Councillors behaving badly

Huon Valley Guessing Games Rohan Gudden, one would hope, learned a lesson in manners, respect and proper procedure at last Wednesday’s (July 17) meeting of Huon Valley Council. Cr Gudden, as an elected member of the valley community, should now appreciate that one cannot describe someone in the public gallery as an “imbecile”, even when that person is breaking the rules by interjecting. When the order of a meeting needs to be restored, the task falls to the chairperson alone.

Unfortunately, chairman Mayor Robert Armstrong — when the Huon’s junior councillor stepped out of line — failed to instantly demand retraction of the offensive word, or an apology by Gudden to the person addressed.

In fact, amid gasps of surprise at the “imbecile” outburst aimed at a long-time and respected member of Cygnet’s wider community, Armstrong merely asserted that Gudden had the floor.

One might wonder why a “point-of-order call” did not come from at least one of the assembled councillors. In fact, there were grounds for two calls: one for the “imbecile” remark, and one for the mayor’s failure to demand immediate retraction and an apology.

It would be some minutes before the mayor would inquire of Gudden whether he wanted to apologise to Marianne Bekkema, the target of his abuse. Gudden’s proffered retraction — “Aaahh, I apologise” — was instantly accepted by Bekkema. The apology was at best perfunctory.

Gudden is not the only councillor to have used less than diplomatic language around the council table in recent times. I recall on at least two occasions the normally measured Peter Pepper describing forest activists as “terrorists”.

In each instance, Mayor Armstrong saw fit not to ask for a retraction or even a moderation of language. Ah well, on reflection, I accept that it must be difficult for people of like mind to remind each other that, even in the bitterest disputes, a bit of respect for the other side can help prevent a difficult situation from getting worse.

It seems, with the departure from council of Glenn Doyle — GM for three years until he stood down last October (resigning earlier this year) — some of the bad habits once common in the council chamber are creeping back in. I have no idea what it was about Doyle’s presence at the council table that brought more decorum to meetings, but, in his brief tenure as CEO, he did (as he vowed he would do at the time of his appointment) “change the culture of council”. It is to be hoped that the recent deterioration in council behaviour is not an indicator of a reversion to the bad old days.

Any councillors who, last Wednesday evening, did not feel at least a tinge of embarrassment at the “imbecile” incident, should consider carefully about again offering their services to the public at the next local government election, due towards the end of next year.

GUDDEN’S behaviour, and that of the mayor, got me to thinking about an unsavoury event in December 2010 in Cygnet Town Hall. It was a township meeting called in response to a hugely supported petition in defence of the iconic peppermint gum that stood for decades at the junction of Charlton and Mary streets at the southern end of Cygnet (see ‘Cygnet, heal thyself’, http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/huon-valley-guessing-games-cygnet-heal-thyself/ ).

By the time that meeting got under way, it was far too late to save the tree — it had been ringbarked by some deranged axeman (still at large in the Cygnet area) — but there were still issues to discuss and motions to move.

The audience was evenly divided: one group, mostly Old Cygnet, didn’t want “our town changed” — yet, oxymoronically, did want to see the tree gone; the other group, mostly blow-ins, also certainly didn’t want to see the town changed, yet, with the tree’s demise having become unavoidable, it did want about five metres of the trunk left standing to be carved into something symbolic of Cygnet’s boat-building and apple-industry history by one of the Huon’s highly talented chainsaw sculptors.

As the meeting went on, it became clear that the sculpture vision would never be realised, one raucous female, siding with the Old Cygnet crowd, declaring, “We didn’t come here to listen to this rubbish”.

All the blow-in proposals were narrowly defeated by the Old Cygnet crowd, many of whom had made their way to the meeting from the Middle Pub (which has since been put out of operation by a fire).

One peppermint gum supporter after the meeting was heard to say that it was perhaps fortunate that all their motions had been defeated because he feared angry locals might have trashed the town had their numbers not prevailed. An extreme, probably unreasonable fear maybe, but that public meeting, reflecting divisions that still run deep in Cygnet, witnessed an appalling outburst of vitriol by several Old Cygnetians against the Johnny and Jilly-come-latelies that had been attracted to the region.

The 2010 meeting was also the scene of an inept (some thought prejudiced) display of chairmanship on the part of Mayor Armstrong. As well as not keeping discussion confined to the agenda, he signally failed to condemn unwarranted and aggressive verbal assaults on people whose latter-day arrivals in Cygnet had contributed greatly towards making the township the busy and vibrant community it is today.

LAST Wednesday night’s council meeting was yet another reminder that the Huon’s long-serving mayor is light on when it comes to mastering the art of meeting procedure and decorum.

By not immediately reprimanding the out-of-order councillor — who should know that a politician simply cannot heap contumely upon a heckler just because she is being vocally disruptive — the mayor, too, was out of order. Armstrong might well consider offering his own apology to Marianne Bekkema.

WHICH brings me back to why Bekkema — who a long time back campaigned doggedly for years against the use of the poison 1080 — was feeling so frustrated: it was all about council’s continuing failure to respond positively to her long campaign for a lift to the Supper Room in Cygnet Town Hall. With a “no action” recommendation on her latest petition for a lift, Bekkema, who is never shy about making her feelings plain, could not resist (at least a couple of times) exclaiming, “Discrimination!” from her seat in the public gallery.

Bekkema’s petitions are punctuated by signatory comments such as “Sooner the better”, “So that everyone can enjoy the Supper Room”, “It’s time”, “No discrimination”, “Equity issue”, “Discriminatory not to have equal access for all” . . . One local said she had been calling for a lift in the Town Hall for about 30 years.

Particularly galling to the Cygnet regulars in the public gallery was Gudden’s suggestion that anyone could collect hundreds of signatures for a petition. Well, that might be true, but only when there is strong public support for a specific cause. In total, more than 600 people enthusiastically signed the two recent Bekkema petitions calling for a lift to the Supper Room, a popular venue for small-crowd events.

(The first petition, with more than 500 signatures, was rejected by council on technical grounds. On a matter of such interest as a lift for the aged and infirm in a community-owned building, council might have been expected to show a little more regard for the spirit, rather than the letter, of its rules.)

The agenda item dealing with the second Bekkema petition (17.046/13) contained a recommendation that “no action be taken . . . because council has included installation of a lift [but not until 2021-22!] . . . in council’s 10-year New Asset Plan, a change to the plan will have priority implications . . . and there is nothing objective before the council . . . to bring the matter forward”.

Cr Liz Smith, who found the “objective” bit in the recommendation puzzling — what could be more objective than heavily supported petitions? — put up an alternative motion.

This recommended that “the matter be referred to the Positive Ageing Committee and the Access Advisory Committee for advice on the community’s need for a lift” and, “if the committees provide support for the proposal, that council . . . obtain costings . . . so that the project is ready to proceed should disability access funding become available”. Not unreasonable, eh? And Smith’s motion did not even ask council to commit any funding.

Smith’s fellow Green, Cr Rosalie Woodruff, seconding the motion, upset the mayor by suggesting that “we are getting a complete stonewall from council”. Armstrong, who saw this as a slight on council staff, said Woodruff’s comments were “bordering on the offensive”. (Clashes of the Armstrong-Woodruff nature appear to partly stem from the mayor’s odd, but long-held attitude that when council makes a decision every councillor should henceforth support it.)

Having taken so much offence at Woodruff’s remarks, Armstrong might also have been expected to find unacceptable Gudden’s remark about Bekkema.

As usual, Deputy Mayor Mike Wilson was on about council being cash-strapped, again conveniently forgetting he was a strong supporter of a largely unwanted new Cygnet toilet block at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars when a hundred grand would have refurbished the much more attractive (now demolished) old block; a splurging of about $1.7 million on a remaking of Sale Street, Huonville (an overkill act in the extreme); and of expenditure of $70,000 on a doubling of children’s play equipment in Cygnet’s Burtons Reserve. (It seems our local authority will do anything to discourage kids from communing with nature, but is not so much interested in pandering to the needs of those with rapidly diminishing voting futures.)

Predictably, Smith’s motion went down 6-2 (Pepper being absent), and the original recommendation — to do nothing — got up by the same count.

It strikes me as strange that council so often seems to foist on Cygnet what it doesn’t want and to be difficult about providing the township with what it does want. The staff report, for example, observes that “installation of a lift at the Cygnet Town Hall has been raised by the Cygnet Township Committee [now defunct by council decree] over a period of time”.

Even the much-needed new car park behind the town hall is not in harmony with the township plan. And, if talk around town has got it right, it has been designed with an entrance to Mary Street that fails to meet DIER standards.

So, just like council had to reconstruct the drainage beneath the pocket park near the supermarket in Huonville because it got it wrong first time (and the same thing happening with the roof on the new toilet block in Cygnet), it looks as if the new car park’s access (presumably executed by the contractor according to council specifications) is likely to have to undergo modifications for reasons yet to be disclosed.

There’s talk aplenty about town as to what those reasons might be. It seems it has something to do with no one wanting a bus shelter to be stuck on the northeast corner of the Mary Street car park (as council has decided it will be). Among those opposed are most, if not all, members of the now-defunct township committee; and the Catholic Church, on whose land the shelter would stand, and whose wonderful buildings would be partly obscured from Mary Street if a bus shelter were put there.

The talk goes on to suggest that an alternative site for a bus shelter is now mooted as being to the north of the pizza shop just in from the new Town Hall car park entrance. If the intelligence is accurate, that would mean redesigning the access from Mary Street, thus incurring yet another waste of cash by a council that might not have been so strapped had it not lost $4 million of the people’s money on speculative financial funds four years ago.

That $4 million, plus perhaps another million in interest over the five years or so since it was “invested”, would have solved all council’s budgetary problems for some time to come.

Council’s latest “stonewalling” on a lift for the Cygnet Town Hall — clearly a pressing need, and popularly demanded on grounds of discrimination against the aged and handicapped — is going to do nothing to dispel the widely held notion in Cygnet that the Huon Valley Council is unreasonably prejudiced against even having an open mind on projects the community asks for. — Bob Hawkins

Bob Hawkins, a Huon Valley ratepayer and a member of no political organisation, makes no secret that he counts Crs Liz Smith and Rosalie Woodruff among his friends.