MEDIA RELEASE: Communication Failure at Launceston's Town Hall

It has come to our Launceston Concerned Citizen’s Network’s attention that the BIGPOND and OUTLOOK EXPRESS so-called email service is currently dysfunctional and apparently this is so not only in Tasmania and Australia but internationally.

Several members of the network have had intermittent and unreliable service for some weeks now and they have found various ways to deal with the issue. 

Once the issue is known there are alternatives that can be employed. If this problem in the midst of the COVID-19 is not a big enough problem by itself it is compounded by the City of Launceston’s determination that it, as a matter of administrative policy, does not and will not acknowledge the receipt of incoming emails as do most professional operations it is plain to see. The technology is simple and straight forward. 

This is a matter that has been raised with council’s management and people’s representations simply fall upon bureaucratic deaf ears. In a 2020 context, this is an outrageously unempathetic stance for Tasmania’s largest Council to be taking. 

SECTION 62/2 of the Tasmanian Local Government Act affords the General Manager (aka CEO) to ”do anything necessary or convenient to perform his or her functions under this or any other Act” and it appears this is in evidence in regard to acknowledging incoming email traffic. 

It needs to be noted that this is not an emergency provision of the Act and that it serially invoked at Launceston’s Town Hall and especially so when an issue is contentious. 

Here, receiving Development Application representations impacted upon by council policy and the failure of technology. 

It is also the case that SECTION 62/2 seems to be authorising Council officers to reject representations impacted by the acknowledged failure of an email service that was relied upon by a subscriber. 

This is not a case of the ‘dog eating the homework’, it is a technology failure being treated unsympathetically and arguably inappropriately. 

The city’s General Manager is on leave and it appears that his underlings are behaving like mice while the cat is away. 

Doreen Bowen 

Communications Officer 

0434 294 473