Huon council’s benign dictatorship can’t solve its serious problems … The Payout …

*Pic: Former HVC GM Simone Watson (with ex-Mayor Peter Coad and Peter Gutwein …

SATURDAY November 19 …

• Bob Hawkins in Comments: We seem to be getting off topic: too much theory, not enough action. Here in the Huon Valley, at one extreme we have a general manager — with a $180,000 payout —despatched with the best wishes of the LG Minister-appointed commissioner, and, at the other, the People’s Mayor lumped with a massive legal debt, incurred as a result of a sustained politically motivated attack on his integrity and his determination to improve council’s governance standards. Sounds awfully unfair to me, but not a surprising outcome given the consistently abysmal performance of Tasmania’s ruling classes these past two centuries. If some degree of fairness is to prevail, at least the People’s Mayor should be reimbursed his legal expenses and each of the nine sacked councillors should be awarded at least a year’s salary plus their entitlements.

WEDNESDAY November 16

• ABC: Huon Valley Council general manager paid out $180k after contract cut short

• Geoffrey Swan in Comments: HVRRA could be a good start … some 80 odd locals turned up on Tuesday night, some of the questions could have been answered if they had attended any of the previous HVC Council meetings.. or as someone stated if the Huon News got back into it’s old practice of reporting on the meetings by having a journo at each meeting and providing a summary.
However I am personally not convinced at all about the Huon Citizens Council … …

EARLIER …

*Pic: of Adriana Taylor, from Glenorchy Community Fund, HERE

Huon council’s benign dictatorship can’t solve its serious problems

Huon Valley Guessing Games

Superficially, the Huon Valley Council dictatorship, possibly deceptively, looks benign, and a municipality-wide charm-fest is proceeding with verve.

In the three weeks since former Glenorchy mayor and ex-MLC Adriana Taylor — at the invitation of Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein — became the embodiment of the nine sacked councillors, valley dwellers have been treated to a vigorous display of sweetness and light — and, I fear, maybe a tad too much hope.

So far, Commissioner Taylor is proving most impressive. She speaks in sentences that everyone can understand. She exudes confidence. She presides with aplomb. She is totally approachable. And she says she has done a lot of reading.

All of the pitiful few in the public gallery for her first public council meeting last Wednesday (October 26) seemed to approve the no-nonsense way in which she whisked through the agenda — oddly headed “Notice of meeting to Councillors” — in not much more than half-an-hour. The gallery of 15 included two local journalists and three ex-councillors — Bruce Heron, Liz Smith and Mike Wilson. It was a pathetic public turnout for such an historic meeting —Tasmania’s first since the local government amalgamations of 1993 of a council that had been sacked.

That the meeting was poorly advertised, and that many valley residents expressed surprise that there were even going to be council meetings now that it no longer had councillors to indulge in their largely zombie-like (or non-existent) debates, could not have been the only reasons for the sparse turn-up. Political apathy in general and widespread lack of interest in local government in particular are among more likely explanations.

THE OCTOBER 26 HVC meeting was its first since dilly-dallying Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein finally got around (October 6) to sacking the councillors that he, I think misguidedly, seems to have believed were the root cause of what had been obvious to many for years: that the council was (remains?) truly dysfunctional.

(I’m sure Gutwein will eventually be persuaded — if he doesn’t already privately think so — that the haplessness of the councillor situation was only a minor, yet significant, part of the real cause of the dysfunction.)

From the mayor’s seat, Taylor — who is to be paid about $200,000 for a year’s work for her job as “commissioner” (that’s the word the Local Government Act uses) — told the meeting that she had read both the Gutwein Board of Inquiry report into the affairs of council as well as the submissions from council including the still sort-of-secret Page Seager report.

(I’m hoping at least one of the nine sacked councillors, each of whom has a copy of the PS report, will recognise that it is their duty to the people who elected them to take courage and put out their copy for public consumption. Better still, General Manager Simone Watson might change her mind and reveal why council management felt it necessary to spend $54,000 of public money commissioning a legal firm to discredit the findings and recommendations of two dedicated and independent public servants who spent seven months diligently investigating the affairs of HVC at the direction of Minister Gutwein.)

At the October 26 council meeting, Taylor appeared competent and forthright, and looked every bit the very good chairperson her years of public service at local government and state level have made her.

But, considering she herself has declared that the council is “in administration”, I have yet to spot anything among what we have been told of her CV that indicates she has the qualities and experience required of an “administrator” that should be tackling the monumental task of investigating very serious, and complex, issues.

THE MOST time-consuming item on last Wednesday’s agenda was Public Question Time, which ran its allocated 15 minutes.

In that session were a couple of questions that, indirectly, challenged the competence of HVC management to do its job in a community-empathetic and satisfactorily responsive manner.

The most telling question dealt with an issue that would be laughable if it were not so seriously representative of the seemingly never-ending disconnect between council and the people it serves.

It seems Liz Smith (then still a councillor) had been issued with what cannot be considered anything less than an implied threat that she could be imprisoned for a parking offence.

Smith, on October 2, having dashed from one meeting to another since 9am, and running late for another council meeting, chose to leave her car in the mayor’s allocated parking spot. Whoosh! In came council’s parking police and she copped a $70 fine.

This, verbatim, is what Smith said in Public Question Time:

“My question is to ask why I have not received a reply to correspondence to the General Manager dated October 2? On September 6, I was required to chair a council advisory committee at 2pm, and attend a council workshop at 4pm. This was after two other meetings — one at 9am in Hobart, another at 1pm in Cygnet. Therefore, I was potentially late for the advisory committee I was to chair. I knew that the mayor was in Launceston that day, so I parked in his reserved space. I got a parking infringement notice.

“On October 2, I emailed the General Manager, informing her of my reasons for parking there, and, as advised in the notice, requesting she withdraw the infringement notice. I received no acknowledgement, and, on my return from the mainland last Friday (October 20), I found a “First and Final Notice” from the council (dated October 12) informing me that “failure to pay may result in enforcement action being taken which may include at the Director’s discretion, seizure of property, suspension of drivers’ licences and vehicle registration, community service orders, publication of offenders names and imprisonment. [The “director” referred to is the “Director of Monetary Penalties Enforcement”.]

“I have been unable to find the [HVC] Customer Service Charter online, and my question is whether this correspondence is consistent with Council’s Strategic Plan, Goal 5.3, to “ensure that all internal and external customers receive a highly professional, courteous and effective customer service experience.”

This writer has not yet run foul of a valley parking officer, but I can imagine that a threat of imprisonment for failing to pay a $70 parking fine could frighten the wits out of someone not familiar with the kind of terror tactics bureaucrats all across Australia resort to these days. I don’t think Smith was seriously concerned that she might end up behind bars, but . . .

Smith’s experience reminded me of a couple of things.

First, right hands and left hands at HVC HQ often seem to have no idea what the others are doing. The Smith parking affair looks like another instance.

Second, I got to wondering if then-councillor Mike Wilson got a ticket a year or so ago when his car (complete with election-mode campaign photograph) was parked in the mayor’s spot (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/huon-waits-on-the-real-umpires-call/show_comments#comments).

Perhaps Wilson would like to tell us whether he, too, copped a $70 fine; whether he, too, received council management’s threatening letter; or whether, if he did in fact receive an infringement notice, it was withdrawn.

OK, I know it was only a pro-forma letter that Smith received. But why such heavy-handedness? As trivial as this issue might seem, it would be appropriate for Commissioner Taylor to carefully examine the full facts of not just Smith’s case, but also of Wilson’s vehicle being parked in the mayor’s spot.

At the same time, Taylor might inquire as to why council’s internal communications system was not capable of instantly short-circuiting the possibility of such an unnecessary and unpleasant occurrence?

Letters such as Smith received should never be sent to anyone who infringes parking rules. It’s little wonder there is so much whingeing by regulation critics when such alarmist and threatening junk is being sent to the public. Let’s hope the GM acts quickly to put an end to this absurdly bad joke.

The rawness of the facts presented by Smith served yet again to demonstrate just why HVC management doesn’t seem to have a clue as to how to behave towards the people — the general public — who pay bureaucrats’ wages, and whom they are supposed to serve.

MY OCTOBER 26 question related to two questions I had asked at the September 28 meeting, the last at which there were elected councillors around the table. When I said I believed there were inaccuracies in the minutes of that September 28 meeting, Commissioner Taylor said the audio of the meeting would be checked.

The more important part of my question was about the state of HVC’s Human Resources Unit, which some outsiders with inside knowledge allege to be in crisis.

At the September 28 meeting, I asked the General Manager this question: “Is it true that a tenth HR employee, in LESS THAN THREE YEARS [my emphasis], has just left council employment?”

The GM took my question “on notice”.

The September 28 draft minutes, tabled for adoption at the October 26 meeting, rendered my question and the GM’s response this way: “Is it true that a tenth member of the HR department has left Council’s employment in a THREE YEAR PERIOD [my emphasis]? 
General Manager advised that the question will be taken on notice.” 


In my October 26 question, after quoting my HR question of September 28, I continued: “The draft minutes state that the ‘General Manager advised that the question will be taken on notice’. Four weeks later, I am still awaiting the GM’s reply. How long does a ratepayer have to wait for a simple answer to a simple question? Or does the GM’s failure to answer my question suggest council has serious problems with the stability of its Human Resources department?”

Next day (October 27), I received this letter by email from the General Manager via her executive assistant:

“Thank you for your public question at the Council meeting recently. It is incorrect that 10 people have left the Huon Resources Unit in the LAST TWO years [my emphasis]. There have been 6 resignations over the last 2 years for a variety of reasons. Employment relationships may have also ended in this period due to other reasons such as the end of a fixed term contract, unsuccessful probation period or similar matters. Generally speaking reasons for resignations vary for people and include individual circumstances such as family commitments or illness, desire for career advancement and opportunities for higher salaried positions, particularly fly in, fly out arrangements. As you will appreciate detailed information in relation to the particular circumstances surrounding any employee’s cessation of employment is a private matter and I am unable to provide you with any personal information of this nature. Regards, Simone Watson, General Manager.”

My October 28 email response to GM Watson’s letter, via her executive assistant, read:

“Thank you for forwarding to me General Manager S. Watson’s letter of October 27, 2016. Would you please inform Ms Watson that her letter does not answer the question I asked. I suggest she listens again to the audios of both the September 28, 2016, and October 26, 2016, meetings of HVC, and then make another attempt to answer my question. I am hoping Ms Watson’s error in failing to answer my question was purely accidental. I note her letter does not specify when my question was asked. Does she not recall that it was asked at a public ordinary meeting of HVC on September 28? Regards, Bob Hawkins.”

GM Watson responded to this letter on Monday afternoon (October 31):

“The question that I had taken on notice is ‘Is it true that a tenth HR, human resources, employee in less than three years has just left Council employment?’ The answer to that question is as provided in my letter of 27 October 2016 and that is that it is not true that a tenth human resources employee has left Council employment in the last two years. This statement is also the case for the last three years. My correspondence then went on to provide you with additional details with respect to the number of resignations which is information additional to the question posed. I have no other question taken on notice. If you would like to raise any additional matters, or if I have misunderstood your question, then please provide details of this so that it may be attended to.”

This time Watson had my question right: I had referred to “less than three years”, not the “last two years”.

I have in my possession information, which I regard as reliable, that contradicts the figures in Watson’s letters. I am intrigued by the discrepancies.

THE MORNING after the October 26 council meeting, I got around to reading HVC’s draft “Annual Report 2015-16” (included in the council’s meeting documents). That was when I noticed something that I’m sure has not happened since the council was established in 1993 — there was no message “From the Mayor”.

Huon Valley Council certainly had a mayor throughout the 2015-16 financial year in the form of the popularly elected Peter Coad. So, why no message? I’m sure all will soon become clear, but I’m not waiting for the answer. Possibly Coad was asked to put his name to a passage of spin authored by HVC’s costly media. I could be wrong, but, if that is the case, I don’t think it would be the first time Coad resisted putting his name to PR waffle.

Perhaps GM Watson, who, of course, is responsible for production of the annual report, has an explanation of the omission of a mayor’s message in the draft. Certainly there should be one by the time the annual report is presented to the AGM.

The draft 2015-16 annual report is punctuated by the usual amount of vacuous platitudes that one expects of such documents. Two in particular cause me to smile:

“Our mission is to work in partnership with the community and other stakeholders to improve the quality of life for the people in the Huon Valley, by investing in a dynamic, sustainable and equitable future”; and (under ‘Our Values’) “In all our dealings we will be open, fair and honest; respect our people, land and culture; embrace diversity and new ideas; pursue community cohesion.”

I haven’t seen much of that kind of sentiment delivered in eight years of monitoring HVC’s behaviour. However, if the way in which Commissioner Taylor is tackling her job — by getting in touch with the grassroots of the community and inviting everyone to speak up — is maintained, and turned into action, there is a possibility that such “values” could become reality.

I’M TOLD Taylor’s visit to the Living Boat Centre, Franklin was favourably received. And I watched her in action at the October 27 TCA (The Cygnet Association) bash at Cygnet’s Red Velvet Lounge. Very impressive.

I trust she is on more than just a charm offensive designed to divert community attention from much more serious matters relating to council that can only be properly investigated by Minister Gutwein and his Local Government Division.

It is to be hoped that her period in charge of HVC is the beginning of an awakening that encourages the community to believe that all of council’s services really are in the interests of the great majority of valley people.

An interesting observation by Taylor at the RVL was that the council is in “administration”. Unfortunately, the Local Government Act 1993 doesn’t stipulate that the LG minister must appoint an “administrator”. Rather, it says it must be a “commissioner”.

Commissioner Taylor’s background — local government and Legislative Council — equips her well for chairperson duties and keeping an eye on council management’s behaviour and valley affairs in general.

But does she have the administrative skills that would enable her to get down to the forensics that I believe are required to fossick exhaustively back through HVC’s files maybe five years, 10 years, 20 . . . ? Say, for example, to analyse the records of the seven or eight credit cards that I am reliably informed have been in use at HVC in recent years, rather than just the two cards — those of the previous mayor and the GM — whose contents were, after strong resistance, reluctantly revealed a few months back? Perhaps GM Watson would clarify just how many credit cards have been used by HVC these past several years.

More serious matters that were brought to the attention of the Gutwein board of inquiry — whose findings and recommendations were largely ignored by the minister in favour of the much-talked-about but little-seen Page Seager report, which attempted to turn on their heads the management-critical aspects of the BoI report — are probably outside of Commissioner Taylor’s riding orders. It is to be hoped Gutwein’s acting director of LG has those investigations well in hand.

ALL OF the shemozzle that HVC has been these past two years could have been avoided had Mike Wilson’s Heart of the Huon controlling block, and council’s management, welcomed the people’s choice for mayor and allowed him to get on with his main task — as chairperson of a board of councillors — instead of subjecting him to two years of sporadic isolation and veiled abuse.

As I perceive it, Peter Coad was frozen out from his first day in office in November 2014 — and he remained in that hopeless position ever after. I would guess that the more he saw of the inside workings of council the more he asked questions. And that must have been very irritating for a regime set in its ways for more than two decades, and which probably had rarely, if ever, had to field a penetrating inquiry from Coad’s predecessor, now-MLC Robert Armstrong.

What was it that was so frightening to the old brigade? The mayor’s “opposition” group, if indeed it ever existed, comprised a decidedly un-green conservative (Coad), a Tasmanian Greens (Ian Mackintosh), and a former Greens independent councillor (Liz Smith). As a minority, it had little chance ever to prevent the Heart bloc from calling the shots on any motion.

Anyone today who analyses the voting patterns at HVC over the past two years, will almost certainly find that more than 95% of all votes were unanimous; and about 99% of those that were not unanimous were won by the Heart of the Huon bloc.

From the word go, Wilson’s Heart political group acted as if they weren’t going to have a bar of anyone chosen by the people that did not suit them. With hindsight, one might reasonably conclude that the Heart have spent the past two years, possibly unwittingly, fomenting the circumstances that finally led to Gutwein doing exactly what he never wanted to do — sacking the lot of them.

The wording of an October letter from Gutwein — to an irate valley resident who had warned that they would never vote for the Liberal Party again because the LG minister had treated Coad so unreasonably and had asked him to stand down as mayor — was more noticeable for what it didn’t say than what it did.

Gutwein wrote: “The Premier has requested that I respond to you on behalf of the Tasmanian Government . . . One of the major challenges for Commissioner Taylor will be to restore stability to the area and harness the goodwill and diversity within the community, and in this way help move the Huon Valley to a prosperous and vibrant future . . .”

No mention anywhere in Gutwein’s letter that very serious allegations had been made during the seven-month BoI inquiry; or that none of them, as far as the public knows, had yet been, or were being, seriously subjected to scrutiny by relevant authorities.

SINCE TAYLOR was appointed, two nascent organisations have come onto the scene. From, it seems, Geeveston, heartland of the clearfell-forestry lobby, has come a Huon Citizens Council “non-profit trust” (http://www.huoncitizenscouncil.com/index2.html). It appears to be the creation of one Petar Johnson (aka Petar Ivanovski), who says he has two properties in the Huon. Johnson has communicated with valley residents by phone, and visited Huon FM’s studio in Geeveston. But no one seems able to get a handle on exactly who he is, what his links are within the valley, and what it is that motivates him. It would be helpful to get HCC into context if someone has reliable information as to his identity.

HCC’s professionally designed website, which doesn’t say anything much of substance, has this ‘Purpose and Aspiration’:

“The Huon Citizens Council was created in response to the current Huon Valley Council crisis resulting in the standing down of the elected council members and the appointment of a State Government Administrator for a minimum of 12 months commencing in October 2016. Noting enormous dissatisfaction of the Huon community to the quality of leadership and governance during the previous period the Citizens Council was formed to uncover the issues of concern of the community and to properly advocate their resolution. The Huon Citizens Council has made a commitment to independently participate in the reform process. The Trustee is not connected with and has not given any donation to previous Councillors nor holds any equity or commercial relationship with major businesses in the Huon region. The appointment of a Commissioner allows an opportunity to reform Council policy while enhancing community support and engagement for the betterment of the District. It is our aspiration that the Huon Citizens Council can independently facilitate, advocate and consolidate residents vision for the sustainable development of the Huon and work with the Commissioner and her staff to accelerate the required reform. Along this process we hope to undertake projects and events which allow the Huon spirit to again resurface leading to a better and stronger sustainable community orientated Council.’

High-flown words. Impressive to those vulnerable to spin. Johnson will probably tell us more about himself when HCC’s first general public meeting (set for November 25) is held in Geeveston.

In the meantime, Johnson might decide to place a caption beneath the photograph on the first page of his HCC website (I’d be interested to know when and where that picture was taken); and to explain how he is so sure that the people of the Huon want nothing to do with talk of council amalgamations.

Seems he is unaware of increasing, less than frivolous, conversations in the Cygnet region about possible secession and inclusion in the Kingborough municipality.

Over on the east side of the Huon, at Cygnet, Pat Synge and Sylvia Merope have inspired the establishment of the Huon Valley Residents and Ratepayers Association Inc (HVRRA).

The association, like HCC, has lofty ideals in its constitution:

(a) Monitoring and promoting good governance of the Huon Valley municipality

(g) Advocating on behalf of residents and ratepayers with HVC when deemed appropriate by the committee

HVRRA, which is in the process of assessing its level of community support, is understood to be seeking an early meeting with Commissioner Taylor.

A SIDELIGHT to mainstream council developments is a growing debate about whether the people or the councillors should decide who should be mayor of the next council, in whatever form the State Government decides it should be.

In an era of receding democracy, it would be a travesty to allow councillors to appoint mayors. That way, the ruling clique on any council would forever prevail in all aspects of the council’s conduct, such as, when a serious matter was brought to HVC’s attention, that matter could not be considered by its audit committee without approval of the full council.

Why should the majority group of councillors be able to choose the mayor? After all, she/he is only a chairperson. What is important is that each issue before a council is considered by nine (or however many) councillors, and the majority vote should decide its resolution/fate. If a council is made up of the people’s representatives of honest, disinterested intent, it shouldn’t matter which side the mayor is on.

However, if the State Parliament does decide that the people should be denied the right to choose their mayor, perhaps the next best thing would be for a council to have to change its mayor, say, every two years.

That way, each councillor would get a turn at the top job; and no councillor would be entitled to be mayor for a second time until at least every other councillor had had the opportunity to be mayor. That way, there would be a degree of confidence out in the community that no mayor was getting too close to management — and vice versa.

MEANWHILE, back to the moment. Though, quite reasonably, Commissioner Taylor might have a chauffeur to drive her around our sizeable municipality, it might be better — as she presses on with her getting-to-know-you meetings — for her to travel solo. When Big Brother (or Big Sister) is not around, it’s amazing how much more freely people are willing to speak their minds. — Bob Hawkins

*Bob Hawkins has been covering Huon Valley Council for Tasmanian Times since early 2009. He is a long-time friend of former councillor Liz Smith, and an admirer of People’s Mayor Coad for doggedly trying to bring reason to a dysfunctional council.

• Pat Synge in Comments: … HVRRA is holding a public meeting in Huonville Town Hall at 7pm on Tuesday, 15th November. … If you want to know more about HVRRA go to www.hvrra.weebly.com

• Bob Hawkins in Comments: Now that the decks have been cleared, it is to be hoped that Commissioner Taylor will put her mind to sifting through the many allegations contained in the 80 or so submissions made last year to Gutwein’s Board of Inquiry into the affairs of Huon Valley Council. Though the BoI tended to tread lightly with them, serious issues were raised and, it is to be hoped, as an elected parliamentarian in an alleged democracy, Gutwein has instructed his appointee to get to the bottom of those allegations. If he has not, he is failing in his responsibility as a minister. My understanding is that some allegations, should they prove to have substance, should end up in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions, or with other statutory bodies, for careful examination. I would like to think that this has already happened, but I’m not holding my breath.