Monday 31 October 2016

AURORA STADIUM NAME CHANGE??



Aurora Stadium
I WONDER how many Launcestonians are aware that our footy ground on Invermay Road on Invermay Round has an official title that goes back to 1901?

That name still stands today it is York Park, named after the Duke of York after his visit to Tasmania.

Are we disrespecting his memory by using an alternate commercial name and ignoring the history of this site?

My understanding is that as he was the Duke of York and Cornwall, that was the reason for Cornwall Square being so named.

We have now denigrated Cornwall Square by selling off part of it for 30 pieces of silver, or maybe a bit more, we’ve done the same to York Park, this is the second time as it’s now Aurora Stadium.

Perhaps our fly-in, fly-out general manager who appears to have more power than our aldermen would consider selling off the Town Hall, Albert Hall and the Cenotaph and leasing them back?

Ron Baines, Kings Meadows.



Saturday 29 October 2016

Citizen Juries Are Working Right Now

The newDEMOCRACY Foundation Day three of the Nuclear Citizens' Jury in Adelaide. Jurors hearing from 32 witnesses that they chose. This YOUtube video provides an insight into how Citizen’s Juries work and are working [LINK] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5-KegQKmSE
If you want to know more about what citizens' juries are and how they work? Why not listen to nDF Board member, Professor Carson, being interviewed on Real Democracy Now! a podcast (episode 1.1). This podcast is hosted by one of the newDEMOCRACY Foundation’s very own volunteers and is available through iTunes [LINK]– https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/real-democracy-now!-a-podcast/id1164312350?mt=2]


Wednesday 26 October 2016

IT'S TIME .... time to rethink and reimagine local governance in Tasmania

Emmanuel Macron is a high official investment banker and politician French, born in Amiens 1977. 

Macron is a technocrat, tax inspector and an investment banker at Rothschild & C  before being appointed Deputy General Secretary of the Presidency of the Republic with François Hollande 2012 to 2014 . 

He was appointed Minister of Economy Industry and Numeric in the government Manuel Valls II inAugust 2014. Having been a member of the Socialist Party between 2006 and 2009 , he founded the movement “En Marche!”, or “Forward!” [LINK].

Macron resigned from his ministerial duties in August 2016.

Emmanuel Macron was Montebourg’s successor as Minister of the Economy and possibly a presidential candidate in 2017. Macron has his own proposal for creating an allotted supervisory body ... the creation of a citizens’ commission . 

Macron may have earned a degree in philosophy at one of Paris' top universities, but there is nothing grande école about his manner. In our social-media age of "real" politicians, he appears the epitome of authenticity.... [LINK]

Each year, the president of the Republic has to appear before a citizens’ commission – [citizens' assembly/jury - LINK]  –  to be held to account, possibly supported by the Court of Audit. Macron envisages the possibility of using allotment. This would allow the recreation of a little “political hygiene” in the system. For creating a democratic debate “which does not exist today”.

"He speaks his mind, but he does so in an elegant way. He is talented and business- oriented. The country needs someone like him to embody innovation and to give it a face."
So Macron may indeed be what one commentator calls the "missing link", that reassuring yet revolutionary insider/outsider able to connect all of France's fabulous assets. But it's not entirely clear that even Macron's pin-up looks and charisma will be enough to genuinely transform France into Start-Up Nation 2.0.
Back in June TIME ran a story "Emmanuel Macron Has Big Plans for France. Is It Ready for Them?" that reported that when Macron visited the small driving school in Montreuil the owner handed him a boxed gift. Inside lay a sculpture of the literary character Don Quixote, the self-styled knight who fights for impossibly noble ideals. Macron laughed as he picked it up. “We need people who dream impossible things,” he said, “who maybe fail, sometimes succeed, but in any case who have that ambition.” 

Macron’s dreams of becoming France's next President – and  brining about fundament change – no longer seems impossible. So, if Macron can dream of fundamental change why not entertain such change in Tasmania – and sooner rather than later?

Tasmania's Local Govt Act 1993 is well past its use-by-date, its flawed in a 21st C context and its provisions are open to governance without accountability. Quite simply, on the evidence the 'system' is broken and dysfunctional. Tasmania has often been used as a kind of 'social laboratory' and very often with positive outcomes. 

Rather that 'stick like a load'a krap' to an outmoded and klapped-out local governance system its time to embrace change. It's time to start a really serious conversation about effecting real change and right now.

Watch this space!
CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

Sunday 23 October 2016

The foolishness of asking the wrong questions Minister Gutwein

CLICK HERE FOR THE MERCURY STORY
Eva Ruzicka is out there on FACEBOOK asking about the idea of, and  the new emerging  myths to do with  "strategic capability". She also thinks that "Mayor Tony Foster hit it on the head by pointing to economist in pin striped suits."

She is asking Minister Gutwein, why he is so afraid to have a real conversation aimed at sorting out what is the reality of state government responsibilities.

Indeed she is on the money in asking about the capacity local government to maintain Tasmania's "increasingly frayed social fabric." 

The notion that the State should, as she says "actually [be] taking financial responsibility for whole of state services that in this day and age" is, it seems to her viable. OTher think the model is broken.

Likewise she seems to think that Tasmania's 29 Councils are best suited to delivering the required services.  But are they?

Mayor Foster might, as Eva Ruzicka says, be right about his pin striped suited 'economists'  but it seems that they are being asked to answer the wrong questions. The question that really needs asking is to do with the model's viable – a 20th Century model – and up to the task in the 21st Century for a population of something over half a million souls? 

Having asked that we then need to look around us and ask ourselves is this model standing up to the rigours of time. The evidence seems to pointing to it not being so. 

Stuart Bryce it seems thinks "that there's some merit in trashing councils [given] the latest scrap at LCC [Launceston Council] it seems that in certain "operational" circumstances, alderman are redundant." Most of the people who vote in council elections imagine that the are voting for representatives not a bit of it in Launceston it appears.

Just look at all the nonsense that Ald. Danny Gibson is being exposed to and that it all alerts us to in regard to the renaming of the Aurora Stadium and the "support" for the North East Rail Trail by LCC. As Stuart Bryce says on FACEBOOK nothing "heard in Council [of] either of those decisions."

As George Burrows points out to Stuart Bryce "your lot [Launcestonians] are just beginners compared to Huonville and Glenorchy, but I must say you seem to be learning fast."

Social media is telling those who use it quite a bit and the press is telling us nothing of real interest.

If Minister Gutwein is not looking around himself and observing the unraveling of the 'local governance rope' one wonders whose lent him their rose coloured glasses and in order not to se what.

It hardly seems credible that the case for an open and independent inquiry involving 'the public' actually needs to be put to the Minister given all that's revealing itself. But it seems that it does!

About now if we were not having all-in-all-out four year term councils we'd be having elections - rather just had one. Councilors and aldermen would as likely as not be on much better behavior and the inevitability of facing local governance's dysfunction might just have been prolonged. But it seems that the dysfunction must be faced now.

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Bad Planning Proposal Stopped!


Launceston Council's Lindsay Street Carpark proposal is now off the agenda.  
What would have happened if not enough people took on the council and ensured that they had their voiced herd. This is one of those projects that cause rates to go up and up if they are not stopped!

SEE THE TASMANIAN RATEPATERS SITE 

PUBLIC MEETING: Statewide Planning Scheme

The Hodgman Government is 'reforming' Tasmania's planning laws to make it easier for developers to gain approvals by weakening protections, watering down assessment rigor and winding back public engagement and opportunities to appeal.
 
This is complex, detailed and happening right now.
 
One day it will affect you; when a development is built in your favourite national park or reserve, when apartments are built overshadowing your backyard or the character and amenity of you neighbourhood is altered for good.
 

Find out more at an upcoming public meeting.
 
Date      Tues 8 Nov 2016 (World Planning Day)

Time     1.10 pm – 2 pm

Venue    Hobart Town Hall, 50 Macquarie Street, Hobart, Tasmania



Speakers to include Michael Buxton Professor of Environment and Planning at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University.
 
More speakers to be announced soon.