Express train of limited public whistle stop tours!

Heading west – Queenstown 1 Feb 2023

Entire north coast – Ulverstone 2 Feb 2023

Deep south – Kingston 6 Feb 2023

Early east coast – Sorell 7 Feb 2023

Last week the Director of Local Government and the Board hopped on their whistle stop tour into the far flung corners of this great state.

Ostensibly the aim is to consult and perhaps to find the answers regarding the potential pathways to reform Tasmania’s broken local government sector. “All aboard free tickets with dinner at every venue for the public.” Still, only a handful of the public turned out.

For the public along the entire north coast the one whistle stop was at the Gnomon Pavilion in Ulverstone. At this even the Chair and her friends plus the current Deputy Mayors of Central Coast and Latrobe Councils, several council employees join the rest of the local government review board plus Director and Staff.

A dozen independent members of the public attended out of a total of 32. Beside a staff member I don’t believe there was anyone less than fifty years of age there.

The opening introduction saw motherhood statements being made by board members and the director like “the voice of the community must be heard” and “it’s time the government put their big boy pants on.”

The two round-tabled discussions of five tables centred on three potential pathways.

  1. Significant (mandated) sharing and consolidation of services.
  2. Boundary consolidation to achieve fewer, larger councils.
  3. A ‘hybrid model’ combining both targeted sharing of services and targeted boundary consolidation.

What was abundantly clear from the start and remained so at the close is that this local government review board – with the majority of its members having steered local government to where we all sit with it today – has literally no idea how to fix it.

They shut some of the public down when they disagreed with the board. They physically showed signs of disrespect to those voicing a different view on how to move forward with local government for the next generations.

The ratio of one public person representing 10,000 Tasmanian individuals on this limited stops whistle tour at each stop for the future of local government means it has no real standing. They must call for much more public input and seriously look at those reviewing local government, because most of those now doing this job were driving the train for the last thirty years and now have no real idea on how to stop this train wreck we call local government in Tasmania.

The Chair of the Board called it ‘an inquiry’. She said: “If at the end of this process in June 2023 the state government shelves this, I will be very disappointed in them”.

The control around the five tables saw the board members and the director become the spokesperson for the tables. There were some moments of clarity which saw comments such as “the code of conduct is broken” and “the Local Government Act should be re-written for the future”.

The chair reinforced that there was a deadline on this process of June 2023. All should fear that the end result of this process, due to the pressure and the real lack of a serious way forward will only set us back in our third tier of government until there is much wider and greater public involvement and serious commitment to change for the better.

Our Tasmanian communities deserve better from our state government. They should not just back everything on what seems like the winning ticket for the next state election … yet turns out to be the ticket on the local government train wreck we all saw coming as the decrepit locomotive on its rickety tracks hove into view.

The irony of the night saw the Director state that he paid LGAT, which is made up of council members, to conduct a workforce culture review basically on themselves through a contracted law firm. That’s how ingrained the culture of local government incompetence is and has been for a long time.

Possibly the only way out is to sack them all and start again from scratch.

James Redgrave is a former military serviceperson and private investigator who takes an interest in local government matters in Tasmania.