Estimates - Local Government - Lift the Tone

CHAIR - Minister, last year the Local Government Association of Tasmania launched their Lift the Tone campaign, and I note that when retiring mayor of Kingborough Paula Wriedt left, she said she'd talked about the toxic behaviour in councils, and we know that it's a problem. It's probably a reason why many people, particularly women or people from diverse backgrounds, are thinking, is council really for me? And I'll just quote the president of the Local Government Association, Mick Tucker, when he said: 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. The Lift The Tone campaign followed a survey conducted by LGAT that found almost 80 per cent of councillors and council staff in Tasmania had interactions with members of the community that were abusive and intimidating. Alderman Susie Cai was in the paper this week talking about some racist comments which were pretty ugly. So, since the last council election, could you tell us how many codes of conduct have been considered, and how many suspensions or orders there might have been? What are you doing to improve the conduct of local government elected members from your ministry?

Mr VINCENT - Certainly, and before I hand over to Luke for those numbers, I share your comments and observations there. It's not in my make-up to be anything other than conciliatory with people around the table, but we have seen a deterioration in that. I think all of us around the table who have been involved with local government fully understand the emotions that come out from even walking into the supermarket some days, and I can assure you it's not just people from multicultural or females wanting to stand. It is also an enormous amount of men that are intimidated by those actions.

From day-one I've had talks with the Local Government Association about changing that, and some of my staff have been involved with talks with Dion in regards to a social media program in the lead-up to the October elections advocating to 'think before you run'. Think of the reasons why you need to run for council, why you want to run for council, and the requirements and the respect required when you do, if you do, get to council. Because it is not just the angst from a public point of view. We're also seeing a lot of angst towards council staff, and in quite a few cases over the last probably, in recent years, a lot of angst from councillors to council staff as well. So, it is forefront in my mind that the sector needs to be better at how it portrays itself, and as Mr Tucker says, the debate is vital. We've all got different opinions, and I think that's what makes democracy strong. People have to realise that and have respect for the other people around the table. I will hand to Luke to do those numbers, please, on the code of conducts.

Mr GREGORY - Yes, thank you, minister, and through you, minister: in terms of our number of complaints received in this financial year for 2025-2026 - as at 31 March 2026 I'll clarify - we had 11 complaints that have come through. One of those was dismissed after investigation - sorry, three have been dismissed on initial assessment and the remaining eight are under assessment and investigation, including one of those that's carried over from the previous financial year due to some delays.

I will say that the trend after a couple of really, I guess, significantly high complaint years in 2023-24 and 2024-25 - in 2023-24 it was actually 54 complaints; in the subsequent year it was 40. So, 11 at this time in the cycle, in an election year, I think is a positive sign. Obviously, we would like to see code of conduct used as a last resort, I guess particularly when we are looking at disputes and conflicts between councillors - elected member on elected member. There are some changes that we've made to the framework in recent times that we are hoping, and we hope this is evidence of actually seeing them start to work in practice. Those changes have included the introduction of a mandated dispute resolution framework at every at every council. That came in in September 2024 and then all councils had to have one of those in place by September 2025, and they now do. LGAT are supporting that process with a panel of mediators that councils can access. By all accounts, that is going well. The other changes that we've been making is to sort of tighten up the initial assessment process, to make sure that only valid complaints are getting through to, I guess, a final panel, and not vexatious complaints. We really want to knock those out. Finally, we've actually developed and released some guidelines for handling unreasonable elected member behaviour, to act as a resource for general managers and for councillors to know and understand their avenues in order to deal with some of the more unsavoury conduct that we see sometimes. And that can include code of conduct, but it can also include recourse to other regulators like WorkSafe.

CHAIR - Okay. I'm conscious of time. I mean, it's an important question but I wonder if you could take that on notice as to, since the last election, the number of codes of conduct. That would be useful, if that's okay, minister?

Mr VINCENT - I certainly can. We can collate those numbers so that it does show from the last election, year on year.

CHAIR - Thank you.