THE public has been banned from consultation meetings regarding the future of the Tullamarine dump.

The Tullamarine Landfill Rehabilitation Advisory Committee (TLRAC) will now hold all meetings in camera, after recommendations by independent process manager Barbara Sharp, who claimed disruptive gallery members were upsetting the meeting process.

After examining the recommendations, TLRAC committee member and Transpacific Industries group general manager Phil Carbins closed the public out of its 13 October meeting and all meetings thereafter.

All communication from meetings will still be available to the public online and on email lists.

“It is extremely disappointing that the current TLRAC has not been able to make substantial progress during the last four meetings,” Mr Carbin said.

Ms Sharp said community members were "insisting on presenting their issues directly to the committee during meetings, and this is having a detrimental impact on TLRAC’s ability to achieve even a shared view of what it is to do, let alone make progress on decisions”.

The 12-person TLRAC committee includes four people who represent the wider community. Greens MP Colleen Hartland, who was at the meeting, slammed the decision to ban the public.

“This is an absurd overreaction – locking the public out because they dared ask questions in a public consultation,” she said.

“The EPA has created an absolutely intolerable situation. They have refused genuine consultation. No wonder the residents are upset - there is a toxic dump near their homes and they have to sit in the foyer and chew their nails while discussions happen behind closed doors.”

About 40 per cent of the dump is capped, while the remaining 60 per cent of the site is covered by soil.

At the meeting, Ms Hartland said she would bring up issues raised by the gallery in parliament.

Terminate Tullamarine Toxic Dump Action Group president Kaylene Wilson, who is also on the TLRAC committee, said the public ban was "laughable".

Ms Wilson said the questions she has put forward to EPA and TPI, on behalf of the community, have been routinely dismissed.