An Invercargill councillor has refused to apologise for what he said during a tense public exchange this week.<\/p>\n
Elected members endured a 12-second wait on Tuesday for an apology from Cr Ian Pottinger over a comment aimed at Cr Alex Crackett during a committee meeting she chaired.<\/p>\n
But Cr Pottinger, a six-term councillor, could not be moved by the deafening silence, prompting Cr Crackett to say she would take the matter up “offline”.<\/p>\n
The situation unravelled during discussion about a projects report when Cr Pottinger criticised council spending on the city\u2019s historic clock.<\/p>\n
Cr Crackett told Cr Pottinger the matter was not up for discussion that afternoon, and debate would take place when the report came back.<\/p>\n
Cr Pottinger then took exception to Cr Crackett asking if he had a question.<\/p>\n
“Yeah I asked the question, were you listening?” he said.<\/p>\n
Cr Grant Dermody disapproved of the comments, calling for a point of order and an apology.<\/p>\n
“I think, Mr Dermody, you just refrain and learn about council before making comments like that,” Cr Pottinger retorted.<\/p>\n
Cr Crackett told Cr Pottinger she would appreciate an apology, leading to a standoff which was broken by Cr Crackett saying the pair would talk “offline”.<\/p>\n
Both councillors have since confirmed an apology has not been made.<\/p>\n
Cr Crackett said it was appropriate to keep discussion relevant and ask councillors to hold on to opinions until information was complete.<\/p>\n
“As the chair, I was well in line to pull him up.<\/p>\n
“Strong and robust debate is a really vital part of our democracy but it has to be conducted with professionalism and with respect.”<\/p>\n
She might follow up on the matter, which would be handled through governance processes.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Cr Pottinger was still unsure what he needed to apologise for.<\/p>\n
He pointed out Cr Dermody could not raise a point of order because he was not a member of the committee \u2014 a detail which was confirmed by the council.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time Cr Pottinger has caused a stir at a council meeting.<\/p>\n
In May, he irked Cr Darren Ludlow by saying he had not received the email that democracy was not in place that day.<\/p>\n
The incident followed a situation in March when he apologised for assuming the gender of mayors.<\/p>\n
\u2022 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Invercargill councillor has refused to apologise for what he said during a tense public exchange this week.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-271433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}