Economy
When the mayor’s away, a relaxed council plays
Huon Valley Guessing Games
Robert Armstrong — Huon Valley Council’s sometimes mayor and the Huon Division’s sometimes member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council (parliament’s upper house) — was, I believe, still playing council clown and toying with the municipality voters when Wednesday’s council meeting (July 16) began. And he wasn’t even there.
Seems, according to Deputy Mayor Mike Wilson, that the professedly “full-time” mayor and “full-time” Legislative Council member was away in Melbourne visiting his first grandson. No-one begrudges a grandad getting excited over a newborn, or for taking time out to visit him, but, fair play, this man’s campaign promises that he would work full-time in both jobs as a result of getting himself elected at two levels of government are getting beyond a joke.
Better, for his own good, and that of the people of both the Huon Valley municipality and the Huon Division, that he steps down — and quickly — from the job of mayor. That at least might give him time to concentrate on one of the first duties expected of an MLC — the maiden speech. (The next LegCo sitting is scheduled for August 19-21.)
However, as people in hard times (as many are in the Huon) are often heard to say, it’s not all gloom and doom down here in the valley. In fact, with the dead hand of chairman Armstrong absent, the July council meeting (despite the lousy acoustics) was a bit of a circus, fun, lightness, chaos, confusion, laughs, chortles, chuckles, physical limps, verbal slips, unlikely liaisons (in the nicest sense of the word, of course), courtesies to the public gallery, and faux pas galore — all ingredients that one might associate with a superficially healthy, yet more likely dysfunctional, clowncil.
BUT back to the “working flat out” (his words) mayor/LegCo member, and the fist he’s making of the two jobs he promised, when campaigning for voter support, to do “full-time”.
Robert Armstrong might think he’s working flat out, but several signs have been apparent in the months since he won his LegCo seat that the municipality is already starting to miss out on things ratepayers and residents should be able to take for granted, especially from someone in a full-time job — such as the mayor being unavailable for scheduled meetings,
First, let’s consider council’s June meeting. It was known, from the May meeting, that three councillors, Ian Paul, Rosalie Woodruff and Liz Smith, would be away for the June meeting, each having been granted leave of absence. It takes five councillors for a quorum, so council could have met on its scheduled June 25 without the mayor. It seems, from council documents, it was not convenient for Armstrong to attend on June 25. Why? Because LegCo was sitting on the same day. So, according to HVC document 15.014/14 (tabled at the June 23 meeting), “it was considered to change the June council meeting date to ensure the maximum number of councillors are available to consider the agenda items”. Just to enable Mayor Armstrong to put his LegCo hat on and be at parliament on June 25, everyone — councillors, staff, members of the public, and any other parties interested in council affairs — had to change their private plans so that they could attend the Huonville Council Chambers on the evening of Monday, June 23, rather than on the normal Wednesday date.
No big deal …
No big deal in itself, yet it was an example of how the full-time mayor cum full-time parliamentary legislator was already running into difficulties fulfilling the twin duties and responsibilities required of him without turning upside down the lives of all others involved in the monthly council meetings.
Yet, come the July 16 scheduled meeting of council, the code to “ensure the maximum number of councillors are available” seemed nowhere near as important. So, no sign of the mayor on July 16 — just an apology.
And what’s going to happen next month, when council’s scheduled Wednesday monthly meeting (August 20) clashes with a LegCo sitting day? There was no sign at the July meeting of council that there is to be a change of date for the August meeting, so it will be interesting to see how Mayor Armstrong continues to fulfil his commitment to two full-time civic jobs. Surely he won’t send his apologies to one or the other of the two institutions? More likely, we are seeing what is an informal process of Armstrong abandoning his previously impeccable council appearance record, thus enabling deputy Wilson to get a chance to see what it feels like to have his bum on the mayor’s chair.
Some say there was an agreement between Armstrong and Wilson about passing on the mantle of mayor. However, if there was/is, it is not yet clear that it is being put into effect.
It’s not easy to keep track of a mayor/LegCo member’s movements, especially when you don’t have the annual resources of the $200,000-plus that Armstrong now enjoys; or the time to keep an eye on his movements. Politicians know they’re fair game for the paparazzi, but down here in Tasmania none seems interested in dogging the movements of this dogged political professional. So relying on paparazzi monitoring is not an option.
Therefore, we’re unlikely to be able to pinpoint other areas where Robert Armstrong may be/not be measuring up to comprehensively doing the two “full-time” jobs he promised he would. Down the years, I have grown to believe that the public rarely, if ever, gets full value from a politician, even when they only have one job to do. I have even more misgivings when their tasks come in pairs.
Mayor Armstrong bragged that …
At the May meeting of council, in reply to a question from the public gallery, Mayor Armstrong bragged that, even though he was already a LegCo member, the rules would allow him to stand for mayor again in October. Surely it wasn’t hubris that I sensed in that confident assertion! But he was probably right, even though legal fog clouds exactly how long he could continue in both jobs, that he could stand. The unofficial odds in the valley that he will stand again are heavily against — but you never know!
At the HVC June meeting, when I asked Armstrong whether he would be standing again, he responded: “I haven’t made up my mind.” I had hoped to ask him the same question at the July meeting. But, with him not there, we’ll have to wait to see if this indecisive politician has sorted out his intentions — and, if he has, whether he intends to share them with the valley’s hoi polloi. After more than a decade of collecting a mayor’s pay plus perquisites, one might think Robert Armstrong would feel a sense of duty to share his plans, sooner rather than later, with the public. After all, he did campaign for the LegCo on a platform of HONESTY INTEGRITY COMMITMENT.
THE mayor, from this writer’s point of view, has dominated the council far too long, and to its detriment. From a position of comfortable financial strength and high cash resources in the early 2000s (when Armstrong became mayor), council today finds itself struggling to make ends meet. In 10 years, as illustrated by one ratepayer, Bob Frost of Franklin, annual rate increases have averaged more than 7%, for a total rise of more than 86%, “for essentially the same services”. You would never have gleaned those figures from the annual budget-time press releases conjured up by council’s spin brigade. Usually, the mayor has always been keen to quote the rate increase as a percentage. Not this year, as far as I can see.
I think Frost is being a tad generous: in the past year or so, as rates have inexorably continued to rise, the HVC has abdicated several responsibilities by slashing services and disposing of assets, especially in the fields of family, youth and NRM (natural resource management) services. And, alarmingly, council’s cash reserves have more than halved since 2008. Part of this, of course, was the loss, in 2008, of more than $4 million of public money through reckless investment in risk-prone CDOs (collateral debt obligations). Mayor Armstrong has still not explained what gave council such a rush of blood to the head back in the mid-noughties — or publicly apologised for the council he presides over having poured so much public money into less-than-secure investments. Perhaps he will make this one of his last acts as mayor before concentrating his focus entirely on his Legislative Council responsibilities. If Huon Valley Council were listed on the stock exchange, it would probably be worth next to nothing today; it might even have been suspended for failing to tell it like it is.
Mike Wilson in the Big Chair
BUT let’s get off such low notes, and back to the July 16 sans-Armstrong council meeting. Deputy mayor Mike Wilson (an intending mayoral aspirant at the October election), in the big chair, was looking well and at his most charming. The lightness of his touch in controlling (or failing to control) the meeting was eagerly reciprocated by the six other councillors present: Tony Duggan, Rohan Gudden, Bruce Heron, Ian Paul, Amy Robertson and Liz Smith (Rosalie Woodruff is reported to still be trekking somewhere in the wilds of India).
Everyone seemed ready to offer an opinion on one thing or another, even Gudden, who usually doesn’t venture much past, “I’m for development”. As this happy free-for-all rolled along, one couldn’t help but recall council moments in years past when deputy mayors (the now late) Gary Doyle and Heron sat in for Armstrong when he was out of the room because of declarations of interest. For me, they were a bit like mini-versions of the lights coming back on all over Europe in the mid-1940s
A couple of times Robertson took the role of mediator, and at one stage she got a little confused by volunteering to second an amendment of which she was the mover.
Then Paul threw a recommendation into disarray when, very reasonably, he pointed out that the recommended reduction of the speed limit on a stretch at the intersection of the North Huon and Rookwood roads (because of the inherent site-distance danger) was no more than a “cop out” on council’s part in response to what he regarded as salmon-hatchery owner Tassal’s unwillingness to come up with a real solution to the problem.
The to-ing and fro-ing on this one made great theatre for the, as usual, sparsely occupied public gallery — this time numbering five: mayoral aspirant Peter Coad (out of local government nearly 10 years, but with a claim to fame as HVC’s first deputy mayor, in 1993, and, before that, deputy warden of the old Port Cygnet Council), his wife Patricia, and the three usual suspects from Cygnet.
The Huon/Rookwood road issue was resolved by council requesting that, as per the recommendation, the speed limit be reduced from 80 to 70kmh but with the observation that this was not an adequate solution to what is acknowledged to be a dangerous stretch of road. A motherhood motion maybe, but at least council is asserting that it is no solution to a problem that will continue to exist even after the reduction.
Regional Tasmania ‘was on life support’
Then there was a remarkable event: an amendment by former Greens councillor (now independent) Liz Smith actually got up. Even more amazingly, it did so unanimously.
Smith, unimpressed by the Regional Councils’ Campaign’s 2013-14 slogan ‘Regional Tasmania – Keep it Alive’, observed that it suggested regional Tasmania “was on life support”. That, she said, was not the way she saw it, at least not down in the Huon Valley. Why, she said, that very day, at Cygnet’s greengrocery, she had found locally grown oyster and shitake mushrooms — yet more evidence of locals in the valley taking the challenge of economic renewal into their own hands. Smith ought to know how alive the valley is: she was instrumental, with Linda Cockburn (once of GeCo renown), in setting up the Huon Producers Network. With nearly 100 members, and not much more than a year old, it is going from strength to strength.
Councillors had two options: to back the 2014-15 campaign by putting in $3000 (plus GST), or to “not participate”. Smith, believing it would be money well spent, put up an amendment recommending that, in return for HVC’s support for the campaign, councils should receive six-monthly detailed reports on the progress of the campaign, including one to be delivered in May 2015 so that it could be considered in council’s 2015-16 budget deliberations. In an almost breathtaking display of goodwill, her amendment went through with not one dissenter.
And then, for a moment, it looked as if a council executive was authoring a motion. I’m sure it didn’t happen, but from the public gallery it looked suspiciously as if it was . . .
AMIDST this moment of councillors off the leash, three dissonant chords were struck when council was wading through its responses to “general meeting motions” from Tasmanian councils to be put to the Local Government Association of Tasmania (LGAT) general meeting this Wednesday (July 23).
Two of the issues came under the title ‘Environment’, one on ‘super trawlers’, the other on ‘contamination of waterways’. The third, under ‘Public health and insurance’, was about ‘food security’.
Super-Trawlers …
Break O’Day and Northern Midlands councils have a motion that LGAT supports the position of all state parties . . . to lobby the major federal political parties in opposing super trawlers operating in Australian waters, and support immediate federal legislation to permanently ban super trawlers . . . in Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The agenda recommendation was to “not support” the motion. Smith thought it should be supported, especially considering all three main political parties in Tasmania have indicated their opposition to super trawlers. She got the backing of Gudden and Duggan. But Robertson was for the “not support” option, saying super trawlers were outside of the jurisdiction of council. When Wilson, in the chair, called for a show of hands, it was 3-3 (Heron and Paul siding with Robertson). So it was up to Wilson. Presumably attempting to show even-handedness, he squibbed it by choosing to “abstain”, which, theoretically, would have meant council’s position would be “not support”.
But in this suddenly free-thinking council gathering, one could sense something approximating “dis-ease”. Did council really want to look as if it didn’t mind super trawlers fishing in Australian waters? To cut a long story short, council avoided “not support” by sending an “abstain” position to the LGAT meeting. This is a pathetic position to adopt in relation to a threat that could pose huge dangers to the ocean fisheries of Australia, particularly Tasmania. (On this issue, the writer suffers extreme prejudice.)
The second environment issue was ‘Contamination of waterways’. Northern Midlands Council’s motion is that LGAT lobby the ministers responsible . . . to address the contamination of many of our waterways through heavy metal leachate from past mining operations and to provide an inventory of all such waterways and an action plan to end the contamination.
The HVC staff recommendation for this one was “not support”, which was not surprising really when it is recalled that quite a few years back council abandoned its program of checking the health of its creeks and rivers. Surely that wouldn’t have been because findings, especially around fish farms, became, as one former HVC staffer puts it today, the kind of stuff council didn’t want to know about.
Water quality, food security …
Council’s Healthy Rivers program was believed to have had the enthusiastic support of Mayor Greg Norris, an ex-abalone diver who was always concerned about the quality of the municipality’s waterways. Norris died in office in 2001, It was only a handful of years later that the Healthy Rivers program was rendered inactive. Only Smith expressed disapproval of the recommendation to “not support” the Northern Midlands motion to check the waters.
The ‘food security’ motion, from the Break O‘Day and Northern Midlands councils, was that LGAT request the State Government to review these recommendations: government implement any anticipated increase in the resources for the Food Security Councils; funding for resources and development in the area of food sensitive planning strategies; and consider exploring the idea of a parliamentary secretary for food. Consciousness about food security rarely radiates from most Huon Valley councillors. Only Smith seemed to think the motion worth supporting.
So, in a nutshell: HVC is equivocal about the presence of super trawlers in Australia, and it is not concerned about the health of Tasmanian waterways or food security.
In October, all nine councillor positions and those of mayor and deputy mayor will be up for competition. It is to be hoped that attitudes like these become stuff of the past when the new Huon Valley Council meets in November. — Bob Hawkins
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