The Government Meets the People

Margot Giblin 6th Community Forum, Geeveston, 15th February 2009
SMITHTON, Devonport, Bicheno and Queenstown have all had their first forum. On Sunday it was the Huon Valley’s turn when Premier David Bartlett visited Geeveston.

About 50 people turned up at the Geeveston District High School to meet their Cabinet ministers.

David Bartlett, Michelle O’Byrne, Lin Thorp, Lara Giddings, David Llewellyn, Lisa Singh and Graeme Sturges were there.

Michael Aird and Jim Cox sent apologies.

David O’Byrne

Heads of various government agencies were also available, as was the Acting Commissioner of Police, Darren Hine, who attended in uniform, as did his offsider.

After a brief greeting from Bartlett and local Mayor, Robert Armstrong, the business of face to face meetings got under way, at individual tables around the meeting room.

The forums are open to the public but an appointment had to have been made to speak to a minister – and some had missed out.

Carol Murphy had come along anyway, hoping some-one else might cancel. On each quarter hourly ringing of the bell to end individual meetings, however, the seats in front of the ministers she was after were taken.

Murphy has lived in Cygnet for two years and is worried about the proposed Huon Valley Council funded pipeline to bring water to several towns including hers. She has several concerns.She says the decision was rushed and there was no community consultation. She sees the pipeline solution as failing to address the wider issue of wise water use. She described it as another depletion of a natural resource without exploration of other options. It’s also going to be expensive – the projected cost is $26 million, of which the Council only has 12 million in hand, so it will have to borrow the shortfall. Given that the water will be taken from the Huon River, Murphy envisages water of a lower quality than Cygnet’s present Grey Mountain Dam supply.

Unable to talk to a minister today how does she intend to pursue her concern? Carol has been accepted as a member of Cygnet’s Township Development Committee, she says, which is a start.

Tony Woolley, from Geeveston, reckons he’ll know by June 30th if his talk to Graeme Sturges was worthwhile. His problem is the intersection of Scott’s Road with the Huon Highway. If, travelling north on the highway, he wants to turn right into Scott’s Road, he can’t if there’s a vehicle sitting in it waiting to enter the highway. With vehicles banking up behind him he’s forced to keep going to the Kermandie Hotel car park at Port Huon which is big enough to let him turn his semi, and double back. The solution, he says, is simple – widen Scott’s Road at the intersection. Woolley was happy with his conversation with Sturges, who had also visited the site earlier in the day. He says he’ll know if Sturges is fair dinkum about doing something if he’s sees surveyors there by the end of this financial year. Woolley sees it as a straight forward job which he would expect to see completed by this time next year. If so, he will feel the Forum was a success.

More complicated is a local shack owner’s concern with the conversion of the land it’s on from Crown to freehold and the amounts required by owners to buy their properties. His attendance at the Forum was to progress an ongoing dialogue. Those owners whose purchases have taken place since 2000 have seen massive rises in the valuation of their properties. The Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Jim Wilkinson, identified major flaws in the process in which lengthy delays saw many sales not settled until after the property boom. The committee recommended that those properties affected be re evaluated at pre 03 levels. This will be the main thrust of a private member’s bill that has been drafted by Paul Harriss who is waiting on the outcome of the Ethics Committee Inquiry before introducing it. Llewelyn, said this shack owner, has given an assurance in writing that delays in the process should not cause increases in the cost of owners buying their shacks. The success of today’s Forum, for this shack owner, hinges on whether there is a satisfactory outcome before the next election. If not, he said, he thinks he’ll have to kiss goodbye his chances of a re-evaluation.

David O’Byrne, Michelle O’Byrne’s brother, was attending as Secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union.

TT asked how he would measure the success of this forum.

Not by asking people attending how they feel today, he said. Measure it by how strongly they feel connected to the process much further down the track and by how many of their issues have really been addressed.

Some, whose concerns were related to climate change, felt the ministers they spoke to had been polite enough but didn’t seem really engaged or to share their own sense of urgency.

The Huon Valley Forum took place in a local school but interestingly, despite such places often being described as the hub of a community, there was not, according to a teacher who helped set it up, a single parent of an enrolled student there. Many other locals were also absent. They may all be happy with everything in their lives that government might affect but what if they’re not? What if the government needs to reach them?

Walking into a school is not easy for everyone. The prospect of rubbing shoulders and chatting to uniformed police officers might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Return visits to communities are planned by Bartlett. It might be an idea to have some of them at venues that pull in a wider cross section of the community – especially those for whom present outcomes in relation to rural education, health and road safety could be improved for everyone’s benefit.

Disclaimer: The writer has a property in the Huon Valley.