The Examiner's Joe Colbrook and Aaron Smith discuss local government news from north-east Tasmania for April 2025.
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00:00Hello and welcome to the April edition of the Examiners Council Chat Podcast.
00:04I'm Launceston Council Reporter Joe Colbrook and this is Regional Council Reporter Aaron Smith.
00:10Happy Good Friday to you Aaron and it's nice to see you've taken the Casual Friday memo seriously.
00:15Absolutely. Can't be casual on Casual Friday, suit and tie as usual.
00:18Yes. Now Aaron, I think you're going to start us off with some news happening at Dorset Council.
00:23Absolutely. So we've had a pretty major shake-up at Dorset following an 18-month suspension.
00:28As you may know, basically all councils were taken off the council back in August 2023.
00:35So a board of inquiry could be undertaken that was investigating these widespread allegations of statutory non-compliance,
00:42some abuse of councillors and council staff, things like that.
00:47And the sitting mayor at the time didn't really fulfil the mayor position during the suspension
00:54and then resigned in late January of this year.
00:57So they had to host a new election, a by-election, and we've got now Rhys Beattie is the new mayor of Dorset.
01:03And the interesting thing about Rhys is that he hasn't been a councillor before.
01:08This is his first time he's ever stood in an election and he's coming in fresh, essentially.
01:12Yeah, and he looks to be a bit on the younger side too.
01:15So he's 36, so he's about the same age as Matthew Garwood, incidentally.
01:18Yeah, and also followed a similar trajectory almost to the mayoralty, really.
01:23I mean, Matthew Garwood, first-time councillor and now first-time mayor.
01:26You don't see that many instances of this kind of thing happening.
01:29Like you see where Wes Tamar's mayor, Christina Holndale, Northern Midlands, Mary Knowles,
01:34they both saw their councils for a very long time before getting into the mayor's position.
01:39But there are exceptions to the role.
01:40Like you take Meander Valley, where Wayne Johnston directly was appointed into the role in 2018.
01:46And for Georgetown, Greg Kieser, their mayor there, I think was less than a year after he was elected as a councillor that he became mayor.
01:52So it's not without precedent necessarily, but for a councillor to be coming in directly, you know, with no prior experience,
01:58he's definitely going to have to, I think, rely on some of the more experienced members on that council,
02:03which is, you know, what he told me in an interview as well.
02:04Yeah, yeah, I mean, young mares seem to be all the rage these days.
02:08Yeah, absolutely.
02:08We'll have to see how he goes until the next election, which is only a year away.
02:12Gosh, don't tell me that.
02:15But he has currently, anyway, full intent of recontesting it and having another go at it.
02:21And while we're on DORSA, I'll quickly move on to a nearly $500,000 grant that the council has received from the federal government.
02:28This is basically to promote women and girls to participate in sport across the Northeast.
02:34And this is from a $200 million Play Our Way program.
02:37So the council is using this to construct, sorry, refurbish three of their existing courts in Derby, Bridport and Scottsdale.
02:45And they'll also be constructing a new court, a third one in Scottsdale as well, on top of the existing two.
02:50So the total amount is $499,946.
02:56And it makes you think, why couldn't they just give them $500,000?
02:59But, you know, it's a significant grant, especially for a council of this size.
03:02Yes, yes.
03:03And in sporting infrastructure news, Launceston councillors have finally given the green light to the second stage of upgrades at York Park, otherwise known as UTAS Stadium.
03:16Now, this project has been held up since 2024 due to some concerns over a Dutch elm tree that's been at the site for about 80 years,
03:26but also was smack bang in the middle where some new stands were set to be built.
03:32Obviously, when it came before council in 2024, the councillors were at loggerheads.
03:36And so the development application was essentially paused and then withdrawn.
03:41When it came back to the council April this year, it included some conditions on reusing the wood at the site.
03:49So I guess the spirit of the tree is still kept, as well as some conditions around memorialising the tree with some photographs.
03:57And all councillors present at the meeting voted for this development application,
04:02including Tim Walker, who is a, well, still is an advocate for transplanting the tree,
04:07but didn't want to let that get in the way of the stadium build.
04:10Hmm. Interesting to see quite a heavy month for tree news when it comes to councils.
04:14Obviously, you had your Bunya Pine Saga on Charles Street quite recently as well.
04:18Yes, yes. I mean, probably a good time for the councils to rebrand as logging businesses, perhaps.
04:25And on the note of things hanging over from 2024, at the start of last year,
04:30the councils committees were placed into recess and then slowly phased back in through the year.
04:37This was due to an ongoing review of the council committee structure.
04:41I mean, before this review, Launceston Council had 17 different committees run by the council.
04:47A couple of these, like the audit panel and the emergency management committee, are statutory committees.
04:52But the remainder covered all sorts of things.
04:56And now seven of these are going to be dissolved.
04:59These are the Cataract Gorge Advisory Committee, the Launceston Access Advisory Committee,
05:04which deals with disability access, among other things.
05:07The Launceston City Heart Reference Group, the Sister City Committee, the Tender Review Committee,
05:13and the Transport Committee.
05:15The press release released by the council to discuss this was full of all the typical buzzwords.
05:22You know, we had dynamic and responsive, agile, streamlined.
05:26But the gist of the review's findings were that a lot of the functions that the committees had,
05:34like when they initially started, have been absorbed or replaced by other parts of the council.
05:39But it's also key to note that this isn't necessarily the end for a lot of these groups and that sort of thing.
05:46Both Alan Harris and our good friend, Councillor Tim Walker,
05:49hinted at some of these committees being brought back under some new guises,
05:54potentially as perhaps having a wider remit.
05:57And we'll move straight on to some pretty major coalition promises.
06:01The party's been out in force in the regions over the past couple of weeks
06:04to promise a load of funding for both, first of all, Breaker Day and then Meander Valley afterwards.
06:10Right, yeah, both in the Lions electorate.
06:12Yes, that's been Susie Bower, their candidate there.
06:15So they started on April 7th with $4.3 million for Georgia's Bay Foreshore Track,
06:21which has been a long-term project of the Breaker Day Council.
06:24Since the early 1990s, they started laying the track along there.
06:27Gosh, that's a long time.
06:27Yeah.
06:28So this funding that they're promising if they're elected is going to cover the final seven-kilometre stretch
06:34and basically complete the track after a span of, what, over 30 years.
06:38Yeah.
06:39And the Breaker Day Mayor, Nick Tucker, welcomed this funding.
06:43He said it was being great for the community, but encouraged Labour to promise the same amount
06:47so the council can have assurance that it can go forward into the election regardless who wins,
06:51that they'll be able to finish this project after being on the hook for so long.
06:54Yeah, yeah.
06:55And it does make you think that, you know, when I started here at the Examiner more than a year ago,
06:59this was one of the first stories I covered was them calling for funding from the state election.
07:03So, you know, if it doesn't happen, doesn't, you know, come to fruition,
07:07they might be on the hook again for the next one after that.
07:09Yeah.
07:09And in keeping with that theme, I think one of the first stories I did
07:13when I started covering the Launceston Council was budget time.
07:18And obviously, the City of Launceston Council has released its draft budget
07:22for next financial year for public consultation.
07:25I mean, with all of these things, it's easy to say that it's a balancing act
07:29between keeping the level of service the same or even improving those
07:34while also ensuring that it's affordable for ratepayers to keep paying their rates.
07:39However, the 6.7% rates increase proposed in this draft budget is the highest in Launceston
07:47for quite some time and quite a bit above inflation.
07:51However, if you actually take a bit more of a long-term view, you see that Launceston Council
07:55rate rises haven't exactly matched the rate of inflation.
07:59It's also important to note that this is still out for community consultation.
08:03So if you don't like the idea of paying 6.7% more for your property rates,
08:08make sure you let the Council know.
08:10Great wrap up, Joe.
08:11Well, that's all we have for you this month on the Examiners Council chat.
08:14We'll see you next month for the next edition.
08:16See you then.