CONTEXT: The City of Launceston is governed by 12 elected Councillors who stood for election, in order to determine policy and strategy and to actively participate in those processes in an ongoing way. The following question is thus framed within that context and moreover its substance is fundamentally invested in the backgrounding that says that policy and strategy is the business of governance and their implementation is the business of management.
THE QUESTION: Given the richness of the City of Launceston’s CITIZENexperts in a vast array of fields, and Council’s need to determine policy, strategy and planning resolutions on the basis of ‘expert advice’ will Council now proactively review its all so often communicated disinclination to avail itself of wisdom and experience the city’s ‘community of experts’ and its ‘Communities of Ownership and Interest’ via the empanelling of a CITIZENSassembly – [1] - [2] – [3] – with a randomly appointed and evolving membership in order that Council may avail itself of more thoroughly researched policy and strategy determinations?
QUESTION 2
CONTEXT: The City of Launceston appoints a number of Advisory Committees made up of people with expertise that meet from time to time and supposedly report to the city’s Council and Councillors. On all the available evidence they meet in camera and their deliberations and determinations are regarded as confidential. The apparent purpose for this is to maintain and paradigm of confidentiality within Town Hall.
Given that the Act appears to be silent in regard to these committees’:
• Need to be held in camera and have their agendas and minutes being seen as automatically confidential; and • The fact of them being so serving any purpose whatsoever; or
• The imperative for Councillors being voting members on these committees casting them in the role of being advisors and thus advising the advised.
On the evidence, all this runs counter to the principles set out in the Tasmanian State Govt’s Good Governance Guide nor in accord with Council’s own vision, purpose and values. See https://www.launceston.tas.gov.au/Council/Our-Vision-Purpose-and-Values
THE QUESTION: Given the principles set out in the State Govt’s Good Governance Guide will the City of Launceston’s Council now move proactively to remove “Councillors” from these committees in a role of advisors, publish the agendas, minutes and document the reporting of ALL its committees to enable the city’s citizenry to be fully informed in regard to their membership and the governance of the municipality and its consequent appropriate management at all levels?
QUESTION 3
CONTEXT: The City of Launceston operates the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery as a council cost centre. In June 2022 Council announced that its intention was to ‘reimagine’ the QVMAG to increase cultural visitation and with that to boost the local economy upwards of $140Million. The articulated plan was to establish the QVMAG as a ‘company limited by guarantee’ in order for ‘the operation’ to function as not-for-profit Community Cultural Enterprise in order to be free to deliver more fulsomely social and cultural dividends to Northern Tasmania. Since June there has been no apparent action on the part of Councillors to achieve the determined action and given that it is the ‘Councillors’ who are the QVMAG’s Governors and thus the default ‘Trustees’ this is concerning given all that the QVMAG’s ‘Communities of Ownership and Interest’ have invested in the institution, its collections, its research capacity not to mention the delivery of a 21st C relevant program
THE QUESTION: Given the identified strategic determination, the aspirations of the institution’s Community of Ownership and Interest and Council managements’ apparent inability to actually carry forward the agreed upon policy and strategy, will Council, and with some urgency, move expediently towards appointing an ‘Interim QVMAG Board of Governors’, with a membership of say nine appropriately qualified people, tasked to facilitate the appointment of company members, the development of a standalone interim strategic plan and policy sets, and secure funding commitments from appropriate agencies relevant to the operation of cultural institution such as the QVMAG operating in a 21st C context?
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AND THEN there is Mr Bains' of Kings Meadows question ... the one that he has been asking over and over with about the same response, obfuscation, weasel words and disregard for ratepayers and their interest in what their money is being in and for whose benefit.
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