More than 90 per cent of Kingborough is mapped as bushfire prone, and we carry the highest bushfire building exposure of any council in Greater Hobart. A new council declared in November takes office in the middle of the fire season, so this cannot wait for a strategy document. In the first weeks I will bring council’s bushfire readiness position to the chamber and to residents in plain English.

• Publish a fire season readiness statement covering council land, road reserves and community facilities, so residents can see what council is doing with its own fuel loads while asking them to manage theirs
• Extend green waste disposal support for landholders preparing their properties, in place while it still matters this season
• Commission the assessment of council owned and council managed land for the bushfire risk it transfers onto neighbouring private property, the first step towards the published works programme I have committed to
• Publicise Kingborough’s role in the bushfire preparedness pilot with the City of Hobart, RACT and the University of Tasmania Fire Centre, which most residents do not know we are part of

By day 100: the readiness statement is published, green waste support has been in place across the season, the council land risk assessment is commissioned, and the pilot is public knowledge.

Landowners at Allens Rivulet, Kaoota and Gordon, and others right down the Channel, from Taroona and Leslie Vale to Snug and across to Bruny Island, have told me the same story. Gordon in particular keeps coming up. Part 5 agreements under the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993 are registered on the title, bind every future owner, and were meant to be freely negotiated and proportionate. Instead, some landowners allege they were used as leverage to get a decision across the line. Those allegations deserve to be tested properly, not waved away.

• Establish a select committee of councillors in the first 100 days, with published terms of reference
• Work with community organisations, including the Kingborough Land Users Body, and invite affected landowners to bring their agreements forward
• Examine how council has applied Part 5 agreements, separate fact from fiction, and identify the legal avenues available where something has genuinely gone wrong

By day 100: the committee is established, submissions are open, the first sessions with landowners have been held, and a public reporting date is fixed.

Council’s own published planning advice, in the agenda of 3 August 2026, states that the Kingborough Biodiversity Offset Policy in its current form cannot be easily integrated with the Tasmanian Planning Scheme, and that its place in our planning framework remains unresolved. A policy that takes money and land commitments from landowners while its own legal footing is an open question needs a proper review, not another quiet year.

There is an anomaly inside it too. The policy is written for applications and applicants, and nothing in it requires Council to pay offsets for the vegetation it clears on its own land. Ratepayers pay. Council does not. A rule that binds the public but not the body that wrote it is not a principle, it is a charge.

• Commission a formal review of the policy: its legal status under the incoming planning scheme, what has been collected under it in offsets and monetary contributions, and what those funds have delivered
• Test whether Council should be bound by its own offset policy for works on its own land. If the policy survives review in any form, it should bind Council’s own works the same way it binds a family’s block, and we would soon see how workable the policy really is
• Set out the way forward openly: reform it, replace it, or retire it, with the evidence for whichever course is recommended
• Publish the findings in full and in plain English, as I have promised for every review in my platform

By day 100: the review is commissioned with published terms of reference and a public reporting date.

The CEO Performance and Review Committee is required to meet annually. It has not met for more than a year. That is not a paperwork lapse. The review of the CEO’s performance belongs to the elected council. The councillors around the table are the CEO’s employer, and reviewing the performance of council’s only direct employee is one of the most important governance duties they hold. It has simply not been done. Other committees have drifted the same way.

The stocktake will also look at what is missing, not just what has lapsed. A Community Safety Committee is one example. Residents handed me a list of hooning and anti-social behaviour hotspots unprompted, from Algona Road to the Tinderbox Track carpark, and the work that follows, a CCTV coverage audit, formal footage protocols with Tasmania Police and a stronger Crime Stoppers partnership, needs a home in council’s committee structure rather than a home in a drawer. There may well be other committees we need to establish to improve the accountability and performance of Council. Some will be select committees, doing a defined job for a short period. Others should be standing committees, there for the long haul.

• Publish a meeting calendar for every active committee so the annual cycle can never quietly lapse again

By day 100: the CEO Performance and Review Committee has met, the case for a Community Safety Committee has been put to council, and every committee has a published calendar for 2027.

When the current council was elected four years ago, councillors were promised a tour of council’s facilities. Despite multiple reminders, it never happened. This time it will be delivered in the first 100 days, not promised again for four years.

Councillors are, in effect, the directors of a 200+ employee organisation, yet many have never stood in the depots, halls and facilities their votes affect. A director who has never walked the floor cannot properly weigh the decisions that govern it. This tour is an educational and decision-making exercise: knowing what we own, how it fits together, where our people work, and appreciating the very organisation we are elected to govern.

• Schedule the full facilities tour in the first weeks and complete it within the 100 days, covering depots, community facilities and major sites across the municipality

By day 100: every councillor has been offered the full tour and the programme is complete.

Alongside the facilities tour, the new council will be properly introduced to the organisation it governs: meeting staff across departments, understanding how the administration actually operates day to day, and knowing where council’s properties are and what condition they are in. Councillors who understand the organisation make better decisions and ask better questions, and staff deserve elected members who know who they are and what they do.

By day 100: the induction programme has run, and every councillor has met the teams behind the services they vote on.

Good governance is a skill, not an instinct. The Office of Local Government runs a training pathway for candidates and sitting councillors, and there is no excuse for any elected member being behind on it.

• Review the education pathway of every councillor, including my own, against the Office of Local Government training programme
• Ensure every councillor is up to date, with completion reported to council

By day 100: every councillor’s training status has been reviewed and any gaps have a booked completion date.

Before council asks the community to accept its decisions, councillors should sit in front of the community and listen. In the first few months of the new term, every councillor will be asked to take part in a listening tour across the municipality, with a deliberate focus on the regional areas that have long felt they have missed out and not been heard. Every session will be advertised in advance, and what we hear will be published and fed into council’s planning, including the 10 year infrastructure plan.

• Sessions across the municipality, from Kingston and Blackmans Bay through Margate, Snug, the rural localities, the Channel and Bruny Island
• Bruny Island included as a full session on the island, not an afterthought
• All sessions pre advertised, all feedback published

By day 100: the tour is complete, including Bruny Island, and a public report on what we heard has been released.

Nothing wears down community trust faster than roads, potholes, footpaths and drainage that never seem to get fixed. When I published my infrastructure priority, residents supplied their own list, unprompted: Summerleas Road, Tyndall Road, Bundalla Road, Van Morey Road, Impara Drive at Oyster Cove, potholes on Allens Rivulet Road, Lighthouse Road on Bruny Island, a safe crossing for Margate Primary, and more. That register deserves an answer, not a filing cabinet. By my calculations, and from conversations with council’s engineering team, the infrastructure component of council’s budget needs to rise by around $5 million per year to keep pace with growth, and an increase of that size must come with proper budget oversight, which is exactly what the next commitment delivers.

• Table the residents’ infrastructure register at council and have every item formally entered for assessment on merit, cost and safety
• Publish the assessment timetable, so every person who raised an item can see when they will get an answer
• Publish council’s service standards for waste and rubbish collection and report performance against them, because the basics are the first test of a council that works
• Commence the 10 year infrastructure plan aligned to population growth, which the listening tour will feed directly

By day 100: the register is tabled, every item has a published assessment date, and the 10 year infrastructure plan is commissioned.

Kingborough has delivered 19 deficits in 22 years. Within the first 100 days I will move to establish a select committee of councillors to review Kingborough Council’s budget from first principles, working with the Audit Panel. Its job is to pull the budget apart and answer the questions ratepayers keep asking: why do our costs rise so sharply every year, what are the major expenditures hitting us, and how much of that is genuinely outside our control? Cost escalation across the industry is real, and some of the increases councils are copping are extraordinary. But that makes the question sharper, not softer: how can this budget be sustained without hitting the community with rate rises above inflation while still delivering deficits?

• Establish the select committee with published terms of reference and a reporting date
• Work with the Audit Panel to trace the drivers of the annual cost increases, line by line
• Include every fee and charge council levies in the review, especially planning and building fees, because rates are not the only bill residents pay
• Separate genuine, unavoidable cost escalation from discipline council has failed to apply
• Report the findings publicly, in time to shape the 2027-28 budget

By day 100: the committee is established, the first working sessions with the Audit Panel have been held, and a public reporting date is fixed ahead of the 2027-28 budget round.

Residents should not need to watch a two hour livestream to know what their council is doing. From my first week as Mayor I will record a short weekly video update: what council decided, what is coming up, and what it means for you, in plain language, published through all official council channels. It is the simplest accountability tool there is. If the Mayor has to explain the week’s work to camera every week, the work has to stand up.

By day 100: at least 13 weekly updates have been published, without a missed week.