Cockburn scraps $114k delegation to Croatia, calls for review of sister city relationships

The City of Cockburn’s mayor and councillors have abandoned plans to send a $114,000 delegation to Croatia this year amidst public outcry but not before a list of who was interested in tagging along for the European trip was revealed.

The invite to the city of Split attracted controversy in February and was even criticised by some of the city’s own elected members, who ultimately put off making a decision on whether to attend until this month’s council meeting.

Had it been supported, the delegation of up to four elected members would have spent a week in the eastern European nation in July, coinciding with the Ultra Music Festival.

They might also have had an opportunity to link up with Fremantle mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge, who has also been invited, with a visit to the historic island of Korcula.

Instead, after a protracted debate on Tuesday night, the council voted against allowing anyone taking up the invite to visit Split, which is one of the City of Cockburn’s long-held sister cities, this year.

The council will also re-evaluate its entire sister city program — which includes relationships with Yueyang in China, Mobile in Alabama, USA, Split in Croatia and WA’s own Carnarvon — and will not take on any new partnerships until the wide-ranging review of their purpose and justifications are complete.

Cr Tarun Dewan at one stage urged the council to go further, pushing for the review to consider terminating all sister city relationships immediately.

He also called on council to disband the sister city’s reference group and revoke its terms of reference, saying such arrangements had no known “practical impact” for ratepayers.

“Establishing and monitoring such relationships are costly and the outcomes for the community are difficult to measure,” he said.

“The time, effort and investment in maintaining sister city relationships could be redirected towards other initiatives that offer benefits to the community.”

His strongly-worded motion was ultimately lost, but not before Cr Philip Eva requested a list of all councillors who had put forward their name for the Croatian trip — and another proposed trip to Madeira, Portugal after an invite from its Honorary Consul — be shared.

While some councillors backed a dissent motion to stop that list being publicly revealed, citing “irrelevance”, it was upheld at vote.

Cr Carol Zhang called for the list to be revealed amidst the media attention that had surrounded the Croatian trip and “damage” incurred to the city’s reputation.

“It’s really damaged the reputation of our council,” she said.

A City of Cockburn staffer confirmed Cr Kevin Allen, Cr Tom Widenbar, Cr Michael Separovich and Cr Zhang were among those who had expressed an interest in one or both of the trips.

Cr Dewan and deputy mayor Chontelle Stone were named as having expressed interest, but ultimately withdrawing.

The motion to abandon the Split trip was passed 9-0.

Fremantle council is yet to formally consider the invitation for its own delegation to visit Croatia.