Economy
Huon mayor missing in inaction
Huon Valley guessing games
Claytonesque seems the best fit for Mayor Robert Armstrong, MLC these days. Huon Valley Council’s sometime mayor, for the second time in a row, wasn’t there for his council’s monthly public meeting (Wednesday, August 20). Last time, he was visiting his new grandson in Melbourne. This time, he was away in Hobart playing law-maker in the Legislative Council and delivering his maiden speech — neither of which activity can be deemed unreasonable.
What is not reasonable is that Mayor Armstrong promised voters before the last Huon Vally Council mayoral election (October 2011) that he would do a full-time job if elected. That was an assurance voters might well have thought reasonable at the time, especially considering Armstrong had either abandoned — or was about to — his work as a Cygnet real-estate salesman. And, until he began his LegCo election campaign in March this year, no one could reasonably have suggested that he was not putting in the effort expected of a mayor.
Armstrong was to make another election-time promise: in the weeks preceding this year’s May 3 Huon Division LegCo vote, he campaigned on an ‘HONESTY INTEGRITY COMMITMENT’ (his capitals) slogan, and promised to be an “independent” and “full-time Legislative Council member”. And that promise, too, might have been acceptable, but only on the understanding that, reasonably, no one can do two full-time jobs simultaneously.
So, when Robert Armstrong found himself declared a member of the Legislative Council on May 6, one would have thought that, in order to match the promises implicit in his election slogans, he would have immediately stepped down as mayor. That way, he could have safeguarded the integrity of whichever of the virtues (including integrity) that he had campaigned on.
And that way, the ratepayers of the Huon Valley and taxpayers in general would have had a few more thousand dollars to spend on better things than on paying a now very much part-time mayor distracted by what I’m sure he has found to be a huge learning challenge fitting into the arcane duties of the members of the largely useless state institution of which he had just become a member.
It seems the stinging rebuff the voters of his home town, Cygnet, gave him in the May 3 LegCo poll was not enough to persuade him to reconsider the import of his campaign slogans. A huge majority of those who voted at the Cygnet polling station certainly haven’t got the person they would have wanted to represent them in LegCo — of the 1490 first preferences recorded in Cygnet, 1221 (81.9%) were not for Armstrong.
I’ve said it before (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/when-the-mayors-away-a-relaxed-council-plays/), and I say it again: a person who gets elected on a promise of being a full-time mayor and ends up doing a part-time job is unacceptable. Mayor Armstrong, as a consequence of the promises he made, is not doing the job voters might reasonably have expected of him. Yet Armstrong, at the time of writing, is still drawing, at taxpayers’ expense, a mayor’s wage and all the perks that go with that job (car, phone, fuel etc).
Evidence that this is so can be found in HVC’s ordinary meetings minutes of the past few months. For example, his “mayoral report” of official duties submitted to council’s August meeting show that he performed 16 activities in the previous month, whereas a year previously he had performed 27 activities. The corresponding figures for the July 2013 and 2014 meetings were 10 and four. In the minutes of council’s June ordinary meeting, Armstrong’s report showed he had performed only four official duties in the previous month.
At council’s June meeting earlier this year, Armstrong, in response to being asked if he was now doing two full-time jobs — as mayor and LegCo member — dodged the question, answering that he was “working flat out”. Circumstantially, that might well be true. So “flat out” has he been that, in the nearly four months since he became an MLC, he hasn’t got around to filling in his biographical details on the LegCo website. So far, all that is officially known about Armstrong is that he was born on October 1, 1952, and that he was educated at Cygnet Area School. His bio notes show no “employment history” or “civic and community” record, and that he has no “interests”. Now, with his maiden speech behind him, and council duties not getting much attention, he’s sure to find time to get around to filling in those small bio details.
ARMSTRONG’S absence from mayoral duties down here in the Huon Valley must be keeping Deputy Mayor Mike Wilson on his toes (for example, in council’s June minutes, Wilson reported 21 activities in a total of 20 days). Recently, one of Armstrong’s council-controlling ‘Futures Group’ (or whatever it will be calling itself at the council elections in October) was heard to say words to the effect that “Boggles [the mayor’s nickname since school days] is giving us the shits because he won’t make up his mind [about whether he will stand for mayor again]”. At the May council meeting, Armstrong, presumably after obtaining legal advice, said he “could” stand for mayor again; and later, at the June meeting, he said he hadn’t made up his mind.
No one seriously thinks Armstrong will nominate for re-election as councillor and mayor. If he did, and was successful — and then had to choose soon afterwards whether he wanted to continue to be a big fish in the chaos of a small pond (HVC), or a small fish in a largely stagnant big pond (LegCo) — either Parliament or the HVC would soon be facing a fairly heavy by-election cost.
Armstrong’s maiden LegCo speech, not yet in Hansard (as of August 25), found him — by declaring that he would be voting to destroy the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement —aligning himself with the Liberal forces of darkness that want to plunge the state’s unprofitable forestry industry back into the chaos that has dogged it since the 1980s.
I doubt anyone thought he would vote any differently from his upper house Huon Division predecessor, Paul Harriss, who also described himself as a LegCo independent yet then moved into the lower house to become a senior Liberal Party minister. That was a bit out of character for a major political party. People don’t usually get jobs like that without paying their party dues.
Apart from parliamentary formalities, the only reference I can find to Armstrong in Hansard is something Ivan Dean, independent member for Windermere, had to say (Hansard May 6, 2014): “ . . . Congratulations to our new member, Robert Armstrong, on his achievements and on getting his position in this Chamber. With his local government involvement, I am sure he will perform a similar role in this House . . .” Ah, MPs, such masters of ambiguity!
Will Huon Valley Council voters see or hear much more of their mayor of 13 years before the October all out/all in local government elections? An interesting item on council’s “closed” agenda last Wednesday evening was ‘19.016/14 Leave of Absence Request’. Surely this didn’t involve LegCo’s new Huon Division lawmaker? Surely he wasn’t asking to miss yet another meeting — or two?
We’ll have to wait for council’s September public meeting for a clue to what that closed-council item was all about. And even then we might not be any the wiser. The item might not even have been anything to do with Armstrong. It’s just that, here in the Huon Valley, we’re stuck with such a secretive local government authority that we’re likely never to know. — Bob Hawkins