said to be in a “financially sound and focussed position with our Strategic Community Plan 2024-2034 guiding the way forward”. And to top it off for the City, it was named “Western Australia’s Top Tourism Town”!

But some of the electors were not so convinced and several questions and motions were put to the meeting seeking various reports and clarification of aspects of the report, as well as a motion of no confidence in the Mayor and Council. Despite one elector jumping to the defence of the new council and Mayor, asking that they be given the opportunity to prove themselves – it was to no avail and the motion was approved by a dozen or so electors.

Others raised concerns including the management of funds collected for the South Fremantle Underground Power (WA State Government) project and the leasing of the tenancies in the Walyalup Civic Centre (which did take a while but is now in the last bits of fit-out and is fully leased).

Then into Public Question Time, where folk from Friends of Cantonment Hill presented a great bunch of facts on our parks and natural reserves – in particular that our parks and reserves comprise an area greater than a thousand hectares and in 2024/25 more than 13,000 seedlings were planted! But they also concluded, in collaboration with other Freo Friends groups who work in these areas, that there is a desperate need for more staff to support this cause.

Others asked questions on the windup of the Resource Recovery Group, the Long Term Financial Plan, the continuation of our waste services after the RRG and the sources of our revenue. Marija Vucic, a former Councillor and candidate, stated that rate increases are not enough – “we need to grow other sources of revenue rather than shuffling buckets around and kicking the can down the road”.

While Ben Lawver, the new Freo Mayor, was given a gong by the President of the Fremantle Society as “an extraordinary Mayor”, it was preceded with a summing up that footpaths in the CBD were a disgrace and concluded with the view that “we will stand back and see how we go”.

The AUKUS crew were well represented by Leonie Lundy who stated there had been little or no feedback from last year’s AGM on the questions put and that “with good reason for increasing alarm”, she asked that the City work with the community to secure a meeting on this issue in April.

Other questions and motions included the application of herbicides, and in particular glyphosate, in the city, the footpath use by Urban Winery (confirmed by the CEO as a trial through summer to activate this part of High St), a request for total project costs of the South Beach Toilet project, and the need to work on how the homeless in Fremantle can be appropriately housed.

All motions put were carried. While there is no publicly available minutes recording these motions as yet, they will now be considered by staff and a report brought to the next appropriate ordinary meeting of the Council where they can again be discussed by both the community and Council – and for the latter to determine what course of action may be taken.

It is probably as well to conclude by confirming that in Western Australia, an Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Electors in a local government area is required to hold an AGM of Electors. In short, it is designed to be a forum where any elector can raise matters relating to the functions of the local government. However, motions passed at an AGM are not binding on the Council, but the Council is legally required to consider them at a subsequent ordinary council meeting.

By Jenny Archibald

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