SUBMISSION TO LOCAL GOVT REVIEW BOARD

 

[1]                      [2]

DIRECT DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

OECD Public Governance Policy Papers, No. 12, 14 December 2021 

This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy. 

Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. 

The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken. 

Eight models to consider for implementation: 

1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels

2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees 

3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy

4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels 

5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle 

6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process 

7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions 

8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning 

LINK TO SOURCE

A New Wave of Deliberative Democracy CLAUDIA CHWALISZ NOVEMBER 26, 2019 ARTICLE 

On February 25, 2019, in Ostbelgien (the German-speaking community of Belgium), parliament voted to establish a Citizens’ Council, a new democratic institution developed to complement the elected parliamentary chamber.1 The first of its kind to be embedded in legislation, the permanent council launched on September 16. It is the latest development in a new wave of contemporary deliberative democracy, based on the premise that political decisions should be the result of reasonable discussion among citizens. 

The council’s inaugural twenty-four members will rotate out over an eighteen-month period; every six months, eight members will be replaced by a new group.2 New members will be randomly invited through a civic lottery. The council has two mandated roles. First, it is tasked with selecting up to three issues to assign to citizens’ assemblies. 

Each assembly will have up to fifty randomly selected citizens and meet a minimum of three times over three months to deliberate and develop recommendations for parliament. Parliament is then required by law to debate the recommendations at least twice, after which it, the government, the relevant commission, and the responsible minister must reply. The council’s second role is to monitor the parliamentary debates and the progress made in implementing any agreed-upon actions. 

Within a few years, every resident of Ostbelgien—a community of around 80,000 people—will have received an invitation to participate in either the Citizens’ Council or a Citizens’ Assembly.

LINK TO SOURCE

Open government strategies and initiatives are based on the principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholder participation. The OECD supports governments in designing and implementing policies by providing policy advice and recommendations on how to integrate these core principles into public sector reforms.

TASMANIAN LOCAL GOVT REVIEW LOOKING LIKE IT LACKS CREDIBILITY

A review of the state's local government sector will hone in on council financial sustainability, workforce gaps, consolidated service delivery and workplace culture as it enters its second stage. [What about accountability and transparency?]

The Local Government Board on Thursday released its interim report on the board-based review and called for community input on six priority areas.

 

The board will consider options for improving elected member culture and capability with a mind to preserve and enhance local representation. [What about curtailing General Managers powers and disallowing their incursions into policy development in camera?]

 

Councillor numbers and administrative boundaries will also be considered. [What about replacing the Elected Representational Democracy model with the Direct Democracy model of ‘governance’ backed by strong accountability mechanisms ?]

 

The board will investigate the extent to which some communities are paying more for services due to insufficient economies of scale and consider consolidated service delivery models for expensive, capital intensive, though regionally important, council services. [What about appointing expert COMMISSIONS & COMMISSIONERS to do this work?]

 

It will seek to understand current professional and organisational capability, including skills gaps and shortages across councils. [What about appointing limited term qualified expert COMMISSIONS & COMMISSIONERS as policy determiners and operation monitors?]

 

Current and projected financial position of Tasmanian councils, including their future asset renewal, will be detailed. Amalgamations as part of local government reform were deliberately avoided during the first stage of the review. [Replace Councils & Councillors with COMMISSIONS & COMMISSIONERS as it would be cost effective and depending upon those APPOINTED and their accountability this would ‘strategically’ place Local Govt. in a stronger position financially and skillswise. That status quo is clearly unsustainable.]

The Local Government Board in its interim report said such discussion tended to imply a blunt and simplistic approach to reform. [The current Act circa 1993, quite bluntly is well past its use by date]

 

"The future design options we are interested in could result in significant changes not only to administrative boundaries, but also to the fundamental role councils play and the functions and services they deliver," it said. [The Board must not shrink from fundamental and significant change albeit with strong accountability mechanisms in short timeframes in order that 21^st C governance can be delivered.]

 

Local Government Board chairwoman Sue Smith said the board had heard strong support from the community during consultation on local government's role in service delivery and representation. [Likewise, it seems that the Board is ‘cherry picking’ what it pays attention to and what it dismisses ‘in camera’.]

 

"We've also heard that people believe that local government is struggling to fulfill all its responsibilities, particularly the smaller councils," she said. [Larger councils while collecting more revenue ‘struggle’ to be accountable and leave constituents without mechanisms to address inequities via meaningful community consultation.]

 

"People have told us that councils need to be big enough to be sustainable, but small enough to genuinely represent their community." [Rather than the ‘scale’ of a Council being ‘the issue’ it is councillors’ capacity to understand, represent and respond to constituent’s needs and aspirations that is the issue.]

 

Local Government Minister Nic Street said the review would help build community confidence in local councils. [Community confidence in local governance comes with expedient and meaningful accountability. No amount of ‘window dressing’ will deliver community confidence!] 

 

"We want to ensure that councils have the professional skills and resources they need to be able to serve their communities sustainably over the long term," he said. [Expert COMMISSIONS & COMMISSIONERS as policy determiners in a Direct Democracy model can deliver on that aspiration]

 

Labor's local government spokewoman Anita Dow said the interim report amounted to another glossy brochure. [Someone had to say this, but it was ever likely to be thus! In America this is called a SNOW JOB!]

 

"Instead of delivering yet another interim report on their promises of reform, the government needs to come clean on what they are specifically planning for their promised overhaul of councils across Tasmania," she said. [Clearly, what the Board has in mind is the redundant Tasmanian Local Govt. Act 1993 with patches and band aids. Why? The status quo serves too many too well.]

 

The public can make submissions to the interim report until August 25. [Too much is at risk NOT to make a submission BUT be aware you are unlikely to get an acknowledgement or a commitment to consider your submission … CLICK HERE FOR ONE THAT HAS BEEN SUBMITTED WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT  

 

STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT TASMANIA

 

By Caitlin Jarvis July 21 2022 at 3:00am

 

Tasmania has not produced a State of Environment report since 2009, but the state government says the report is under review.

 

A tale of the declining health of Australia's environment was presented in stark detail in the recent national State of Environment report.

 

Planning Minister Michael Ferguson said a number of Tasmanian authorities contributed to the national report, but the state one was still under review.

 

"The Tasmanian State of the Environment sits with the Tasmanian Planning Commission but given its statutory roles and responsibilities it is widely recognised as not the most appropriate authority for this work," Mr Ferguson said.

 

"The government is currently undertaking a review of the reporting requirements, the format of the report and the most suitable authority for the work and will include extensive public consultation."

 

Independent Member for Nelson Meg Webb said Tasmania's State of the Environment report should be labelled extinct.

 

"In June, I asked Planning Minister Ferguson when the Report would be released and received a 'yes Minister' style response which would do Sir Humphrey Appleby proud," she said.

 

"Worryingly, Minister Ferguson made it apparent the only options regarding who was responsible for the report's production were expected to be presented to government by the end of the year.

 

"It is not good enough to keep putting this crucial report into the too hard basket. Our environment is literally burning while governments fiddle around the edges."

 

Environmental concerns in Tasmania have been raised over the impact of forestry, along with the impact expansion of irrigation and industrialisation has had on the state's river systems.

 

Sediment build up in the Tamar due to historic decisions that has impacted the river has been a fight waged for decades, and water quality has been in poor condition for 16 years. [Evidenced by decade upon decade of hand sitting]

 

An internal department report showed that nearly half Tasmania's river systems had experienced ecological decline, but the current state of the rivers is not public information. During the state budget, the government also only allocated 2 per cent of the funds to the environment department. It was the equal smallest slice of the budget along with recreation, culture and religion, and nominal interest on superannuation.

 

Another common theme to emerge from the commentary surrounding the national report, was that the country needed an independent Environment Protection Authority.

 

In the state budget, funds were allocated to make the EPA more independent from the government, with the process underway.

 

An EPA spokesperson said the changes would broaden the EPA's responsibility for environmental assessment.

The draft bill will strengthen the independence of the EPA and expand the powers of the EPA director to make monitoring information available to the public.

 

It will also establishing processes for making environmental standards to manage activities that may affect the state's natural environment. [NO HURRY THEN?]

 

However when asked, the spokesperson declined to comment on the national State of Environment Report, nor what the state could do to improve environmental management.

 

Mr Jaensch said the state government takes the protection of Tasmania's natural environment seriously. [On the evidence we must wonder]

 

"The report acknowledges that the changes to our climate already underway are having an impact on our environment. That's why Tasmania will continue to do all we can to reduce emissions and support our communities, environment and economy to adapt and build resilience to climate change."

 

Mr Jaensch said Tasmania had recorded net negative emissions for the past seven years and tabled legislation targeting net zero emissions or lower from 2030, which will be the most ambitious legislated target in the country.

 

New Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek ‘gobsmacked’ by state of Australia’s environment … Australia’s new Environment and Water Minister, Tanya Plibersek has criticised the management of the country’s environment, addressing the National Press Club on Tuesday to express her “shock” at “how badly we’re doing as a nation on meeting” water targets.LINK

EXPERTISE IN THE CULTURAL SPACE

WHEN THE GUARD CHANGES THINGS CANGE ... Having Tony Burke call out the state of affairs in 'the arts' with a little luck we will see a trickle down effect. His calling out the inadequacies relative to expertise on various boards is something that needed to be done well before now.

Politics to one side, Minister Burke clearly has more than passing interest in how cultural realities impact upon community wellbeing. In the Menzies Era and up to McMahon's time the Minister for the Arts eventually got to be Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and 'The Environment' – all the things governments looked like they need to have policies about but were not all that interested in going so.

 Peter Howson in the McMahon Govt being an exemplar, when he was appointed as Australia's first Minister for the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts, he was reported as commenting: "The little bastard gave me trees, boongs and pooftas". In so many ways Howson's Ghost haunted the Morrison Govt and other governments before that. It turned out that these 'peripheral issues' were not so peripheral after all– indeed they are not.

Speaking of 'trickle downs', arguably in Tasmania Howson's Ghost cum legacy has haunted, or is haunting, government at all levels still – not to ignore Local Govt. Launceston's Council is where you'll find Howson's Ghost lurking still in its policy determination. For example:

•   The QVMAG's  Aboriginal Reference Group when it meets and the GM (AKA CEO) is present he reportedly informs 'the group' that he will be making the "decisions";

•   When the Mayor/Deputy Mayor GM (AKA CEO) are presented with First Nations reconciliation issue they reportedly informs 'whoever' that they will be making a "decision" that in turn goes to the back burner;

•   When the Council, Mayor and GM (AKA CEO) are presented with a First Nations accountability issue they reportedly informs 'whoever' that they will not be making the requested information available given its sensitivity;

•   When the Council and/or the GM (AKA CEO) are presented with an environment  issue they will inform 'whoever' that they will be making a "decision" that in turn goes to the back burner; and indeed will invoke the status quo, blighted as it is by Howson's Ghost lurking in every crevice at Town Hall.

Given that 'opinion', even expert opinion, is the order of human knowledge, it does not require accountability, or indeed  any real understanding. Empathy, on the other hand requires the suspension of egos and the ability  to embrace another’s world. Empathy's purpose is profound and larger than any estimate of self worth”

SOURCE https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/culture-in-crisis-arts-minister-tony-burke-slams-decade-of-neglect-20220630-p5ay3z.html

‘Lazy and indulgent’: Arts minister slams previous government’s board appointments By Karl Quinn July 1, 2022 — 5.30am

Australia’s cultural institutions are in a state of disrepair and will take years to recover, according to Labor’s Arts Minister Tony Burke.

In an interview with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in which he addressed a range of issues including the need for Australian content quotas for the streamers, the previous government’s lack of support for the local film industry while throwing incentives at Hollywood, and the stacking of cultural boards with political appointees, Burke said the damage was substantial and would take years to undo.

Tony Burke announcing the Labor Party’s arts policy in Melbourne in May.

The Morrison government operated on the principle of providing funding to cultural institutions only when “everything was falling apart”, he said.

“It took a massive number of leaks in the National Gallery before it got funding. It took for some of the records at the Australian Archives to be physically dissolving before extra funding was provided. For a political brand that calls itself conservatives, they weren’t interested in conserving much.”

According to recent reports, the 40-year-old National Gallery building needs $87 million worth of urgent repairs, but only $20 million was funded by the previous government.

Burke said he had met with “every collecting institution” already and encouraged them to make direct submissions to the Creative Australia cultural policy review that would frame Labor’s approach to regulation and support of the arts.

Some changes, such as quotas, could be made without great cost to the government, he said, but others would need to be fought for in upcoming budget discussions.

The National Gallery in Canberra: a recent report claimed the building needs $87 million worth of urgent repairs, but only $20 million has been funded.

The National Gallery in Canberra: a recent report claimed the building needs $87 million worth of urgent repairs, but only $20 million has been funded.

“The reality is you can’t turn a decade of neglect around in a couple of years,” he said. “We’ve got all the budgetary pressures we have and the institutions, while their collections remain magnificent, have infrastructure around them that’s seriously run down. It’s going to be hard. I don’t think there’s any other way of describing it.”

Claiming he had first raised the need for regulation of programming delivered via the internet in 2013 (when it was still known as Internet Protocol Television), Burke flagged the likelihood that the 5 per cent Australian content requirement for the streaming platforms proposed by the last government would be scrapped in favour of a higher figure.

“The longer we’ve left it the harder it becomes,” he said. “I do support quotas for streamers … I view the 5 per cent proposal as too little too late, but exactly where we land is a decision not yet taken.”

Hollywood films are all well and good, but they rarely tell Australian stories - or even stories from this planet. Hollywood films are all well and good, but they rarely tell Australian stories - or even stories from this planet.

The local production sector is pushing for a 20 per cent Australian content quota. In some European jurisdictions, the requirement is 30 per cent.

Noting that the outgoing government had made a raft of appointments, many with strong Liberal Party links, to the boards of cultural institutions in its final months, Burke ruled out a wholesale spill of positions as is being considered by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus for the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

“It’s not my starting point,” he said. “If what we’re trying to establish is long-term institutions, you’ve got to be very careful of legislative processes to wind them up and start again.”

The stories [Hollywood tells] are rarely Australian stories. Sometimes they’re not just not from this country ... not even from this planet.”

Tony Burke, Arts Minister He said that position had been made easier to hold by the fact “three or four” appointees “have been really honourable, and even without me asking have put forward resignations for themselves to give me the chance to make decisions”.

“I’m very respectful and impressed by the people who have done that,” Burke added. “Obviously, not all of them have.”

He said there are broader issues with the constitution of the boards of some of our national cultural institutions, which he described as “the custodians of Australian stories”.

“My biggest frustration is in the gaps we have. I don’t see how you have a portrait gallery with no First Nations member on its board. I don’t see how you have a national museum with a board that does not include a single historian.

“The previous government made some appointments that were excellent, some that were lazy, and some that were simply indulgent,” he said.

Burke said he supported the Location Incentive Fund for the film industry introduced by the Turnbull government and expanded under Morrison to attract Hollywood productions to Australia, but said more needed to be done to encourage and support the telling of Australian stories on screen.

“One of the great lost opportunities of the last few years was that the previous government was willing to throw a whole lot of money at Hollywood productions at the exact same time that it was cutting effective regulatory means of support for Australian productions,” he said, citing the proposed halving of Foxtel’s Australian drama obligation.

Burke said he welcomed Hollywood productions and the jobs they bring, “but we can’t pretend that’s job done for the Australian film industry … the stories they tell are rarely Australian stories.

“Sometimes they’re not just not from this country,” he added, “they’re not even from this planet.”

Email the author at kquinn@theage.com.au,

THIS KIND OF THING IS NOT WHAT MUSEUMS ARE ABOUT ... REALLY?

It turns out that when news of this 'farming' in Africa came to light in Launceston there was a suggestion that the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (GVMAG) might seek 'research funding' for such a project. The QVMAG was already using 'Dermestes Beetles' to clean skeletal material for exhibits and it seemed like an obvious next step.

It also turned out to be an idea that had as much chance of flying as a LEADballon and in 2022 it seems, more is the pity. With pressure on for the QVMAG to be more relevant and the need to:  

• Shift from status quo WASTE MANAGEMENT to RESOURCE RECOVERY;

• Shift from status quo in the wake of CLIMATE CHANGE that has been evident for decades;

• In retrospect it beggars belief that such funding might not be sought.

Whatever sensibilities 'insect farming' might offend the functionaries and representatives at Launceston's Town Hall and whatever it is, or was, within the 'status quo' that was or is being protected the irrational and rational reasoning informing it needs to be explored.

That said, when Pierre-Auguste Renoir said “"To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them" he was addressing a 'status quoish' sensibility that lingers on in Launceston's Town Hall.

Most likely it was 'Swami X' who proffered the suggestion in situations like this there are hundreds of thousands of reasons for reasoning like this and every last one has a 'dollar sign' in front of it. If was him, or someone else, the evidence for it being so seems to be as good as one can get!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

LINK TO SOURCE

This Australian startup’s maggot army is making feed out of flies 

Source: Warwick Jones/The New Daily Warwick Jones Warwick Jones Reporter 

 Alex Arnold spent much of his childhood working as a farmhand on his uncle’s sheep and cattle property on South Australia’s southeast coast. “I always noticed there were a lot of grasshoppers and other insects crawling and jumping around the place,” 

Mr Arnold, now 32, told The New Daily. “They were a pest at the time. But there were more insects than cattle.” 

So he wondered what would happen if rather than trying to eliminate the insects, “we actually embraced them, and farmed them”. 

 Today, Mr Arnold and partner Phoebe Gardner, 28, are co-founders of a Melbourne startup that is recycling food waste into fertiliser and animal feed using nothing but insects. 

 Bardee processes more than 10,000 kilograms of food waste a day using world-leading technology, interrupting a major source of greenhouse emissions, replacing unsustainable farming practices, and saving Australian businesses money in the process. 

Mr Arnold has bred billions of insects at Bardee’s Sunshine North biorecycling facility. 

Enough waste to fill 10 MCGs Australians waste about 7.6 million tonnes of food each year, according to an industry study. 

That’s 312kg per person at an estimated cost of about $2500 per household every year. 

 “That 7.6 million tonnes would fill the MCG to the brim 10 times over,” Fight Food Waste CEO Dr Steve Lapidge told The New Daily. 

 “Or it would fill B-double trucks that would stretch from Perth to Sydney, end to end.” 

Dr Lapidge said it wasn’t just food that was wasted. “It’s all the resources, the water, the fertiliser, the fuel to get it to the supermarket,” he said. 

“And that’s all wasted when we waste food.” The UN Food and Agricultural Organization says about a third of the world’s food ends up in landfills, where it decomposes and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Food waste accounts for a staggering 8 per cent of all man-made greenhouse emissions, close to that of global road transport emissions. 

Up to a third of all food produced in the world is wasted. 

The Australian government has committed to halving food waste by 2030, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on food waste. 

 “[Fight Food Waste]’s vision is for an Australia without food waste,” Dr Lapidge said. “Whether you can get to absolute zero – I don’t know any country that has, but you can get pretty damn close to it.” ‘

An integral part’ Dr Lapidge said food waste recycling companies like Bardee are “an integral part of trying to halve food waste by 2030” by turning “unavoidable food waste into something of value”. 

Companies like Bardee are not only preventing methane emissions by diverting food waste from landfill, they’re also replacing emissions-heavy agricultural practices, like cattle rearing and synthetic fertilisers. 

 Bardee’s protein and fertiliser is also rich in nutrients from food waste. “Our aim, wherever possible, is to make sure we’re retaining nutrients in the human food chain,” Dr Lapidge said. 

 And so long as the nutrients from our food waste is going back into feed or fertiliser for produce that ends up on supermarket shelves, “then it’s not wasted food”. But recycling food waste isn’t simple. 

 Co-founder Phoebe Gardner said people have already tried to steal trade secrets.  

Huge investments Bardee has spent several years, and millions of dollars, developing methods and machines that allow them to process food waste efficiently and effectively. 

“Everyone can keep backyard chickens, but not everyone can do what [poultry supplier] Ingham [Enterprises] does,” Bardee CEO Ms Gardner said when asked why more companies aren’t doing what Bardee does. 

Ms Gardner and Mr Arnold started their operation in a Melbourne University carpark in 2019, grinding piles of rubbish into insect feed using a wood chipper from Bunnings.

Today, they have more than 30 employees and a billion insects. 

The Melbourne company uses Black Soldier Fly larvae, which eat the food waste and ‘cast’ it off as nutrient-rich fertiliser.

The larvae themselves are then harvested and boiled to make protein. 

Bardee is home to billions of black soldier fly larvae.  “Farming these insects is quite complicated,” Mr Arnold said. 

“We’ve got entomologists, engineers, and even artists on the team, that have helped design and build a lot of the really unique technologies that we’ve developed.” .

And protecting that technology hasn’t been easy, either. 

Visitors to Bardee’s Sunshine North facility have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and most of the equipment and practices on the factory floor are protected intellectual property and trade secrets. 

“IP protection is an area I’ve had to learn so much about and the team’s had to learn so much about over time,” Ms Gardner said.

“And we’ve even had instances where people have tried to break in to see what we’re doing at Bardee, which really surprised us. 

 “But it just shows how interested and valuable this type of technology is. And hopefully that’s a good signal that we’ll be able to progress in the future and grow this really big.”

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

CURIOUS DEVELOPMENT WITH LOTS OF QUESTIONS

QUESTION ON NOTICE TO CITY OF LAUNCESTON COUNCIL

Against the background of ‘Tasmania’s ‘Housing Crisis’ and Launceston tradespeople, businesspeople and Councillors from adjoining jurisdictions speculating upon a ‘housing development’ comprising something in the order of 2,000 housing sites and with the City of Launceston assisting the developers by designing road work etc. will Council please confirm: 

•   Whether or not such a ‘development site’ exists at all; and 

•    Whether or not the site, or any part of it, falls within the boundaries of the CoL municipality; and 

•    Whether or not the said ‘design work’ is being carried out by officers or others employed by CoL municipality; and 

•    Whether or not the cost, in whole or in part, of the said work is being born by CoL ratepayers and if so at what cost, for what reason and over what timeframe; and

•    Whether or not the cost of the said work is being contributed to by the developer and/or any other party and to what extent if they are; and

•    Whether or not the cost of the said work appears on CoL Financial Records anywhere that a ratepayer might easily access the information; and 

•   Whether or not the cost of the said work has been sanctioned by CoL Councillors, and if so when and in what context? 

WATCH THIS SPACE TO SEE WHO LOOKS AWAY FROM THIS OR THAT

These spaces are often contested space and we all need to be aware of that and be prepared for Councillors, with an election on its way, coming out of their burrows supporting this or that. The Mayor will be out soon enough spruiking his achievements come what may. He'll be followed by his incumbent anything goes majority on Council subliminally revealing what they have 'invested' here one way or another. Quite possibly to hell with heritage or anything like environmental sustainability, social considerations and whole lot of things favours can and sometimes do not deliver.

It is cruel world for those without the wherewithal looking for even break. It is a thought we should all keep in mind as we look forward to this years council elections.

New developments surrounding Princes Square to transform city Joshua Peach July 3 2022 at 3:30pm 

A slew of new developments surrounding Princes Square in Launceston's CBD are set to transform the city square. ....................... Last month, The Examiner revealed Tasmanian entrepreneur and Virgin Australia co-founder Rob Sherrard will take over ownership of Milton Hall and Christ Church on Frederick Street in September, marking the latest major change to the city block. 

Northern Midlands Council lose RTI review

Now this story carries some baggage and it sets a precedent that needs to be tested. Councils rely upon the GM to declare all kinds of things 'confidential' and if needs be invoke Section 62 of the Local Govt Act to shut down unwelcome questioning. Typically the Director of Local Govt. will side with the GM and as likely as not send anyone who complains about ANYTHING to the Ombudsman knowing full well that the Ombudsman lacks the resources to deal with anything quickly.

Leave an issue alone long enough and it will just go away – time honoured technique. Sometimes it just will not as the Mayor here has discovered. Now that the Ombudsman has made a determination here, and set a precedent, Mayors, Councillors and GMs need to take heed and desist in their self-serving obfuscation forthwith. 

Likewise the Minister and the Director of Local Govt should be issuing directives to all councils saying that the lack of accountability on show here needs to stop.

Local Govt constituents actually do have a RIGHT TO INFORMATION!

Northern Midlands Council lose RTI review By Luke Miller June 27 2022 at 12:00pm 

Resident wins RTI review against Northern Midlands Council A council in the state's North has lost a right to information act review to a ratepayer after the foremost independent body in the state investigated the matter. Representatives from Ombudsman Tasmania directed Northern Midlands council on Thursday to assess the information requested for disclosure by a resident of the municipality, Andrew McCullagh. 

Mr McCullagh operates a Facebook page entitled Northern Midlands Council Watch and takes a keen interest in the council's fiscal management and operations. On May 26, 2020, he paid the relevant fees to make an application under the Right to Information Act regarding several projects being undertaken or proposed in the area. ............................ Mr McCullagh wished to obtain a progress report for the Launceston Airport court case; including all costs incurred to date, as well as a list of completed and planned works on the Longford Recreational Ground; also including spending details. ............................ Additionally, he requested all costs associated with the preparation of various properties on Norfolk Street in Perth be provided, as well as maps of and documents supporting the replacement of two bridges in the area. ............................ "As ratepayers, we have a fundamental right to know how our monies are being spent and whether it is being done wisely or simply being wasted," Mr McCullagh said. ............................ On June 19, Mr McCullagh was advised by a council representative Maree Bricknell, - who was acting as a delegate under the Act - that his request had been refused. ............................ Multiple reasons were provided by Ms Bricknell in order to justify the decision, including the requested information - in her opinion - being the same or similar to previous applications Mr McCullagh had made. ............................ She also stated a belief that, if provided, Mr McCullagh would use the information to further his alleged campaign of harassment, bullying, and "extremely disrespectful behaviour" towards the mayor, general manager, and councillors. ............................ Mr McCullagh then sought an internal review of the decision three days later, however, the principal officer and general manager of the council, Des Jennings, advised him in writing that he "could not act impartially". ............................ That conclusion was made due to a conflict of interest arising from an ongoing legal dispute between the men, in which Mr Jennings had claimed damages in the Supreme Court for defamatory comments Mr McCullagh allegedly directed toward him. ............................ Mr Jennings refused to delegate the internal review to another council officer and told Mr McCullagh he could apply for an external review instead. Mr McCullagh then contacted Ombudsman Tasmania, who directed the council to undertake an internal review. Council employee Samantha Dhilon was placed in charge of that process and released a decision on July 24. She said she had "no hesitation" in affirming the response made by her collogue Ms Bricknell earlier in the year, and cited the same reasons. ............................ After Mr McCullagh confirmed he wished to continue the external review, Ombudsman Tasmania's Richard Connock was tasked with determining whether the application could be refused on the basis that it was a repeat or "vexatious". ............................ Last week, he concluded that it could not. ............................ In response to the decision, Northern Midlands mayor Mary Knowles said the council would comply with the Ombudsman's directive. ............................ "However, we disagree with the Ombudsman's conclusions on this occasion and maintain that the RTI was substantially the same as an earlier request from Mr McCullagh," she said. ............................ Mr McCullagh said he was happy with the decision and questioned how there could be any suggestion that an independent arbitrator with no affiliation to either party could be incorrect. ............................ "The decision should've been handed down two years ago," he said. ............................ "Now after all of this, what's occurred has worked totally against them, because all the information is back in the public eye and available for everyone to see."