Tonight: George Town

Sven Wiener

JUST A reminder that the George Town Council Public Meeting on the Pulp Mill will be taking place this evening (7:30PM Tue 27 Nov).

See http://www.georgetown.tas.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=191&c=2001

There has been a lot of controversy over the time extension that the councillors gave themselves for holding this public meeting, in breach of the 30 day time limit (from date of scheduling council meeting) as set down in the Local Government Act 1993.

In addition, what we’ve seen to date is that contrary to the council webpage on the meeting and council’s newspaper advertisements of 31 Oct and 3 Nov, submissions have not as yet been displayed on the council’s website (as at 12:30PM on Mon 26 Nov).

Furthermore, according to the reply emailed by Council Executive Assistant, Kaye Ellis in response to each submission, those who submitted a detailed response will be given 3 minutes to speak at the meeting and those who submitted a minimal submission indicating that they will be speaking, have been allocated 2 minutes to speak. According to Kaye Ellis, these rules were decided on by George Town Mayor Doug Burt and Council General Manager McCrindle. These limitations were not made public until after the deadline for receipt of submissions. It is not known whether the pro-pulp mill lobby within George Town were privy to these rules prior to deadline for submissions and hence were aware that detailed submissions should be presented in order to have 50% longer talking time. A flier was distributed around George Town businesses requesting that they attend the public meeting in order to support the pulp mill.

Debbie Rainbow who is a co-lodger of the petition requesting the public meeting, will be lodging a complaint regarding the above with the meeting chairperson Lynn Mason immediately prior to the public meeting. Ms Mason chaired the Launceston and West Tamar Council public meetings.

A follow-on petition demanding an elector poll (same poll question wording as Hobart City Council had) will be lodged with George Town Council later this week. Under the Local Government Act, George Town Council will be obliged to either reject the elector poll petition if it is in any way invalid, or hold an elector poll sometime before the end of February.

DPAC Local Government Office Director Alistair Scott’s handling of the breach by George Town Council of the 30 day time limit for holding the public meeting, has been unacceptable. A complaint will be lodged shortly with the State Ombudsman regarding Director Scott’s failure to enforce the Act..