The candidates have been revealed for the 2011 Hobart City Council elections. The mayoralty is vacant following the retirement of the longest-serving Lord Mayor in city history (Rob Valentine), the Deputy Mayoralty will have a new owner for the second election running and there will be at least one new Alderman elected, with a strong chance of two.
The current Council consists of three endorsed Greens, six alderman who I call “blues” (representing a generally “pro-commerce” position, of varying strengths) and two aldermen who fall between those two loose groupings, with one seat currently vacant. For extensive detail on voting patterns see here (yes, even with diagrams!). At this election two Greens (Cocker and Harvey), three blues (Briscoe, Christie and Hayes) and one alderman not aligned to either camp (Ruzicka) will face the proverbial music; an extra seat is available for a two-year term. Whoever comes seventh at the end of the cut-up will be back to face the voters in 2013 (assuming Council has not by then been merged/abolished).
Lord Mayor
The incumbent deputy mayor, Helen Burnet, is an endorsed Green whose electoral track record in both council and State elections is particularly strong. She came quite close to being elected as an alderman at her first attempt in 2002 despite not even being the endorsed #1 candidate. She joined Council in 2005 on a recount after that endorsed #1 resigned, and was returned as an alderman that year at the head of the Greens ticket with 15% of the vote and in 2009 with nearly 20%. After a competitive loss to Eva Ruzicka for the Deputy Lord Mayor position in 2007, Burnet won the position in 2009, defeating Peter Sexton by 76 votes.
Dr Peter Sexton (Facebook page apparently still coming, this is last time’s) has been consistently the most moderate of the “blue” grouping, with a distinct greenish tinge in his voting patterns. A relatively quiet achiever, he is rarely found on the losing side of Council motions, seldom says anything controversial in campaign material and probably does not make many enemies. Sexton was initially elected on a recount in 1999 after John Freeman temporarily resigned from Council. In 2000 he polled 3.7% after eighteen months on council, and while that was not a big increase in primary support, he did well on preferences and was elected fifth. In 2005 he increased his primary vote to 6.6% and gained 23% of Valentine’s surplus. In 2009 his primary vote as an alderman dropped to 5.5%, but with his Valentine surplus share up still further to 26% it made no difference and he again came third. His form in Deputy contests is about the same as Burnet’s except that he was the one to miss out in the 2009 cliffhanger. Sexton is endorsed by popular former Lord Mayor Doone Kennedy, whose endorsement had some effect of pulling the rug out from under Jeff Briscoe’s feet on water reform matters by suggesting much credit for Council’s stance actually belonged to Sexton.
Jeff Briscoe was (very narrowly) elected as an alderman at the first attempt in 1994 and has since then improved his aldermanic vote at each election – 7.2% in 1999, 8.1% in 2002 (actually an effective decline because the field was weaker) and an strong 13.7% in 2007. Mayoral runs against Valentine in 2005 (defeated 64%-25% with 11% for Marti Zucco) and 2007 (72-28) were unsuccessful. Briscoe was first elected on a “progressive” ticket, but later became one of the “blues” and also once ran as a state Liberal candidate. (He is apparently no longer involved with the party). He retains a strong ability to speak the language of environmental concern, which has been very notable in his campaign material thus far. Unusual Briscoe initiatives on the campaign trail have included an elector survey (with somewhat underwhelming response at last report) and the opening of a spacious and diversely used campaign office at a prominent city location opposite the State Library, believed to be the first time a candidate for Lord Mayor has done this. Briscoe’s style this time around has been energetic but eccentric, including a populist announcement that if elected Mayor he would abolish all HCC policies and by-laws within six months (something the Mayor alone cannot deliver) and some of the most rambling candidate videos I’ve ever seen. Perhaps there is method in all this in that Briscoe’s best chance is to differentiate himself from the orthodox Sexton campaign and the mostly orthodox Thomas one, and try to appeal to people through enthusiasm and zaniness, but I am not convinced that it is actually calculated.
I mentioned in my previous piece that in this period of Council, Briscoe’s voting pattern had moved somewhat away from the rest of the “blues”. There has been some recent tension between him and some of the others and it’s possible things could get personal, with Briscoe’s electorate office (which, for instance, provides free space to artists) and its perceived relation to the treating provisions of electoral regulations a possible flashpoint for aggro. If so other mayoral contenders would be well advised to keep out of it.
Damon Thomas (former Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO, Crown Solicitor and Ombudsman) easily won a Council seat in 2009 with 8.7% of the aldermanic vote. Given the political-rainbow style of Thomas’s campaign, it was a mystery where exactly he would line up on Council matters, but he has turned out to occupy a “moderate blue” position similar to Sexton’s, albeit less green-tinged and also somewhat less predictable. Thomas is an energetic and organised campaigner who has nabbed a number of the best signage sites in the city (including arguably the very best of all – the disused Myer space) and who has been active with TV and other advertising for months.
Given that Burnet won the Deputy position as a Green candidate, and given that she is the only non-“blue” in the field, it’s very hard to see how she could fail to make the final two. Even if there is a big swing against the Green vote because of state issues, Burnet should still be able to get the 33% needed to reach that point (and this can include not only primaries but also the preferences of the first excluded candidate). So on the assumption that Burnet will be one of the final two, a big question is which of the three blues will be the other.
One might consider the aldermanic votes of Briscoe in 2007 and Sexton in 2009 and argue that since Briscoe’s most recent aldermanic primary was two and a half times Sexton’s, Sexton has no chance. But Sexton’s result was achieved in a year when Valentine was on the aldermanic ticket, while Briscoe’s was not. Adjusting for the major ticket differences (by redistributing the primaries of Valentine and Ruzicka, with the flow-on to each candidate reduced slightly because some Valentine or Ruzicka voters would have voted next for the lead Green, and hence probably for Burnet in this mayoral election), Sexton’s aldermanic apparent support level rises from 40% of Briscoe’s to 86%. Throw in that Briscoe in 2007 had the publicity advantage of being the only Mayoral candidate opposing Valentine, while Sexton in 2009 was just a DLM contender, and make that 100%, if not more. Another consequence of the idea that Briscoe is more popular than Sexton is that Briscoe would have beaten Burnet for DLM had he contested – and I do not think that would have actually been the case.
On the same adjusted scale Thomas’s known aldermanic support level is behind that of Briscoe and Sexton, but not hugely so, and Thomas is a rising force who has now served his first two years on Council, whereas the others are well established. All up none of Briscoe, Sexton and Thomas can claim a clear support baseline advantage over the other, so success between them should come down to how well they campaign and how successful they are in winning the votes of voters not already favourable towards them.
Although Burnet won the Deputy position last time and is therefore the nearest thing to an incumbent, I have two big reservations about her chances for the top job. Firstly the Greens at state level have not been travelling well in what debatably passes for polling, and while it is easy to overstate the extent to which state issues contaminate local government voting, it would be surprising if they were to get off completely unharmed. Secondly, while there has been plenty by way of policy comments from the Greens, I have not yet seen any signs of an extra-special inspired campaign strategy to achieve excitement about the historic goal of a Green Lord Mayor. (A goal, I might add, which would probably prove to be a confrontational, unpleasant and largely symbolic experience for the winner if attained given that the Greens just don’t have the numbers on most issues.)
The Greens generally are going through a bad patch in local government with sitting aldermen in the north tending to no longer run with the party (for various reasons, but dissatisfaction over pulp mill-related compromises is a very big part of it). The malaise has not hit Hobart to the same extent, but one minor campaign issue is a microcosm of the implications of state politics for a Green council campaign. The likely sale of the former Adult Ed building in Macquarie Street is the sort of issue that would normally be a bread and butter photo-opp for Green councillors fighting the evils of privatisation. However, Nick McKim is the Minister who has to defend the decision to sell the building in order to channel funding to community services through LINC development. In the strange political logic of these times, the space in the photo marked “Insert Green Alderman here” was instead therefore filled by … Damon Thomas!
Burnet’s electoral record is so strong that if anyone can win the Mayoralty for the Greens at this time it is her. It seems more likely though that she will lead on primaries, but not by enough, and be caught by one of the three male “blues” in the final distribution. On what’s been seen so far I think that Thomas has the edge in chances over Sexton and Briscoe – in energy over the former and in quality control (most of the time) over the latter. There is not a lot in it and Sexton in particular may turn it around if he runs a very big campaign in the critical weeks. Unusually, we have a four-way contest which any of the candidates could conceivably win.
Deputy Lord Mayor
The three candidates for Deputy Mayor are a moderate Green who has just finished his first term and the two most hardline “blues”, neither of whom has stellar electoral records. Any of the mayoral contenders would have won this position easily but all are focused on the big prize.
Marti Zucco requires no introduction, but anyone recently landed from Jupiter (because you can probably still detect him from Mars) should be aware that Zucco is the human headline of the Hobart City Council. He is willing to get his name in the papers for just about anything, sometimes running for elections for publicity reasons alone, and has a long list of political (mis)adventures to his name. First elected to Council back in 1992, Zucco has a loyal core following and an ability to get a reasonable vote (even outside his Council area) with no effort at all. He has always been returned pretty comfortably as an alderman, but has never yet threatened to win a leadership position, has never polled a quota on primaries and tends to progress slowly once he has to rely on preferences. In the leadup to the last council election Zucco attempted to gain Liberal state preselection unsuccessfully, bringing him into prominent conflict with Elise Archer. He was later to quit the party in disgust. During all this he polled a strong 9% of aldermanic primaries to be fifth across the line after Thomas just overtook him on preferences, but at the same time was thrashed 81-19 by Valentine in the mayoral no-contest. This combination of results tells you all you need to know about the with-him-or-against-him nature of the Zucco factor.
Ron Christie first appeared on Council in 1999, running seventh at the third attempt and gaining a two-year term. He then lost his seat at the next election, polling only 2.1%. He returned to Council with a strong fifth place and 8.3% of the vote in 2002, but in 2007 his vote declined to 6.1% and he was the sole survivor of the all-blue cage-match of doom against Hayes and Lyn Archer, gasping across the line by nine votes after reputedly clearing out his desk in the belief that he had lost. Historically the most extreme and at times idiosyncratic of the “blues” on Council, and notably opposed to many Green views, Christie appears to have moderated just a little in the current term of Council. He has run for this position three times before without anything remotely resembling success, his best effort being third ahead of Darlene Haigh with 17% in a field of four in 2002.
Bill Harvey was elected to Council at the second attempt in 2007, impressively polling over 600 primaries as an endorsed #2 and then running rampant on preferences. Harvey has been the most moderate of the three Greens in his time on Council and has even copped some flak and insurrectionary mutterings from the odd Green hardliner for not being radical enough. Clearly skilled at making noise and working the media (probably more so than his teammate Cocker), Harvey has a rather high profile and has had several recent press grabs.
In the last election, the endorsed Green (a very strong vote-getter) defeated a moderate blue. The Green vote tends to hold acceptably no matter who is running, so while Bill Harvey may not be Helen Burnet, under normal circumstances I would expect him to beat his hardline opponents comfortably. The problem for Harvey – and the central test of this position in my view – is that these may not be normal circumstances and the Green connection could be on the nose. Let the battle commence, and may the least unelectable win.
A fourth contender for DLM deserves a mention, and that contender is Nobody. With neither Christie nor Harvey complete certainties to retain their aldermanic seats, and Zucco yet to master the delicate art of attracting preferences, there is a remote chance that the winner of this battle will be someone who is not returned as an alderman. In this case, the new Deputy would be elected by the Council.
Councillors (7 vacancies, one for two years only)
The quota for election is 12.5% of all votes cast – slightly lower than normal because of the extra vacancy. There are six incumbent aldermen facing the voters:
Philip Cocker was first elected to a two-year vacancy on Green ticket preferences despite a low primary vote in 2005. In 2007 as the endorsed #1 Green candidate he topped the poll with 18.4% of the vote and was elected on primaries. In this election he is only running for his aldermanic seat (unlike Burnet and Harvey who are running for higher office). In the apparent absence of a Green ticket order some of his vote is bound to transfer to Harvey but it remains to be seen how much, and it is difficult to model as a situation with two Greens defending their seat together hasn’t happened on Hobart Council before. Cocker could well be knocked below a quota but he shouldn’t have problems getting re-elected, probably in somewhere between second and fifth place. It could be lower than that if the Green vote is down really badly or if Harvey is especially successful.
Eva Ruzicka was originally a green-leaning alderman first elected via Progress Association style tickets, but now resides around the middle of the Council’s green/blue spectrum. Ruzicka was first elected in 1999, polling 4.1% and outlasting the Greens’ Cath Hughes by just under eleven votes (votes are distributed in hundredths). In 2002 her vote jumped to 19.6% and she was elected Deputy Lord Mayor defeating Lyn Archer 54%-46% two-candidate preferred. In subsequent elections she defeated Peter Sexton and Helen Burnet for the position by similar margins; in 2007 her primary vote fell slightly to 17.7%, perhaps partly because of competition from the Greens and partly because of limited campaigning. Now out of the Deputy’s job for two years (she declined to recontest because of university study commitments), Ruzicka’s profile is not as high as it used to be. I expect Ruzicka’s vote to decline, perhaps to something in the 8-12% range, and although she should still be re-elected even with only a modest campaign, it could well be well down the order rather than her previous first and second.
Jeff Briscoe’s form guide was mentioned above. Alderman Briscoe will be re-elected. He has a good chance of a quota on first preferences, perhaps substantially more. With Cocker and Ruzicka both very likely to lose votes, and Briscoe on an upward trend at the previous election, it is likely Briscoe will top the poll. Even if he doesn’t, it would be a surprise to see him finish worse than third.
Bill Harvey’s form guide was mentioned under DLM. If Green voters are extremely loyal to Cocker as their former ticket leader, and if the Green vote declines massively, Harvey could in theory be in bother, but I don’t believe either of these things will be true. I expect Harvey to substantially increase, and probably double if not more, his vote from last time, and to be re-elected anywhere between about third and sixth place.
Ron Christie’s form guide was mentioned under DLM. . The last election would have been a wake-up call and he is taking this one much more seriously. He has a good chance of re-election, probably in fifth or sixth place, but with his past erratic trajectory is no certainty to hold his seat in this field and is also at risk of relegation to the two-year term.
Eric Hayes was elected to Council on a countback from the 1994 election in 1998. Hayes is another “blue” but one who tends to be fairly agreeable with other aldermen. Hayes polled 6.5% of the aldermanic primary vote in 1999 to be fifth elected, and increased this to 8.4% and third elected in 2002. In 2007 many of his voters migrated to Elise Archer or Briscoe, and he ended up losing his seat in somewhat unlucky circumstances (Lyn Archer recontesting but then doing nothing for health reasons all campaign messed up preference flows, and he might have beaten Christie otherwise). Hayes returned to Council on a recount when Elise Archer was elected to State Parliament. The stop-start nature of his incumbency and a perilously low profile since then place him at the greatest risk of all the sitting aldermen. Despite this, with Adrian Bold out of the mix (see below) there is less competition for Hayes’ traditional “Sandy Bay right” type vote than in 2007, and this might save him. If Hayes is re-elected, he is likely to just get the seventh seat and two-year term.
I now run through the non-sitting candidates, starting with those who I think have the greatest chance of election but not necessarily continuing down that path beyond the first three or four:
Tiina-Liisa Sexton is a chartered accountant who has sat on the boards of Hobart Water and Aurora Energy alongside many other professional and academic involvements. But Tasmania is Tasmania, so having even more credentials to her name than i’s in it probably still counts for less as concerns her chances than being married to a mayoral contender. Given the real strength of Peter Sexton’s vote with the Valentine factor catered for (as demonstrated in discussion of his mayoral chances), if even half that stays in the family then the chances of two Sextons appearing on Council are good (as are the chances of Tiina-Liisa polling a higher aldermanic primary than Peter most recently achieved, and Peter presumably never hearing the end of it if so). With the initial news of the double Sexton candidacy having amusingly framed the decision to run in terms of disagreements about Council issues rather than holding the same views, it will be interesting to see how often they do vote differently if they do both serve together. The ultimate disaster would be not for Mrs Sexton to lose, but for her to be elected seventh, forcing the pair to run against each other in 2013 if they both wanted to keep their seats. I should point out that breaking into Council at a first attempt is rarely easy for anyone, and Mrs Sexton is by no means guaranteed a seat – most likely, it will come down to the quality and quantity of her campaign material.
Sue Hickey is the managing director of Slick Promotions, and a Rotary board member, among other involvements. Again, Tasmania being Tasmania, I suppose it is tedious but relevant to note that she is a former TV presenter and ex-winner of the now extinct Miss Tasmania title. Hickey was preselected for the Liberals in Denison in 2010 but withdrew on legal advice that she would breach the Electoral Act if her business accepted government contracts in the lead-up to the election. Subsequently she was involved in a massively publicised pre-election incident after Elise Archer confronted her concerning comments she had made about an excess of lawyers in parliament. This didn’t stop Archer getting elected to parliament and probably won’t obstruct Hickey much either. Hickey has two disadvantages – firstly she is the only candidate listed as living outside the city council boundaries, and secondly her campaign has come rather late in the piece and she has a lot to do in a very small amount of time. Despite this, if she can make a really major attempt and do it well, Hickey is capable of winning a seat.
Simon Monk is an endorsed Labor candidate. That’s really most of what you need to know. He’s young and fresh and he’s endorsed by Duncan Kerr, but then again, so was Jonathan Jackson. Monk’s flier is very well produced but the contents radiate inexperience. For instance Monk proposes a report to “discover exactly what the council is doing to return rates to our local neighbourhoods”, the sort of thing an experienced alderman shouldn’t need (yet another) report to comment on. Monk has quite a long list of community involvements, many of them Labor standards – Youth Parliament, debating societies, electorate work and even the dreaded UNYA. If he was running without party involvement he wouldn’t have a hope. But the formal endorsement of a party – even one in a popularity death spiral at state level, even in an area which is not all that pro-Labor at the best of times, gives him a huge edge in publicity, likely campaign support and access to the votes of Labor voters who have long been wondering who the hell they vote for on a council full of Greens, ex-Greens and closet Libs. 12.5% after preferences should in theory be hardly a massive ask for a Labor Party campaign and it’s possible on this basis that Monk will do very well.
Leo Foley is the President of the Council of Hobart Community Associations and has recently formed a Hobart Ratepayers Association to promote various proposed changes to councils. He has finished ninth in the last three elections, polling 3.9% in 2005, 5.7% in 2007 and 3.4% in 2009. In the first of these he came close to being elected while in the second he was unlucky to have no available preference flow. At this election he has been pushing the apparently popular issue of council amalgamations. I consider Foley to have a realistic if outside chance of election at this poll, mainly on the basis that he may profit from the expected decline in the Ruzicka vote. It is also notable that he has some chance of election on a recount when Rob Valentine retires, although primary figures suggest that will more likely go (if he recontests) to, of all people, John Freeman.
Corey Peterson is the Sustainability Manager at the University of Tasmania and general sustainability technician/advocate with a background in Antarctic science. Peterson ran on the Greens ticket in 2007 as endorsed #3, polling a good vote and delivering a very strong preference flow to help elect Bill Harvey. In 2009 Peterson was the #2 Green candidate but the preference flow to him was not so good and he narrowly failed to defeat Darlene Haigh for the final seat. Now he is running as an independent and it will be interesting to see how he goes. However, with no ticket to create a preference flow (beyond perhaps some flow from the #3 Green) I don’t see where he would get the votes from unless he can somehow massively increase his primary.
Christine Coughanowr is the Director of the Derwent Estuary Program. Coughanowr is very well known in Hobart waterfront, scientific and environmental circles and her name returns several hundred Google hits. She is likely to poll a reasonable vote but not to be elected at the first attempt.
Madeleine Charles is a young Uni student and the third endorsed Greens candidate. The Greens have no chance of winning three seats at this election and if they get two seats it will be their two sitting aldermen, but anyone whose campaign page has almost as many “likes” as Harvey’s should be able to rack up a few hundred votes, especially as the only female on the Greens ticket.
Dean Parry is running on a platform of eliminating fancy stuff and getting back to council basics. He appears to be a prolific Facebook user and writer of letters to the Mercury, and to be at least a Labor fan if not actually involved with the party; his offerings are long on policy (and humour) but short on biographical detail. I suspect we will find out more as the campaign progresses.
Ben Peelman says he stands “for the Northern Suburbs Rail Proposal, youth and artistic representation, and green libertarian [!!- KB] ideals delivered with street-wise common-sense.” There is far more on his Facebook page than you can poke a stick at about his political background; in particular see his political evolution post of 8 September (expand the comments section). It is interesting to see these kinds of campaigns that seem to emerge more or less out of nowhere with a Facebook page and a realisation that running for Council is easy and free.
Antony De Lara is a Salamanca stallholder with a background in woodcraft. He may be running on the issue of proposed Salamanca changes recently discussed on TT. His electoral potential is unknown.
Peter Brownscombe is a health economist and secretary of Noise Tasmania, a lobby group against noise pollution. He ran last time and I said he wouldn’t greatly trouble the scorers. He didn’t and won’t do so this time either.
Daniel Palmer is at this stage a mystery. Entering his name plus “Hobart City Council” brings up several links related to art but possibly not related to the candidate (since that Palmer seems to be from the North Island). But hey, at least he got his form in on time …
… which is more than we can say for Adrian Bold. The young pro-cable-car businessman who was running hard with a very organised campaign and website, and targeting “inaction & incompetence in local government”, served up some of his own by failing to get his nomination in in time. Apparently owing to “an unbelievably [sic] amount of red tape in another aspect of my life” Bold did not get around to submitting his form until posting it the day before, presumably on the assumption that it would reach the Electoral Office by midday the next day. It didn’t and he is out – the mistake ruining what should have been a winning campaign. Of course, he can run again in two years’ time but I suspect that the political landscape will be different and the blunder will be rather damaging.
(UPDATE: Bold in Wednesday’s Mercury states the error was made by a member of his campaign team but if anything this is worse; a candidate should always deliver their nomination in person themselves. You never know who you can’t trust in this game!)
In summary of the aldermanic chances, usually when there is a vacancy on Council all the sitting aldermen retain, and it is only when the basis are loaded that one or more tend to lose. In this case the field is strong enough that there is a fair chance a sitting alderman will go (and even more than one is vaguely possible) but it is by no means certain.
Finally, I have been pleased to see a high level of coverage of the election in the local print media, in contrast to some past elections that have been virtually ignored. Some examples of issues over which the election is already being contested include:
• the Northern Suburbs rail proposal. I don’t know if anyone opposes this but it’s a good one for candidates to try to demonstrate their transport cred.
• amalgamations. It takes a lot of courage to point out that something so obviously popular could in practice be a total mess, but Cocker has been seen arguing a cautious view of the push for reducing council numbers.
• water meter reforms, generally opposed with Briscoe and Sexton particularly prominent on the issue
• “Laura”. The perennial favourite of the right, Ms Norder has made an appearance with Christie, Thomas and Sexton among those pushing various increased closed-circuit TV towers.
• Mt Wellington Cable Car. This old chestnut may fizz out as an issue now that its main backer has fallen off the rails but several of the blues appeared in a photo opportunity on the issue.
• Salamanca market reforms, regulation and/or claimed overregulation.
• implementation (or not) of Gehl report urban design recommendations (Briscoe has been using this to tie in to calls for something to be done about the former swimming pool eyesore in Molle St)
• inner-city housing, already the subject of a dispute between Zucco and Burnet.
• funding of the Taste Festival (Christie, Burnet and Zucco all active on this issue)
• Christmas drinks at Salamanca. Monk has opposed a possible shutdown and Peelman is a member of the Facebook group on this issue.
It should continue to be a vigorous campaign.
I will be overseas for most of the voting period but will be following developments with interest and hope to return from my chess-political Austin Powers act in time for the count on October 25.
First published: 2011-09-29 06:49 AM
