Under the new code, announced on Friday by Local Government Minister Gabrielle Upton, councils have just 12 months to start webcasting their meetings so residents can tune in from home.

The live streaming of meetings is an issue that has previously been debated in Bathurst and while there appears to be strong support from councillors – and an online poll by the Western Advocate found support support from ratepayers – the idea has never quite got off the ground.

That means Bathurst Regional Council will not be too concerned about the need to live stream its meetings and the new code just sets a deadline for something that was inevitably going to occur anyway.

But don’t expect all councils to be as happy, and one area of debate will be the question of cost.

So far there has no indication from the state government that it intends to fund the roll-out of council webcasting systems so we can expect it will be up to councils themselves to foot the bill. [Jut another example of cost-shifting, really.]

And since you would not expect the set-up costs for a system of a reasonable standard to vary greatly from one council to the next, that cost burden will fall far more heavily on the smaller councils than the larger.

So while the cashed-up ratepayers of Ms Upton’s local government area [Woollahra Municipal Council in Sydney’s eastern suburbs] might fund a webcasting system out of the small change found down the back of their Italian leather lounges, it might not be so easy for councils in other parts of the state.

Small councils such as Blayney and Oberon could struggle to find the money without impacting on other services and the burden will be even greater for the council areas in the west of the state that have been hit hardest by drought.

There are obvious benefits to webcasting council meetings in terms of giving ratepayers greater access to the meetings, but those benefits come at a cost.

In some council areas the benefits will outweigh the costs; in many they won’t.

If the state government is trying to shed its reputation as a Sydney-centric administration, then the Member for Vaucluse has done them no favours at all.