But some are busier, or should be busier than others. At the first meeting of our new council, councillors voted on who should be in which committee and the Liberal councillors, put their hands up for almost all of them. With Cr Mannoun voted onto three, Cr Hadid on two and Cr Tony Hadchiti on four. The Labor councillors, on the other hand, were only voted onto a total of four committees, therefore, councillors Anne Stanley, Gil Gillani, Jim McGoldrick and Ali Karnib will each sit on one committee each. But Cr McGoldrick's position is only that of an alternate. Mayor Wendy Waller was voted onto four committees.

Ms Waller was quite disappointed by the whole display, clearly frustrated by the fact that she and the Labor team didn't get to be on more committees. But they were out-voted on several occasions, as the Liberal councillors, Liverpool Community Independents Team members, Nadia Napoletano and Peter Harle and independent councillor Gary Lucas all working together to vote against them.

Cr Stanley, who has had a long association with women's rugby league in Liverpool was blocked from representing council at the external South West Sydney Academy of Sport committee as well as the internal, Liverpool City Sports Committee, with Liberal councillors being voted onto both of these, despite her being nominated. She expressed her long interest and association with sport, but to no avail. It was an interesting sign of things to come and left me wondering how long the Labor councillors would keep their frustration hidden.

But since they were all voted in, have they been going to meetings and if they're there are they making a positive contribution? Councillors should not only attend meetings, but take an active role when they go and use the opportunity to really engage with community members who go along. After all the community members that make the effort to join the committees and participate in the meetings are interested in the making Liverpool a better place, so the councillors should be as well, if anything they should be taking a strong leadership role in the groups. And if they are missing the meetings, there should be penalties, like being voted off the committees, if they don't attend often enough.

To stop the committees turning into talk fests or being a waste of time, councillors need to go along and take what they got out of them back to council and inform the other councillors, the mayor and council staff of the conclusions they come to after learning the information. The groups could be a great way of getting an insight into what influential and active Liverpudlians think of what's happening in the area and of specific subjects.

But then again, not all of the committees have community members; many are external committees, such as the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, so on those committees, the councillors would serve as Liverpool's representatives. So how would it look if councillors aren't attending these meetings? This could greatly damage the image of Liverpool to other council's in western Sydney and also potentially leave Liverpool out of discussions and decisions that could effect the area. So obviously it is important that most, if not all meetings are attended by councillors.

It seems difficult to believe that only six months into their new roles, councillors could be slackening off their committee attendance. While some have already said they have found the workload to be more than they expected, it seems that they should have gotten used to it by now.

As I said above, everyone understands that the councillors are busy people, with full lives, but they need to remember that they're our representatives and they need to keep on top of their responsibilities to the people of the area. I would have assumed that with the strife that Liverpool's previous councillors got themselves into, with the Orange Grove and Oasis debacles revealing them to be paying little attention to what was going on at council and often having little information, the current councillors would be working very hard to prove that they are cut from a different cloth. After all, the expectations of Liverpudlians of the current council are quite high, they want to see more responsible governance this time and a better representation of the area. Not going to meetings is a signal of not caring about what goes on. But surely the councillors do care? That's what I'm hoping!