Democracy was the winner on the day. Tuesday 25 November, 2008 was the day on which battlers on the Tauranga City Council magnificently bested the establishment.

An attempt by Mayor Stuart Crosby, Deputy Mayor David Stewart and ex-mayor of Mt Maunganui, Cr Wayne Moultrie to restrict elected members' democratic right to bring their ideas to the table via notices of motion failed dismally.

The proposal sponsored by the mayoral trio would have placed eight additional checkpoints in the way of councillors wishing to challenge the status quo by means of a Notice of Motion.

The proposal was in itself a backdoor Notice of Motion engineered by a City-Hall-supporting 'Top Team' who attempted to use the city's bureaucracy to bolster their power base. In effect they set out to shoot down what they saw as time wasting by the troops.

One of the checkpoints required the Notice of Motion mover to ensure the sought after result was "Consistent with existing policies and plans."

This would be rather difficult to comply with as most Notices of Motion set out to change substantially an existing plan of action!

The real killer though was the requirement to provide a report on the financial implications of the proposal. This would, of course, require councillors to have a ratepayer-funded bureaucracy of their own to enable them to comply.

The emphatic vote of eight to three against the mayoral-requested City Hall proposal kicked the idea so far out of play that the 21-year-old Notice of Motion section on the city's Standing Orders file should last another 21 years at least. It was Cr Hayden Evans who noted the apparently successful 21-year reign of the present Standing Order on the subject.

Clear targets of the gagging motion were Crs Rick Curach and Catherine Stewart. According to a list thoughtfully supplied by the City Directions department, these two councillors were responsible for 10 of the 12 Notices of Motion dealt with since the October 2007 election. Electors who voted for Crs Curach and Stewart will be please to note the enthusiasm and pro-active nature of their representatives.

Ironically, just minutes before this debate started, Cr C Stewart's Notice of Motion to put a hold on the Greeton Library re-build project as a means of saving the Greerton Hall, received all but unanimous support from councillors - thereby proving that Notices of Motion do sometimes achieve significant results.

The first words of the City Direction's background report were: "The Mayor and some Councillors have raised concerns. . .", thus unequivocally identifying the Mayor as one of the perpetrators of the dastardly deed.

At the beginning of the debate, Cr Bill Granger wanted to know who the 'some members' were. Mayor Crosby promptly raised his hand, but at first he was the only member to do so.

"Just one of you then?" exclaimed Cr Granger, apparently in some surprise.

Cr Wayne Moultrie then owned up to having raised the subject during informal discussion in the councillors' lounge. And then there were two.

Cr David Steward then confessed to supporting a Standing Orders revamp to make it more difficult to pop Notices of Motion on the agenda paper. And then there were three.

It was unclear how many other councillors were lounging about at the time, but obviously Cr Granger wasn't one of them. No one else volunteered to join the club of three, so the debate got underway.

The CEO and City Directions group manager both raised the spectre of staff having to divert their expensive attention away from other important matters to deal with last minute Notices of Motion. The group manger's background report refers to staff having to 'reprioritise workloads'.

I agree. It must be most annoying for hard working staff when the boss directs them to step aside from preparing and publishing a 400-page-plus agenda on important policy and strategy matters to deal with a piddling Notice of Motion from green-around-the-gills councillors. On the other hand, I would have thought that was just another consequence of working under a democratic system.

Mayor Crosby repeatedly claimed there was nothing in the proposal designed to make it harder to bring a Notice of Motion. "I just want to bring more discipline to the process," and "I want to ensure more information is made available so we can make informed decisions."

But most councillors were not buying that argument.

Cr C Stewart, after declaring she found it insulting that the staff considered the work they put in because of her Notice of Motion was a waste of time, said it was up to councillors to represent the community to the best of their ability.

"Each and every one of us should be prepared to put our ideas forward for discussion," she said.

As far Cr C Stewart was concerned, it was nothing short of draconian to place restrictions in the road to a free flow of ideas. "It flies in the face of democracy," she said.

Cr Bill Faulkner, who at times has castigated some councillors for failing to put their case in a clear and succinct manner, nevertheless said he would vigorously defend the right of any councillor to put forward Notices of Motion whenever they felt it necessary to do so.

Cr Wayne Moultrie, a Hong Kong prosecutor in a previous life, forcefully advocated the provision of more information. "Information provides the best result possible," he said before going on to condemn the earlier debated Notice of Motion about the Greerton Library as an "exercise in futility."

Indeed it was, but this was as much the mayor's fault as anyone else's as he tried to come up with a compromise proposal as he recognised there was a danger of the Greerton Library project being brought to a halt altogether.

Cr David Stewart also pounded the need for more and better information to enable them to make informed decisions. He then also referred to the previous debate, saying, "There's got to a better way than this."

Crs Curach, Grainger, Evans and Guy all attacked the restrictive nature of the proposal, referring to "road blocks", "hurdles" and "an affront on democracy."

I take heart from the eight to three rejection of what was clearly an undemocratic proposal. All power to the naysayers.