President's Report - April 2025

Welcome to the latest edition of LGAT News.

This month we launched an important campaign to lift the tone of engagement between members of the public, elected representatives and council staff. Debate is an important part of democracy but too often we are seeing this descend into hurtful and damaging comments. The impact of this is widespread and often unseen by the community. I’d like to thank those elected representatives who responded to our survey last year and shared their experiences of abuse and intimidation. It was alarming to see that almost 80% of you had interactions with members of the community that were abusive and intimidating in just the past two years. We don’t expect people to agree with every decision, but we should be respectful when voicing opposition or opinions. I urge you all to support this campaign and encourage respectful engagement between each other and members of our communities.

The start of 2025 has seen the release of various local government reforms for consultation by the Tasmanian Government. On behalf of all councils, we have responded to Targeted Amendments to the Local Government Act 1993, Remaking the Local Government Regulations and the Local Government Electoral Bill Discussion paper. While the sector is generally supportive of the broad direction of these reforms, we have provided specific feedback on aspects of all three proposals.

The Tasmanian Government has also handed over the administration of the councillor Learning and Development Framework to LGAT. The transition of the Learn to Lead website and online learning modules will be complete by 1 July 2025.  Once that occurs, we will develop the next stages of the Framework’s evolution.

It was a pleasure to see most Mayors and Deputy Mayors at our recent General Meeting and the workshop the next day.  We saw the debate of a number of sector motions and discussion on the contentious Development Assessment Panels proposal.