Monday 24 May 2021

LAUNCESTON'S COUNCIL SHIFTS THE GOAL POSTS AND IT COSTS AND HURTS RATEPAYERS

 

Following Council's meeting the question still hanging in the air is:

•  Has Launceston City Council been in collusion with the JAC Group in respect of the drafting of this Specific Area Plan and can you assure the community that no inducements of any kind have been received by elected representatives, or Council staff, to facilitate this planning amendment; …ratepayers and the community are very concerned and cynical in regard to this whole process? ... Read the full text here

Boiled right down to the essentials:

•  The JAC Group submitted a Development Application to the City of Launceston to build a high rise hotel and it was approved despite there being an aggrieved property owner and a network of ratepayers challenging the application.

•  The approval was challenged and approval was overruled by the planning tribunal.

•  Launceston's council regrouped and has accepted an application from the developer to change the city's planning provisions in order to accommodates the JAC Group's plans and aspirations and on the evidence at considerable expense to ratepayers 

•  An aggrieved property owner funded her appeal to the planning tribunal via a substantial loan and her appeal was upheld. The aggrieved property owner won her case!

•  The the aggrieved developer seemingly appealed to the council to 'move the goal posts' and the evidence points to the council jumping as high as the developer wanted it seems they would and the outcome slipped through its May 20 without a glitch. Now the aggrieved property owner loses her case and her money and seemingly the developer wins!

•  The now 'developer friendly' councillors take umbrage at the suggestion that they might have been induced to use ratepayer's money to satisfy the aspirations of a developer. Furthermore, they feign incredulity at the proposition that council make the aggrieved property owner an ex gratia payment to compensate her for her losses after winning her appeal and it having it potentially nullified.

There is that age old observation that goes ..."if it looks like a duck, and quakes like a duck and it craps all over the place just like a duck, its a good bet that it is in fact a duck". This is the kind of bush wisdom that colours peoples perceptions of what they are seeing and hearing here.

it's obvious that before the meeting the councillors got together to get all their ducks lined up or granted leave to stay away. 

For the Mayor to step down from his podium when things get a bit testy in order to protest his and councillor' innocence only compounds the perception that something is not quite right. 

Then again, that Shakespearian phrase that goes "The lady doth protest too muchmethinks" somehow resonates in the chamber and beyond replete with all its innuendo as the Mayor sort of invites anyone to take a look at his bank account.

Now there is an offer that cannot really be delivered upon.

Apparently, another councillor fired off an email threatening all sorts things that boiled down to its essentials was exemplar of bullying if true. The whiff of 'whatever' nonetheless lingers.

In other jurisdictions all this would be probably be more than enough to spark some kind of integrity inquiry, but not in Tasmania. In other jurisdictions councils have been sacked for what such inquiries have turned up. In Queensland local government legislation has been changed when this kind of contention started to look and quake like a duck.

The proposal needs to come back to Council as a development application but when it does the way seems pretty clear for approval. Yet as time moves on this class of development becomes less and less relevant given the imposts they place on urban places. They become less and less sustainable in world where the imperatives climate change become increasingly evident.

However this crop of councillors and planners may well be in even greener pastures or in their graves or sitting in their rocking chairs taking with them their spoils of incumbency. Like a snail we all leave a trail, it is that silver track that says where we have been and where we went and inevitably there is a smell.

Somehow this story smells like it is not going to fade quickly.



Wednesday 19 May 2021

The QVMAG in Review

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Queen Victoria  Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) is in decline. Plainly, the reasons for it being so are to do with multiple factors but mostly to do with the paucity of governance.

Increasingly, and over a decade plus,  the institution's status as a council cost centre has stifled its ability to change given council's administrative hierarchy. Unlike, regional museums and art galleries elsewhere in Australia the institution is not governed at arm's length from its funding bodies – here the City of Launceston.

Launceston's ratepayers invest annually in the institution and for the most part willingly. The bitter pill is that the institution each year delivers less and less. It's output has reached a point where it is unable to deliver services commensurate with the long and short term investments in it and the community's 21st Century expectations.

The review here delves into the issues impacting upon the institution's performance and offers some options for a way forward for the institution's governance, management and funding. 

On it's current administrative trajectory the QVMAG runs a real risk that it may well need to close and and have its collections dispersed. 

Arguably, the institution has arrived at point where its future is unclear unless there is real change of the kind that brings it into the 21st Century at the time of its 130th Anniversary.






Sunday 25 April 2021

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery's Elephant Is Still In The Room


If you are a politician or a bureaucrat, when you celebrate a history, and the story telling in it, the thing worth remembering are the words of that ubiquitous humorist Mark Twain. He constantly reminds us that if you are telling the truth a good memory is surplus to requirement. When it comes to history, since we are gathering cliches together here, Napoleon's observation that history is simply a version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. Massaged history is the kind of thing that will resonate quite loudly when bureaucracies and their functionaries market themselves. They can be relied upon to talk up their own achievements won on the backs of others all the way to next performance review.  

Post WW2, Winston Churchill said that for his part, "I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history." And speaking of histories, Martin Luther King Jr  famously said that he agreed with Dante. It was he who predicted that the hottest places in hell's inferno were reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. 

There comes a time when silence betrays excellence, when speaking up works against mediocrity. There comes a time when truth cannot be silenced.

As today's socially disadvantaged people take to the streets, the hustings and sometimes courts of law, the morally challenged must soon feel the heat as they draw themselves ever nearer to Dante's inferno. The status quo is apparently being 'all mucked up' and there are paradigms shifts disrupting the once relaxed and comfortable ideals and the belief systems that sustain the proverbial rent seekers of this world.

Celebrating a musingplace's history is a tricky business and never more so than when there is some presumed milestone that is being held aloft. Half a decade in a 130 years lifespan can be either momentous or nothing more than an inconsequential blip. But at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Launceston, a city that for as long as the institution has existed, proudly celebrated its colonial histories and heritage. It has worn them as a badge of honour albeit that increasingly, this is contested ground.

The QVMAG was founded on the cornerstone of the Royal Society of Tasmania (RST) endeavours to make sense of the world from its edge and in the antipodes. As a 'musingplace', the QVMAG rather quickly became a political cum colonial edifice like those in London and Paris it once subliminally modelled itself upon and aspired towards.

That these histories are blighted by the colonial assertion of terra nullius needs to be noted. Currently, all that flows from it comes with a subterranean need to smooth history over and avoid all those uncomfortable stories languishing away deep in a musingplace's 'the collections'

So, let's not talk about any of 'this or that' if whatever it is challenges us and our assumed, and comfortable, value systems.

Albeit somewhat smaller, like the ubiquitous British Museum in the 'motherland', the QVMAG filled itself to the gunnels with the trophies and plunder that colonialism has a want to assemble in the assertion of power. 

Above '42º S',Tasmania's histories played themselves out in the QVMAG's collections as they grew, as did the institution. It turns out that 'wealth grew' above 42º S as after all Launceston understood itself as the island's real capital. 

Snapshots of 'the place' and the people who invested their lives and their resources in the TRS's project, 'the advancement of knowledge', we find anything but 'advancement' in a 21st C context when the colonial aspirations of the past are interrogated more intensely. And, the institution looks more and more like an enterprise of diminishing returns.

In the half decade since the QVMAG celebrated its 125th year the institution has become bureaucratically embroiled in its own imaginings of itself. Likewise, the deluded notion that as a 'cost centre' in local governance its purpose, albeit subliminally, is to define and determine 'culture' – what deluded rubbish. It turns out that it doesn’t cost any more to strive for excellence while settling for mediocrity eventually will have an enormous price tag.

It also turns out that five years on from the125th anniversary it is the 'time frame' within which the institution truly loses its plot. It has become the victim of 'managerialism' with mediocrity as its dividend. 

Consequently, effectively the institution has become 'hollowed out' as its managerial ineptitude stripped way and neutralised its real assets. All this hid out under the bureaucratic smoke screen that COVID-19 somewhat conveniently threw up as camouflage. The art of camouflage is the most interesting of all the arts in all its insidiousness. 

In 2016 the 'elephant in the room' was to be seen in the flurry of activity that spawned that 125th Anniversary exhibition. All too evident in that celebratory  exhibition was the 'leaving out' of Tasmania's 'First People' – the palawa/pakana. Indeed, Aboriginal cultural production per se was entirely left out of the equation albeit that there were needs to, and indeed options a plenty, to include it. 

As embarrassing as that curatorial oversight was at the time, the ghost of 'Nellie-the-elephant' lingers yet with the evidence of her flatulence detectable in almost every nook and cranny and smelling of mediocrity

However, a year later, in July 2017, The First Tasmanians: Our Story exhibit opened and to some extent put to right the institution's long standing, shadowy and subliminal dissemination of the 'Truganini myth' – that the palawa/pakana were not really there. Momentarily there was a bit of a lurch into the future.

Notwithstanding any of that, the aroma of Nellie's flatulence is omnipresent. It is more than evident that within the managerial hollowing out of the institution's research credibility has become lost inn the process. The institution has been surreally 'asset stripped' and its status as a musingplace has fallen from grace. 

The bureaucratic phenomena that underpins the 'cost centre rational' has put institutional purpose risk. That 'RST ideal', 'the advancement of knowledge', is out in the cold and off the agenda. Quite simply, when mediocrity is tolerated you are bound to get more of it.

Like an insidious virus mediocrity has infected almost every organ and it is transforming the institution's cultural status as an 'art gallery and museum' into that of a bland cum pedestrian theme park – a pale copy of a kind of Disneyland where along with something of yesterday and tomorrow might be seen, and where fantasy is never far away

It is more than concerning that the institution's Governance Advisory Board has been sidelined and by doing so it strategically dumbs the institution down. Alongside this the operation's community support systems have effectively been neutralised as well.

Failure is an awful thing to contemplate. When one looks for the common denominator in failure it is always the same thing – the excuses that stand in the way of success.

So, apart from being something of a smoke screen, COVID-19 has become a metaphor for institutional degeneration and decline. Most of this can be put down to 25 years plus of blanding and blending of governance and management. All this is at the expense of the 'public purse'. In recent times 'the dividends' – the cultural dividends – flowing to 'the executive' has mimicked the corporate sector's insidious excesses. Sadly, it is the fraction that represents the whole.

So, in the vernacular, any promise of arriving at a turning point must be taken with that proverbial 'pinch of salt'No institution could ever be as deceived by another as they typically are by themselves. 

In 2020 in the hight of the first wave of COVID-19 Prof. Brian Schmidt, ANU's Vice Chancellor, advocating a reality check in academe, somewhat poignantly alerted the university world – and by extension musingplaces too – that such institutions were no longer the curators of, the keepers of, knowledge or knowledge systems. So, clearly the race is on, or it should be. The need to embrace the paradigm shift that has fallen upon academe and the imperative to build new relevancies could not be clearer.

Credible institutions differentiate between governance and management. However, it is not so, and far, far away from any kind of reality at the QVMAG. Somehow by a quirk of fate the QVMAG has no 'arm's length governance' and is left to its own self serving devices. Alarmingly, the institution has become a free wheeling and unaccountable bureaucratic fiefdom. 

The upshot of that has been there to see for some time. Most recently, unfettered self indulgence and rudderless frolics guided by personal social aspirations has delivered some strange version of 'the lowest common denominator'. If it looks like cultural determinism it probably is. If it has become some kind of 'warped normality' – the kind of thing totalitarianism indulges in – it might well be.

Asking a bureaucrat in any manifestation of governance, what ‘culture’ is nowadays, it will surely earn you looks of bewilderment. It’s the kind of thing everyone says they know the answer to but when push comes to shove nobody, it seems, has a ready answer for you – at least not one that fits some convenient bureaucratic paradigm

Culture is the central concept, the corner stone, upon which the study of anthropology is founded. Anthropology encompasses that range of phenomena that are transmitted through social interaction in human societies.  Scholarship in anthropology is the discipline that is most obviously missing in the QVMAG's purview and curiously 'management' has set itself upon a course of defining Launcestonian cultural reality. We might well ask why and for what purpose?

Cultural universals are found in all human societies. They include expressive forms like art making, music making, dance, ritual, religious expression, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, modes of shelter, clothing, etc. However, the unfulfilled promise hanging in the air is for the 'City of Launceston' to have its very own 'cultural strategy' quasi Eurocentric and monocultural no doubt – to guide its citizenry forward is nothing short of worrisome. 

No, not a budget to facilitate the city's 'cultural development'. No, no, not a 'strategy' to help determine and shape a community's vision of itself. However, there is some presumably homogenised Launcestonian cultural reality on the agenda. Yes, and it is said that there is a strategy, albeit one dreamt up in a constructed vacuum.    

Presumably what 'comes next' is in construction and one being planned well away from the gaze of 'the community' that needs to be configured/reconfigured bureaucratically. It is no doubt  some kind of weird post-colonial, yet to be determined, administratively compliant reality. Curiously, the subjects of the strategy have thus far had little more than lip service in the way of consultation.

Curiously in the celebration of 130 years of musing it is the 1960's that are being lauded as the halcyon days as the current director prepares to exit the scene invoking a future, a pared down future and in a diminished operation resplendent in its dilettantism.     

Any notion that the QVMAG's 'management structure' has anything like a social license to do what it has been doing is absurd, perverse and in the end hubristic. Yes, the institution's fiscal status must change if it is to avoid a legacy of mediocrity. Yes, the QVMAG, as a cultural institution, should head into the future deeply committed to evolve into 'community cultural enterprise'. And yes it does need to jettison its 'cost centre status' at every opportunity.  

Ray Norman April 2021
   


 


The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery has been a constant in Launceston since its opening in 1891 at Royal Park. 

This year, the museum will turn 130 on April 29. 

To begin with the museum had a caretaker, but no curator. The first curator, Herbet Hedley Scott, was appointed to the role in 1897. Mr Scott's successor was his son Eric, a well-regarded scientist. 

The beginnings of QVMAG came from collections sourced from the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Launceston Mechanics Institute. The early collections focused on mineral specimens and natural sciences on the ground floor, with art displayed on the upper level. 

However, more space was needed. So, in 1907 the first extension was built to accommodate a zoological gallery. In 1927 the museum gained a significant additional collection when it purchased the John Watt Beattie collection. The lot included a trove of early colonial history and art, as well as an extensive convict-related collection. The museum continued to develop over the years, with more extensions and research and objects acquired. 

In 1998, the museum extended further with a new site at the Launceston railway yards at Inveresk. The new site opened in 2001. Then, six years later, a decision was made to create a dedicated art gallery at the original Royal Park site, with the Inveresk site to focus more on natural sciences and history. The refurbished art gallery was opened as a space dedicated to the visual arts and design in 2011. 

Experiences of QVMAG City of Launceston's general manager of arts and cultural services Tracy Puklowski said the museum was made up of stories. 

"It's a story about the history of Launceston. It's a story about how museums have changed over the years. It's a story about the personalities that have run the museum over the years," she said. 

Ms Puklowski was appointed to her role as director of the museum in 2018 and was amazed by the size and scope of the institute. She said the challenge when she started was to hone in on what the museum should specialise in, narrowing the focus. .

"What struck me was these incredible unique stories that we have here, and how much innovation there has been in Launceston over the years," she said. 

Senior curator of visual arts and design Ashleigh Whatling said when she started at QVMAG in 2017, she saw the potential to mix things up and challenge some of the assumptions around the artworks. 

"I thought there were opportunities for us to tell more rounded stories, getting different parts of the collection to speak to different eras." 

Museum assistant of natural sciences Judy Rainbird started at the museum in January 1998. She applied because of the technical aspect and the opportunity to work with the collections the museum had. 

Collection changes    There is no doubt QVMAG has changed substantially over the years, and not just with site builds and expansions. Collections have grown, staff have come and gone, and technology has helped bring the concept of the museum into the 21st century. 

Ms Rainbird said the when she started she primarily assisted the curator at the time, and though the work had changed over the years, the collection curation requirement remained the same. 

 "I think the biggest change is that being a small museum we are now internationally known and have a reputation," she said. "It's just through digitalisation ... we are more exposed." 

Ms Puklowski said QVMAG had become more aware of its audiences, who they were, and what they wanted. 

"I think we have become a lot more confident in ourselves as an organisation," she said. "We are a bit more willing to experiment, take risks, push the boundaries. It's been a delightful evolution to be a part of." 

Ms Whatling agreed with Ms Puklowski and said the museum had been able to tackle the social and political aspirations of northern Tasmania. She had also focused on acquiring a more diverse range of works from contemporary artists. 

The meaning of QVMAG City of Launceston deputy mayor Danny Gibson said QVMAG had long been central to the cultural fabric of the city. 

 "QVMAG is a central part of Launceston life. For 130 years the institution has been dedicated to sharing the stories of our people and places," he said. "I commend Tracy and her team on providing opportunities to engage with art, science, history, and space to the people of Launceston." 

Ms Puklowski said the anniversary marked an important turning point for the institution. 

 "We are so proud to celebrate our 130 year anniversary with the people of Launceston," she said. "Museums are a reflection of the times. Our institution continues to transition and adapt through cultural change since 1891. In the future, we continue to look to reflect, grow and adapt." .

The future    No one knows what the future will hold, but the women of QVMAG weighed in their opinions about what could be focused on in the years to come. 

Ms Rainbird said she imagined the staff would increasingly find more stories to link to the objects in the collection due to all the access to resources they now had. She said the information would also fill in the gaps for items that had unknowns attached to them. 

Ms Whatling said a greater range of diverse voices would be found, and more challenging stories would be brought to the forefront. 

"Not just more diversity in our artists, but in the curators, in the leadership team, not just the voices that we are curating," she said. "The bottom line is, I feel like I'm part of a long chain of custodians of this collection and the chain will continue after me." 

Ms Puklowski, even though she will soon be leaving her position at QVMAG, still had an idea of where the museum may head in the future. She believed it was important for the history of QVMAG that the governance and funding structure should head into the next phase of evolution. 

"I think that QVAMG is in a really great position at the moment to take that next step into its future," she said. "I'm really sad to be leaving but I'm proud of what we have achieved."
subterranean

Sunday 18 April 2021

THE ALARM BELLS SOULD BE RINGING IN EVERY LAUNCESTON HOUSEHOLD AND BUSINESS

It's that time of the year again and here we go again with the same old, same old, as if the "post COVID snap back'" is real. The reality is that world has changed and fundamentally. The reality is that the Local Government Act 1995 in Tasmania is way past its use-by-date. And, it's election time too in Tasmania and it is shaping up for a federal election, so the air reeks of political bull dust.

The situation at Launceston's Town Hall is not quite as Acting Mayor Danny Gibson presents it. Because interests rates are at an all time low, presumably this is seen as an opportunity to boost spending and increase economic activity. Who benefits? The developers and The Councils' operational management of course. Who pays? Everybody else of course and for the most part ratepayers.

Yes, yes, infrastructure needs to be maintained and upgraded. However, by way of example, if there was ever a time that the cessation of Landfill Waste Disposal – dumping unutilised resources in the environment –  needed to be implemented, it is right now. This council has been ducking that issue for way too long and here we committing $6Million to burying resources in one financial year. Who benefits? Not a community looking for 21st C sustainability. Imagine for a moment how else that money could be invested and the dividends it might deliver.

Curiously, if you quiz a councillor or an operative they'll tell you that this or that is going on BUT,  they'll say, we must keep on consigning 'waste', otherwise imaginable as a resource, to landfill. Why? When does it stop?

With a tokenistic Climate Emergency Policy it must seem plausible to keep on trotting out this inconceivably stupid nonsense, otherwise why do it? One day the first step needs to be made and NOW seems as good a time to do it as was the times passed over. However, this is just a tiny bit of the fiscal ineptitude on display. Stop landfill now!

Year upon year this council fails to deliver projects on time and on budget and apart for a faint apology here and there, the prospect for fiscal accountability and transparency is way, way over the horizon.

Acting Mayor Cr Gibson – or should we say aspirant mayor – projects returning to fiscal sanity by 2025-26. That does not look like a prospect UNLESS this council can get away with hitting up the ratepayers to cover the operational excess and budget overruns. That is what typically happens but it is time for a serious rethink. None of this fiscal failure can be put down to COVID-19, not a skerrick.

It is concerning that council is in already debt, and: 
  • Apparently that is in the order of $12 Million; and 
  • Apparently that is expected to grow to $32 Million; and 
  • The city's current budget is $7.5 Million in deficit; and 
  • Apparently that is to grow exponentially in 2021-22 – funded by borrowings fee and rate increases no doubt.
And, against this background Cr. Gibson has the temerity to talk about "careful and prudent planning aligned to our long-term finance plan".

On face value both the elected representatives and council operatives are not only exhibiting all the signs of having lost the plot, it is increasingly clear that, collectively, they were never in possession of a real world  strategy that was fiscally sound and plausible.

It needs to be said that, in its entirety, and in a 21st C context, the City of Launceston's Council is failing its citizenry big time. One Councillor  is calling out the city's unsustainable rate demands compared to elsewhere, but not a squeak out of the other Councillors or management, not a squeak in defence.

In the business world this lot would be summarily dismissed and deservedly so. In Tasmanian Local Government council's have increasingly become less and less accountable and dismissal that is, in Launceston, is never on the agenda. You have to wonder what dastardly deed would bring about such an outcome. What actually separates this council from say Glenorchy and Huon Councils?

In the short term residents, ratepayers and businesses need to be making their aspirations and concerns well known and loudly. In the longer term, Tasmanians need to be demanding fundamental and meaningful change. No longer can Tasmanians waste time talking about accountability and transparency as too much is at risk for future generations. Those who will paying today's debt tomorrow no matter how large.

Those who generated the debt will have superannuated and insulated themselves far, far away from any consequences. They will have moved on and some may well be in their final repose.

The current system allows elected representatives to be sidelined and senior management to use their positions to asset strip budgets for their own purposes – sometimes perverse purposes.

Rather than play the compliance game set down by the powers that be at Town Hall ratepayers and citizens should:
  • Send their comments and expectations of the budget to each and every Councillor or specific Councillors;
  • Phone each and every Councillor or specific Councillors and tell them what they expect;
  • Go to https://www.facebook.com/CityOfLauncestonOfficial/ and share your concerns there and on other othe social media
  • Send your concerns to the press via email; and
  • Copy them to the GM/CEO and Mayor, his Deputy and then the Minister for Local Govt – whoever that turns out to be.
IN SHORT give'm heaps!

Tandra Vale
              

APRIL 17 2021
City of Launceston council to 
release 2021-22 budget 
Dana Anderson

QVMAG programs to be supported in proposed 2021-22 budget. 
  • Recreational facilities, 
  • roads and traffic maintenance, and 
  • waste 
all rated high on the list for the City of Launceston council's proposed 2021-22 budget. 

City of Launceston acting mayor Danny Gibson said the proposed expenditure of $130 million for the 2021-22 financial year included 
  • $24.19 million on recreational facilities, 
  • $12 million on roads and traffic, and 
  • $5.9 million for extension capping at the Launceston Waste Centre. 
  •  The council also proposes to invest in the ongoing implementation of the My Place My Future plan, 
  • Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery program and 
  • Smart City initiatives. 
 Other projects in the proposed budget include 
  • $3.2 million for major road reconstruction, 
  • $1 million for urban road resealing, 
  • $750,000 for Reimaging the Gorge, 
  • $450,000 for footpath work, and 
  • $460,000 for the redevelopment of parking at Churchill Park. 
Last year the council's proposed rate increase of 3.9 per cent was abandoned in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ............................. Councillor Gibson said the proposed general rate increase of 3.75 per cent for the upcoming budget was offset by the rate freeze in the previous financial year. ............................. Though the council budgeted for a $7.1 million underlying deficit in 2021-22, Cr Gibson said the council remained in a strong financial position. ............................. "Through careful and prudent planning aligned to our long-term finance plan, we are confident the council will return to a full surplus by 2025-26," he said. ............................. However the flow on effects of the pandemic, particularly with the Community Care and Recovery Package designed to help businesses recover, did hurt the council's bottom line. ............................. "I firmly believe that the $8.7 million package ... went a long way to help protect our community and our businesses from the impacts of the pandemic," Cr Gibson said. ............................. "On the flip side, it did result in the council taking a significant hit to its bottom line and it will continue to do so over the next three or four years." The council will also see challenging waste and recycling charges, with the City of Launceston budgeting for a 10.4 per cent increase. ............................. Increasing depreciation costs, and increasing operating costs of the two museum sites and University of Tasmania Stadium will also be issues the council will continue to address. ............................. Cr Gibson encouraged all residents and ratepayers to read the proposed budget when it's released and make a submission. 

Submissions to the budget can be made by email to
in writing addressed to the 
  • Chief Executive Officer, City of Launceston, 
  • PO Box 396, Launceston 7250
  • until 5pm on May 7.

Sunday 11 April 2021

CAN LAUNCESTON EVER BE A SMART CITY?


Contrary to the POST COVID SNAP BACK THEORY the status quo is not ‘the normal’ we need to be aspiring towards. It is in fact as dead as a Dodo. That class of thinking has been turned on its head and in reality, it is an unsustainable myth that casts a very dark shadow over 21st Century cultural realities and placemaking. 

The ‘civic planners’ educated in the 20th Century and who stopped thinking the day they graduated, or the day they got their first paid work, and still cling to what was ‘normal and acceptable’ are now redundant and surplus to requirement. The curtain fell on testing 'critical thinking' and it is time to rest upon one's laurels and gather fruit from the money tree.

With encroaching climate change, and the prospect of international serial pandemics, what was imagined as ‘normal’ has already passed much to the chagrin of the ‘relaxed and comfortable’ civic planners. That 'normal' is in tatters and there is a real need for a paradigm shift. 

However, there is a NEW NORMAL that is achievable, and: 
• It has been costed; and 
• In the face of the climate change that is upon us it is worth the effort; and 
• Importantly, the required work towards a NEW NORMAL has actually started.

If precedence is required, well Melbourne as a ‘place’ interested in 21st Century ‘placemaking and cultural landscaping’ and the city is taking the first foundation steps towards establishing a NEW NORMAL

In fact, the Melbournian movers and shakers have found precedences for their aspirations internationally – simply because they searched for them. However, more to the point, there is a network of thinkers there who are actually taking the first steps forward. 

More than that they are able to articulate a vision for a NEW NORMAL while the status quoists stand by shaking their heads wondering what isa in it for them ... well nothing really.

Let’s imagine the redundant rusted on NORMALISTS, the status quoist, for what they are, self-serving ‘cultural road blocks’. They are ‘functionaries and bureaucratic underlings’ who find saying NO to change, and loudly, less threatening. That is so albeit that those who pay their salaries and who are increasingly seeking change in order to meet new challenges and hopefully looking towards a NEW NORMAL – a sustainable future

That old, old adage that goes “if it is too hot in the kitchen get out of it” ideally to fulfil a new/another usefulness in another paradigm. For some that is going to be very hard work but so be it. If you are surplus to requirement perhaps there is place for you to spend your time well away ’real world enterprises’. Whatever, their level of ‘value judgement’ and ‘deemed authority’ needs to be at the very least put to one side – at best totally displaced and disrupted

Regional cities such as Launceston could well reach out and seek to be a part of the change towards a NEW NORMAL that must be. An early and eminently achievable project is END LANDFILL and reimagine 'waste centres' as resource recovery centres.  Nonetheless, on the evidence, there is a bureaucratic disinclination to do any such a thing – . 

Currently in Launceston, buildings that will impact NEGATIVELY on the community and the ecology within which they are sited are not only being approved, they are being lauded. 

Mindblowingly, in Launceston 'right now' there is a bridge under construction that apparently is unlikely to meet even 20th Century engineering standards. It seems that: 
• It may well fail any credible safety tests; and 
• That is being built under the gaze of the city’s civic planners and engineers; and 
• That it has the potential to cost ratepayers more than they can really afford. 

Sadly, it appears that the project has got to this stage without adequate ‘civic supervision’ but more importantly it is potentially yet another impost on the community that just cannot afford it. If this is the OLD NORMAL it is the result of redundant civic process antithetic accountability and transparency. 

Likewise, there are other ‘developments’ being flagged that are not only potential ‘multidimensional civic abominations’ and if realised would impact heavily upon the ecology in ways that ultimately cost future communities seeking a NEW NORMAL, an affordable ‘normal’, a sustainable ‘normal’, to the extent that they will need to be deconstructed/reconstructed one way or another. 

An achievable future based upon the exploitation of inexhaustible and renewable resources is within reach. However, it is being put out of reach by underperforming 'civic managers' unable, unwilling or ill equiped to aspire towards a NEW NORMAL while the status quo persist and pays them well.          

What is actually needed now is the intellectual wherewithal to take those all important ‘first steps’SEE: https://www.normalise.it/the-full-story 

LISTEN HERE TO AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CONCEPT



Friday 26 March 2021

Is Janie Finlay Independent or is she looking for somewhere to swing to?

 


Rumours are flowing thick and fast and why wouldn't they be? Councillor Janie Finlay, an ex-mayor for the City of Launceston and recently an independent candidate for Rosevears in the Legislative Council, and now an 'advisor' to the Tasmanian Labour Party, is now looking like she'll be taking a shot Bass for Labor. 

Are you confused? That's us talking to you readers but yes indeed we could be asking Janie. It is all very confusing but hey these days politics is a career and one must take one's chances where one finds them. 

Apparently Janie is going around the traps to see what's there in the way of support. Is it on the wane or is it holding? If she stands, she'll discover all that yet again on May 1.

Speculation aside lets throw a couple of ideas about that she might like to consider. A good place to start would be what the State government could and should be to do with Local Government. Janie could be quizzed quite intensely given the generally poor state of affairs in local governance in both Launceston and Tasmania generally and her direct hands on experience. In fact, she is consistent mover and seconder on a vast array of agenda items.

Janie Finlay is not short on opinions on the full spectrum of issues and she is always there with the winning team even at the most contentious times. If she has ever voted against anything its nothing that stands out in the community she represents and that seems extraordinary.

In any case, it'd be an imperative for Janie Finlay to now do a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats test for local governance in Tasmania – given her expertise. She has wide experience and by now she will know where the bodies are buried but will she tell us or rather those whom she hopes to persuade to vote for her as a Labor candidate.

Janie Finlay as a candidate for Bass might be inclined to discuss local governance's transparency and accountability and perhaps even call a community hall meeting on the topic. There would be a crowd, COVID-19 notwithstanding, ready and willing to listen to her in the company of all the alternative candidates. 

Janie Finlay as a candidate for Bass might also be inclined to speak on 'women's issues' along with the cultural diversity of communities in Tasmania. She might well be able to articulate what employment opportunities she envisages for Tasmania in the short, medium and longer term in the State.

Janie Finlay as a candidate for almost anything can talk on almost anything but this time round she'll need to deliver more than platitudes and unfulfillable parish pump promises. But we are jumping the gun and assuming that she will be a candidate and its the Labor Party that needs to decide who they are going to back in this very winnable State Government election.


Wednesday 24 March 2021

WHAT LAUNCESTON PEOPLE CANNOT EXPECT

  • Expect a councillor to take a phone call or call you back.
  • Expect to get to speak to someone with the information you need if you phone the reception desk.
  • Expect the council to contain expenditure and keep rates and charges in line with a economic norm.
  • Expect the council to give local business a fair chance to tender for council work.
  • Expect the council to complete a project on time and on budget.
  • Expect the council to consult with residents on anything that they do.
  • Expect the council to meet environmental standards that take account climate change.
  • Expect the council to work with community to develop their streets,  roadways and maintain verges.
  • Expect the council to work with small businesses to enable to grow and generate employment.
  • Expect the councillors to pay any attention to ordinary people to live more comforably and develop their neighbouhood.
  • Expect either a council officer or councillor to pay any attention to  their needss as residents or business people.\
And ask almost anyone and you will find other things to add to the list.  The city gets the council it gets because the residents just cannot see a way ahead with the kind of administration the city has and that keeps the elected representatives in the dark.

THE VALUE OF URBAN TREES


IF one man can do this what might a city do over and above what it currently does? 

This could also be imagined as ‘development’  ... A development at least? 

IF this can be achieved in Hong Kong what could be done with unloved trees in Launceston? 

What can be made from one tree, any tree? This could also be imagined as ‘cultural development’ ?

 A 100 designer makers could be asked the question could they not?

Developers building new homes in certain areas across Adelaide must replace every tree lost due to construction, or pay up to $1200 per removed tree, under a proposed new State Government scheme. The draft plan, which will be signed off in late February, aims to encourage tree planting and reduce canopy loss in urban residential areas. It will apply in zones outlined in the proposed Planning and Design Code, including in Housing Diversity Neighbourhood, Urban Renewal Neighbourhood and City Living Zones.

LINKS TO DOCUMENTATION [1] • [2] •  [3]


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Mainstream ecological sustainability into development strategies 
Rather than falling back on existing approaches to ecological sustainability LOCAL GOVERNANCE should reflect a transformed mindset and a novel economic strategy  On September 25, 2015, the world celebrated the adoption of the United Nations resolution “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. The agenda comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with 169 associated targets. Since governments of all UN member states are committed to the agenda, in theory at least there is international consensus on a new philosophy of development, representing a major departure from long prevalent orthodoxy.