The Examiner's Joe Colbrook and Aaron Smith discuss major council news from across north-east Tasmania for January 2025.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to the first edition of The Examiner's Council Chat. I am Aaron
00:04and this is Joe and we're going to be talking about all the council news from
00:08North East Tasmania over the past month. I'll of course be covering all the
00:12regional councils and Joe will be covering Onsestone or whatever that
00:16town's called. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's Launceston. Yeah no one really cares
00:22about it personally but yeah it's just the secondary council reporter. Speak for yourself.
00:26But this month we're going to start with some very very big news from Launceston
00:30and that is pertaining to Danny Gibson. Tell us about it Joe. Yes well the former mayor and
00:36still current councillor Danny Gibson, we found out that a risk assessment of his working with
00:43vulnerable people's card returned a negative result that basically he's too much of a risk
00:49and that's on some alleged historical behavior. Being a justice department risk assessment
00:57it was based on the balance of probabilities so not beyond reasonable doubt like in a court but
01:03still credible enough for the registrar to have concerns and in the course of this we also found
01:09out he was paid well the council paid on his behalf nearly fourteen thousand dollars of rate
01:16payers funds for legal advice and external public relations advice which he's now been asked to pay
01:21back and it's not Launceston that's the only place that's well had some controversy over misuse of
01:29ratepayer funds. Yeah absolutely the northern midlands has right walked into a really really
01:33big scandal over recent months that has been brought to a head most recently in their January
01:38meeting where Councillor Andrew McCulloch called on Mayor Mary Knowles, Deputy Mayor Jack Lambert
01:43and the General Manager Desi Jennings all to step down all in the one meeting as you can imagine
01:47that was a bit of a nightmare as far as the council discussion goes. This follows a pretty major
01:54decision from the Supreme Court of Tasmania late last year where the Mayor and General Manager were
01:59ordered to repay a load of council monies that had been used to fund the defamation case against
02:04Andrew McCulloch. They had made a decision in closed council or it was open council they
02:10had destroyed the audio from it basically to fund that through the council itself whereas later on
02:17the Supreme Court Justice said definitely shouldn't be doing that it was illegal and arguably corrupt
02:22conduct basically so a pretty big scandal on their hands. And that dates back to before Andrew
02:28McCulloch was an actual councillor right it was one of those things where there's all these legal
02:32battles happening in the backgrounds and then he gets elected to the council. It's over largely
02:38Facebook posts and emails I think he sent around 2019 and 2020 so they're in this process of suing
02:44this ratepayer at that stage yeah and then he gets elected onto the council I think in large part
02:48because he's kind of stirred up all this this issue basically yeah and I think a lot of ratepayers do
02:54respect him for that and do see what he's advocating for as a serious serious issue
02:59but yeah the figure that was initially stated to be $25,000 for Mary Knowles and Desi Jennings to
03:05repay and that's since climbed significantly. $135,000 is currently the public number. I have
03:12heard figures significantly higher than that again which I'm not entirely sure are accurate at this
03:16stage but yeah point being he basically called on them all to pretty much resign to refill the council
03:24as you can imagine they did not want to do that. He has a supporter in Councillor Terrett and
03:31Councillor Brooks seems a bit more neutral on the matter but the majority of the councillors are all
03:35kind of knocking it back and I think inadvertently he thinks that it makes them look more guilty than
03:40they actually are. Yeah yeah and I mean speaking of resignations tell us what's happening at Dorset
03:47Council. Where do we start with Dorset? So that's basically a case where the council has been
03:53suspended for 18 months pretty much. That was all for a board of inquiry investigation over
03:58quote-unquote widespread statutory non-compliance. Yeah which is a fairly high threshold as I
04:04understand it's why some of these other issues that we've discussed may not well I understand
04:10won't trigger any sort of state government investigation at this stage unless it was
04:15revealed that there was far more stuff happening behind the scenes. This was to do with both
04:20councillors I think the mayor especially and also staff members so it took quite a while to deliver
04:26this report. The Tasmanian Labor opposition were calling for it to be coming out earlier this month
04:32saying it was long overdue. And that was also extended I'm pretty sure the investigation ran
04:38longer than originally planned and with good reason by the looks of it. Yeah the state government's
04:43defended how long it's taken saying that it was needed for the amount of evidence that's come up
04:47especially things that have arisen since they started the investigation. But yeah that was
04:51delivered and the councillors I think some of the staff as well were given online training modules.
04:57The one here I've got is learn to lead in local government and stuff like that. I spoke to the
05:03now former mayor very briefly who said that the minister could get stuffed with his training
05:08and he resigned back in August 2023 has no intention of returning and if you look at the
05:12Dorset webpage now he is not listed on the councillor's page. The other ones are all there
05:17but he told me that there's several who have already resigned as well so they're going to have
05:21to be looking to elect some new members pretty soon. Yeah yeah always always fun and I'm sure
05:28you'll be keeping track of these developing stories. Absolutely. Speaking of development
05:34Launceston council met for the first time on January 23 this year. Main thing in the development
05:41space was the state government's moving ahead with its plans to build a new mental health precinct
05:47near the Launceston General Hospital. They'd applied for and received permission to demolish
05:54this 1860s built, well it used to be a house, it's now the current mental health facility at
06:01Franklin Street. It was heritage listed but then taken off the heritage register and that's because
06:07well in the planning documents they basically said there's no real should we say historic
06:13significance like it's not tied to any particular notable people or events and
06:18apart from being an old building they would say it's not heritage as such and I mean most of our
06:25Launceston councillors were fairly neutral about the whole matter but Tim Walker really
06:31well spoke at length about the thing. He basically said the building had been allowed to fall into
06:41disrepair by the state government and if it was a private developer people would be
06:46treating it with some suspicion and also felt as though the councillors themselves despite workshops
06:52and other forms of engagement he felt like councillors were being left out of the whole
06:57development process around the hospital like he was advocating for something like a steering
07:01committee which we didn't see with the Utah's redevelopment. It's surprising to see it heritage
07:06listed and then that be taken away from it. I feel like you don't see that very often with many
07:09developments. Yeah I mean I can't think of anything else that I've seen where something
07:15has been listed and then not listed. I mean a lot of the time we see these issues crop up it's when
07:19something just hasn't been heritage listed like the James Nelson factory over at Mowbray which is
07:26now being raised to the ground to make way for a McDonald's and some storage sheds which
07:32is a bit inauspicious for a building design like that but that's the way it goes sometimes.
07:38Wasn't the only major development we've seen in recent weeks. Meander Valley had
07:42proved quite a controversial application just a couple weeks ago now. Controversial why?
07:48Well it's around Westbury which there has not been a subdivision in that town that has not
07:53been some level of divisive I think in the last 12 months. This is a six lot subdivision of a
07:595.1 hectare property on Jones Street South so it's quite large in comparison to most of them
08:04like the smallest one is 6,000 square meters which in comparison I think there was one off
08:09Dexter Street late last year which had about 350 meters per lot which is you know close to
08:14bare minimum off of the Tasmanian standards. The issue here was less so the size of the lots and
08:20more focused on the road it was on which if you look at it off of like Google Street View or go
08:25there yourself you'll see that it's maybe wide enough for one and a half cars to fit on. Right
08:30yeah one of those little country lanes almost. And it's not sealed at all as well so there's a lot
08:34of concern around the fact that it's going to more than double traffic around the area only
08:38to about 70 car movements a day which is still very low but concerns around dust basically in
08:43that area. That isn't the only major news we've had coming out of Meander Valley in recent weeks
08:48that being the fourth councillor to resign in the current term that went from Deborah White who was
08:53only appointed back in September last year following the resignation of Michael Kelly who
08:57had quite a long stint on council himself. Deb was I think a councillor for 11 years prior to her
09:03current you know four month term on the council but she cited health reasons as reasoning for her
09:09stepping down. She's kind of battled with long COVID for quite some time now and was confident
09:13that she was you know on the mend when it came to performing on council but has since realised that
09:18it's not really viable for her. So we now know that Christine Cronshaw will be replacing her
09:23starting from the February meeting I think on the 11th they next meet and she is a volunteer in the
09:28region. Previously working at the Great Western Tears Visitor Centre where you know helping
09:35visitors with information around the region and stuff like that so we don't know too much about
09:39it at this stage but I'm sure we'll find out loads from you know beginning of next month.
09:43Yeah looking forward to it and well on that note about councillors one of the things that was
09:49tabled at the last Launceston meeting was a report on well progress made on motions tabled by
09:56councillors dating back to March 2022 so that takes us to before this current council term
10:02but still includes sitting councillors. I mean this is part of CEO Sam Johnson's big push for
10:09well transparency and accountability just giving people more information about what the council
10:16is doing and when. I mean we've seen a few changes to how they handle their financial updates and
10:21that sort of thing so that's a monthly process now which is great for me I'm a bit of a numbers
10:25geek so I enjoy reading through those when they come out but anyway yeah so 21 motions passed
10:32since March 2022. It's interesting to see the well the breakdown of who's I guess the most
10:38active councillors. I mean we had five by Mayor Matthew Goward, four by Councillor Danny Gibson,
10:43four by Andrea Dawkins, one of which she shared with Hugh McKenzie that was
10:49basically commissioning a clean air strategy which is still in the works since November 2022 but
10:55should be on the way. We had two each by Councillor Alan Harris and Tim Walker and
11:00one each by Susie Cai, Andrew Palmer, Joe Pentridge and Lindy McMahon. Right it's very interesting to
11:07see so many of the councillors all putting forward their own motions. Yeah yeah I mean the only two
11:11councillors that weren't recorded in this report were Alex Bruton and George Rase. Fantastic well
11:17that's all we have for you for this first edition of the council chat from the examiner we will see
11:22you in all likelihood this time next month. See you then.