The reality is, the meetings have devolved into events where the councilors engage mostly in political grandstanding for the press, and each faction shows up with with their activist signs, chanting, and yelling.
Transparency and publicity in deliberative democracy does not mean that everything is just public and open discussion, because it just don't work.
Most areas should be maximally public, like results of meetings, meeting agendas, who is attending, decisions and laws of course with very rare exceptions (personal privacy, ongoing criminal investigations, ...).
But sometimes the meetings themselves should not be public to enable honest discussion and ideas. Just make sure that every party involved has a representation. Chatham House rule is often good choice when full privacy is not needed (you can talk about what was said, but not about who said what).
Cabinet's ability to reach decisions effectively requires frank discussions, which are only possible without having to posture for the cameras. Cabinet papers (submissions and minutes) are classified and only released several decades later -- 30 years, in Australia.
Similarly, cabinet solidarity (sometimes called collective responsibility) holds that when Cabinet reaches a decision, all members of the Cabinet must support it in public. This is partly to maintain confidentiality, but also a practical matter of having the numbers on the floor of Parliament.
The flip side is Question Time: when the Cabinet is asked questions in open Parliament (usually alternating between government and opposition members). Question Time is performance art, ritual combat. Rap battles before rap battles. But it is not the main vehicle for decision-making. Nor should it be.
Obviously the various factions will have private meetings among themselves and have private meetings between representatives when they actually need to get things done or come to an agreement.
This degrading of internal communications is pretty much the entire point of Wikileaks.
Those private meetings are illegal under state law, yet the councilors do it anyway (this was brought to light during the recent Head Tax debacle).
Have their been any investigations into why people find them revolting?
Negotiations are hard, the more parties there are the harder they get. Public negotiations have very large numbers of parties, even if most of them can’t vote.