A council spokesperson said councillor Zed Latinovic \u201cinterjected\u201d while the mayor was addressing Bruce Simpson, the member of the public who was filming. <\/p>\n
Latinovic yelled \u201cpoint of order\u201d and proceeded to read out section 12.4 of the Standing Orders, while the chair was still talking.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, since the meeting hadn\u2019t begun, the member\u2019s interruption of the chair was not recorded as a point of order,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Petley asked a member of the public to put away his camera as he had not sought prior permission to film, which was required in the council\u2019s Standing Orders.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was communicating with a member of the public, councillor Zed Latinovic, followed by councillor Dave Shaw, attempted to raise a Point of Order, which wasn\u2019t possible as the meeting had not started,\u201d Mayor Petley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to start a meeting while your elected members are yelling over the top of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Waikato Times previously reported a similar incident regarding Simpson at the council chambers in 2025, where he refused to turn his camera off. <\/p>\n
Petley said the meeting was being livestreamed so Simpson had no need to record it himself, and that other people in the chamber had not consented to be filmed.<\/p>\n
Simpson said he would not stop and would remove any footage of those not willing to be filmed.<\/p>\n
Simpson said the council\u2019s livestream was notoriously unreliable and he was there to record proceedings for his YouTube channel, and \u201cany other concerned citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n
Simpson argued he was filming in a public place and was well within his rights.<\/p>\n
In this recent incident, Petley said the behaviour of Latinovic and sections of the public gallery was \u201cunacceptable on this occasion\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis completely undermines the democratic process and meant we were unable to proceed with a meeting in which we were scheduled to discuss a number of topics which are crucial to our community \u2013 including the upcoming Annual Plan and Fees and Charges,\u201d Petley said.<\/p>\n
An update for the meeting will be confirmed at a later date.<\/p>\n
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakat\u0101ne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A council spokesperson said councillor Zed Latinovic \u201cinterjected\u201d while the mayor was addressing Bruce Simpson, the member of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1443,74,1060,11164,3595,8046,16394,104738,5205,26519,15559,6381,99278,13505,10934,2374,4754,111,43,139,69,90,28464,1240,1524,83884,1316,161106,22092],"class_list":{"0":"post-303560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-about","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-ban","11":"tag-began","12":"tag-by","13":"tag-camera","14":"tag-challenged","15":"tag-chaotic","16":"tag-council","17":"tag-councillors","18":"tag-elected","19":"tag-erupted","20":"tag-filming","21":"tag-interaction","22":"tag-mayor","23":"tag-meeting","24":"tag-members","25":"tag-new-zealand","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-newzealand","28":"tag-nz","29":"tag-on","30":"tag-scenes","31":"tag-south","32":"tag-waikato","33":"tag-walkout","34":"tag-when","35":"tag-yelling","36":"tag-youtuber"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303560","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=303560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}