The Examiner's Joe Colbrook and Aaron Smith discuss local government news from north-east Tasmania for March 2025.
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00:00Hello and welcome to the March edition of the Examiner's Council Chat.
00:04I'm Launceston Council reporter Joe Colebrook, and this is regional council reporter Aaron Smith.
00:09Now, it's all been go in Launceston this month, and not for some great reasons if I'm honest.
00:17The fallout continues after Mayor Matthew Garwood posted a picture of himself with falling in reverse frontman Ronnie Radke.
00:25And for those who don't know,
00:27the mayor was on holiday, went to see the Falling in Reverse Adelaide show, paid for a meet-and-greet with Mr. Radke.
00:34And when he posted this photo to his personal Facebook page, a lot of people in the comments were quick to point out Mr. Radke's criminal past.
00:43I mean, he pleaded guilty to an assault and then later served two and a half years in prison for violating his probation conditions.
00:54He was also charged with domestic violence, but then later pleaded no contest to a lesser charge.
01:00He's had a bit of a checkered past and people were expecting a lot more from their mayor, especially women, especially women on the council,
01:10who were then singled out for harassment by Mr. Radke after they spoke out about it.
01:15I need to apologize, you loser. Me, I'm the one that needs to apologize.
01:21I come to your f***ing country and your city and play these shows. You could never f***ing do this on your own.
01:28Your entire f***ing government couldn't do this on your own. You're going to sit here and f***ing tell me I need to apologize over something you did? F*** you.
01:36And things all came to a head last Thursday. That's March 27 at the council meeting.
01:42Councillor Tim Walker moved a motion of no confidence in the mayor, which is fairly dramatic scenes, really.
01:49Absolutely. So this motion of no confidence doesn't actually enforce anything on the mayor.
01:54It's just the council saying, we don't put much faith in you right now.
01:57Yeah, correct. I mean, it's very difficult to unseat a sitting councillor.
02:03I mean, the state government can intervene in very limited circumstances, but the threshold for that intervention is quite high.
02:12Basically, the five councillors that voted for the no confidence motion are just basically telling him that they disapprove of his conduct in this because he also was very slow to take any action, really.
02:28And as of that council meeting, hadn't taken the photo in question down, which obviously caused quite the stir.
02:35Yeah. And now that photo is basically everywhere.
02:37You can't really avoid it.
02:38Yes, yes. And it's perhaps moral of the story is be careful about what you post on social media and also be very quick to apologise if you do cause offence, which I think this photo has caused quite a bit of offence to particularly women in the Launceston community.
02:55Absolutely. Well, I'm not sure I can match that in terms of newsworthiness, but I do have a decent one for you from the Breakaday Council.
03:02So earlier this month, they rejected a development application, which you don't really see from councils often at all.
03:08Was this something that the council officers had recommended for approval or they suggested it be rejected?
03:13They said absolutely reject this.
03:15It was actually a very short deliberation from the council itself.
03:19And as far as I can tell, Breakaday hasn't rejected anything in two plus years, realistically.
03:25So this was going to be a 26 metre tall telecommunications tower in St Helens.
03:31Particularly, this was going to be on 14 Bowen Street, which is right in the heart of town.
03:37So for this area, it's under the utility zone, which for the Tasmanian planning scheme, it says a pole or a tower like this one can't be more than 15 metres.
03:46And if it is, it's then a discretionary item.
03:48Yes. They have to then discuss it as is it going to cause a lot of visual amenity loss, all that kind of thing.
03:54And it was a very quick deliberation to say that, well, you know, it's a massive tower in a town with basically no buildings above two storeys.
04:00It's going to be a massive loss and we're just going to reject it.
04:05So it's kind of this bizarre case where you don't see those things pushed out the door like that so quickly.
04:11And in response, Telstra isn't particularly happy.
04:14They're considering taking the council to a tribunal currently.
04:17Oh, I love those tribunal cases.
04:18Yeah, it's fun to cover.
04:20I'm not sure if they're actually going to do it.
04:22They're just saying that they're considering it and it's on the table, stuff like that.
04:26They have defended it as being a critical piece of infrastructure because their current mobile network around St Helens isn't very strong.
04:33Yeah. And this would upgrade some businesses and residences around the area to a 5G network.
04:39And black spots in Tasmania are a bit of an issue.
04:42I mean, it's been a long time in the making, I think.
04:45Absolutely. In response, Breaker Days Mayor Mick Tucker, in a statement, was quite pointed in saying that they had just taken the
04:52cheapest and easiest option because they already own that Bowen Street site and they're trying to develop their own property without
04:58taking into consideration the community's wants and needs, putting it somewhere where it's not going to affect everyone's sightlines.
05:04So we're going to have to wait and see what happens next in St Helens over there.
05:07But it's looking a little bit controversial between those two organisations.
05:12Yeah. There's one that I've got here from West Tamar, which is their request to reduce their local West Tamar Highway to 80
05:20kilometres an hour from the current 100 kilometre an hour limit between Riverside and Lugana.
05:26I guess you could say this wasn't controversial in the sense that all the councillors were in agreeance on this.
05:30And we had a lot of members of the community, particularly former professional cyclist Richard Port, came out and spoke in favour of the
05:37motion, saying that it's obviously a safety concern and stuff like that.
05:40Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I mean, the slower you travel, the more reaction time you have, the less damage you can do.
05:46I mean, a cyclist gets hit at 80 km an hour, that's still painful, but obviously it gives the drivers more time to actually see the cyclist.
05:55Absolutely. Yeah. So it was an odd one in that if you looked at just the meeting itself, it was very much non-controversial.
06:01Everyone's in agreeance. But you look at the broader public feedback and it hasn't been quite so positive.
06:08Councillor Rick Shegog made an interesting point during the meeting that the fatality everyone kept pointing to was this 2013 incident
06:16when a 21-year-old cyclist was killed along that stretch by a utility truck.
06:20But he pointed out that this wasn't an incident because of speed.
06:23It was a lack of... it was inattention, basically.
06:26The driver had 14 seconds and 400 metres to react and hadn't done so.
06:31So he'd kind of criticised the approach to just drop the speed limit when there were other factors at play there.
06:37But yeah, they've called on the state government and we're going to have to, yeah, again, wait and see, see what they are interested in doing.
06:42Yeah. The last one I've got for you today is from Northern Midlands Council.
06:47And this follows on from a very similar story I mentioned in last month's podcast about Perth.
06:52Right. So they have their streetscape development in both towns, which is essentially going to beautify their main streets by removing some car parks, putting in plant boxes, widening the street, putting in pedestrian crossings, all that kind of thing.
07:05I guess what's the issue here?
07:07Because that sounds on the face of it like a good idea, surely.
07:11It does. The issue is that loss of parking, essentially.
07:15Many businesses, locals alike, are worried that you take away the parking, you're going to lose the quick stop people, you're going to lose people stopping in town, all that kind of thing.
07:24Perth's development originally was going to be over 20 car parks removed and it's now been reduced to nine.
07:30And this one in Campbelltown, its current plan was for roughly 25 parking spaces between William and King streets.
07:36So larger again.
07:38After hearing these concerns raised in that last council meeting, the deputy mayor, Janet Lambert, put forward a motion to pause the development as a matter of urgency, which was ultimately unanimously supported.
07:50There'd been enough people coming up saying we're very worried about this, but they want to put a stop to it.
07:55And hadn't that happened, it would have gone out the tender by the end of this month to then, you know, go on to future development.
08:02So it was kind of their last opportunity to put a stop to it.
08:05But yeah, again, we're going to have to hold on to see what they then do.
08:10It's likely to be some kind of extra round of community consultation.
08:14But upon hearing that concern, they just decided that it wasn't worth pursuing at this stage.
08:18Yeah, fair enough.
08:20But that is everything from me, Joe.
08:22Do you have anything else from Launceston you want to touch on?
08:24I might be worth putting it out there that there's a fair few of Launceston's heritage sites that have been closed for maintenance and renovations.
08:34I mean, the latest of these is the John Hart Conservatory in City Park.
08:39That's likely to be closed until the spring.
08:43But at the same time that that's being done, you've got the Albert Hall renovations slowly coming to completion.
08:49You've got the Children's Jubilee Fountain, which is also in or was also in City Park.
08:55But that's still being worked on by the metal workers, I believe.
08:59And also the Alexandra Suspension Bridge at Cataract Gorge, which is one of those things.
09:05I mean, it's necessary work.
09:07It's just all coming out at the same time.
09:11Yeah. Much going on, as always.
09:13Well, in that case, we will see you this time again next month for the fourth edition of our Council Chat.
09:19See you then. Bye.