Last night, the council voted to extend the confidentiality provisions for documents that date back more than a decade.

North Ward councillor Phil Martin told the meeting there were few conceivable reasons that secrets from 2005 had to remain under wraps, and argued the council’s policies around confidentiality were too conservative.

He told InDaily this morning that, beyond its own debates, too many of the council’s dealings with the State Government were held in private to accommodate the government’s “public relations calendar”.

“This preference [for] secrecy has undoubtedly taken ratepayers out of [the discussion],” Martin said.

He questioned why the Capital City Committee – comprising State Government and city council representatives – held their deliberations in private and suggested discussions about the proposed Central Market Arcade redevelopment and a Grenfell Street–Currie Street transport hub had been unnecessarily kept out of the public eye.

He said the State Government had shared visualised plans for a Grenfell-Currie transport hub with the council – which is why such a hub was included in the council’s draft strategic plan – but the council had not released those to the public.

However, City of Adelaide Minister John Rau told InDaily this morning that it was sometimes necessary to keep discussions confidential.

He said it would be inappropriate for him to pass judgement or comment on whether the council should open specific documents or debates to the public.

But he said “we’d not be able to deal as well as we would like if we couldn’t have … ‘without prejudice’ conversations with the council”.

“There are times where it’s appropriate … for matters to remain confidential.”

He said it would be “absurd” if, for instance, the State Government and the council were working jointly on the tender for a project, that prospective tenderers be given “access to our financials”.

“It may well be that a matter such as that … 12 months down the track to longer needs to be confidential,” he said.

“[However] there are circumstances … [in which] those matters are, at least for a period of time, confidential.”

Martin told InDaily he believed “hundreds” of council documents that could have been partially redacted then released to the public were instead kept totally private – sometimes because of a single line of text.

Martin said the council needed to strike “a balance between providing people with information about issues and projects to which they have a right, and protecting the information of private individuals and commercial interests where [they] need to be protected”.

“We’ve not been able to strike that balance.”

Martin was among the councillors that voted to extend the operation of 75 council confidentiality orders at last night’s meeting, but said he hoped that future confidentiality orders are less extensive.