Newcastle's deputy lord mayor says the council chamber is not divided after a review of the minutes showed 62 per cent of decisions in the term carried unanimously.
Deputy lord mayor Declan Clausen tabled data from 2021-2024 meetings at the final meeting of the term on August 27, which showed 463 matters were considered up until June 2024, 98.7 per cent of which were carried.
"Some 62 per cent of all of those motions were carried unanimously in the chamber and I really want to make that point because it's often reported that this is a chamber that is divided and I don't think that these statistics show that to be the case," he said.
"This is a chamber that in the vast majority of instances works collaboratively together, unanimously in fact getting the job done for Novocastrians."
Fellow Labor councillor Deahnna Richardson echoed Cr Clausen's comments.
"He mentioned that this chamber is often depicted as really divisive, that we're often at loggerheads with each other but we know that's not the case," she said. "We work quite collegiately together."
About a third of the motions were initiated by councillors as notices of motion or lord mayoral minutes.
Cr Clausen's motion included a pie chart pointing out that Labor councillors initiated 119 of the motions, Greens councillors presented 27, Liberal councillors developed 18 and Independent councillor John Church introduced three.
The display was criticised by Greens councillor Charlotte McCabe who said she couldn't support Cr Clausen's motion.
"I found that it doesn't come across to me as being genuinely collaborative in spirit," she said.
"The pie charts just felt like they were self congratulatory, that they were party political and that is really disappointing and regrettable at this point, the very last notice of motion in our very last meeting.
"It should be a time where we're all thanking each other for our service and for all of the hard work, which obviously goes far, far beyond how many notices of motion we put forward.
"There's so much more that we do as councillors.
"I just felt that this is too much down the party lines which isn't appropriate at this time."
Cr Clausen acknowledged the work of councillors was more than notices of motion "that no spreadsheet that I could put together would ever be able to quantify".
"But the best thing that we can try to give some sense of the variety and the number of topics that we cover are the things that we do come together, debate and consider in this chamber and this motion is a summary of those," he said.
While Cr Clausen and Cr Richardson denied that the council was divided, several meetings throughout the term attracted fierce debate and accusations of misogyny, spreading misinformation and disinformation, greenwashing, hypocrisy and potential code of conduct breaches.
A Newcastle Herald analysis of the term found more than half of the motions brought to the chamber through the term by the Greens, Liberals and Independent councillors were defeated or changed by Labor councillors through amendments or alternate recommendations prepared by council staff.
All of Labor's motions were passed, while two attracted alternate staff recommendations, both of which were carried.
The majority of carried motions that were altered to reflect staff recommendations were voted against in some capacity by the councillor who brought the item to the meeting.
