In your letterbox from 21 September
Four things I will fix as Mayor
The flyer, line by line, with the evidence behind every line and the page that carries the full argument. Nothing on it is a slogan. Every commitment has a mechanism and a source.
Four years of turning up. Not just at election time.
I am a Kingborough councillor, a Margate local, a husband and dad, and a successful CEO of multiple community service and business organisations. For four years I have turned up: at community meetings, on your roads, in the chamber and at your door, in every part of the municipality. I see the great work our council and its people do every day, and I understand where we fall short and how to fix it.
- The councillor everyone turns to when there is a problem with the bureaucracy. The record, item by item
- The only councillor to vote against this year’s 6% rate rise and record deficit, the 19th in 22 years. Watch the budget speech
- Moved the successful motion to withdraw the controversial Bonnet Hill and Bruny Island Specific Area Plans, which the community detested. The four reasons, on video · The full case
- 2026-27 budget: a 6% general and stormwater rates increase and an underlying deficit of $2.644 million. Kingborough Council, Agenda No. 11, 15 June 2026. The vote is recorded in Minutes No. 11 of the same date.
- The 19th deficit in 22 years is Aldo’s count from Council’s published underlying results; the same agenda notes Council’s “history of recording annual underlying deficits”.
- Specific Area Plans: motion moved by Cr Aldo Antolli, item 14.1, carried. Kingborough Council, Minutes No. 14, 3 August 2026.
Four things I will fix as Mayor
These are the four on the back of the flyer, word for word, with where each one comes from. Every one of them sits inside the 29-page priorities paper, which is the document to read if you want the mechanism, not the headline.
Landowners are our bushfire front line. Council must stop getting in their way.
- Let you clear bushfire fuel on your own land, extend green waste arrangements so you can clear before the season, and hold council land to the same standard
- Priority 7, Rural stewardship and environmental common sense: a faster path for genuine fuel reduction and defensible space, extended green waste collection before fire season, and an assessment of the bushfire risk Council’s own land carries onto the properties beside it, with the works programme published.
- Kingborough carries the highest bushfire building exposure of any council in Greater Hobart, and the cost of insuring a home here is rising because of it. What Council can actually do about it.
End excessive planning information demands.
- Rebuild planning around business and residential customers: minimal reasons to say no, maximum help to get approved, and an end to the excessive use of requests for information. No more zoning crises
- Priority 2, Planning reform that actually works and Priority 3, the review of council department functions, which covers the planning function review that commenced in March 2026.
- The zoning crisis he means: the Bonnet Hill and Bruny Island Specific Area Plans, withdrawn on his motion on 3 August 2026. Priority 10, Direct communication and zoning transparency.
19 Council deficits in 22 years. Enough.
- Mandated budget surpluses and rate rises only as a last resort. Clear the $10.9 million Kingston Park debt and its $552,000 a year interest bill
- Kingston: no more Kingston bus interchange or Summerleas Rd underpass fiascos. Council-level oversight on major projects
- Bruny Island: needs State and Federal funding support. Visitor levy discussions are current with the Premier’s Office: tourists pay, locals exempt, every dollar stays on Bruny. Fitting for the south’s number one tourist destination
- Priority 1, Long term financial planning and asset management reform, and the budget speech of 15 June 2026.
- Council’s borrowings: “currently $10.922M with $3M having been retired during the year”. Agenda No. 11, 15 June 2026, officer’s response to a question on notice. Loan interest for 2026-27 is budgeted at $552,350, down from $670,000 the year before: 2026/27 Operational Budget Estimates and the Annual Plan 2026/27, borrowing costs line.
- Kingston bus interchange and Summerleas Road underpass: Council’s own independent reviews found “systemic issues” in how both builds were managed, including a turning radius recommendation that was ignored. Pulse Tasmania, 8 December 2025; ABC News, 15 October 2024. Priority 8, Infrastructure for a growing community sets out the oversight fix.
- Bruny: 220,525 interstate and overseas visitors in the year to March 2026, about one in six of everyone who comes to Tasmania from elsewhere, close to 380,000 visitor trips a year once Tasmanians are counted, and $1.8 million a year in rates from the island. Priority 9, Bruny Island, with 31 sources, including every funding option that has been assessed and the State partner it depends on.
Get ahead of road maintenance instead of chasing it.
- End the pothole tyranny: more funding for the engineering team, and a published works list with a date against every job, reported every quarter so you can understand timing
- Margate and the Channel: a safe crossing for our kids at Margate, a safe turn out of Sandfly Road, and the Huntingfield to Margate shared path built with State funding support
- Bruny Island: seal as much of the Lighthouse road as possible, so road dust stops fouling tank water
- Priority 8, Infrastructure for a growing community: the works list commitment, the Margate crossing and Margate Primary, the Sandfly Road turn onto the Channel Highway at peak hour, Summerleas Road sealing and the footpath to the fire station.
- Huntingfield to Margate shared path: the State’s route runs from the Antarctic Division through Peter Murrell Reserve and around the golf club into Margate; planning and design is under way, construction is not yet funded (Legislative Council Estimates, 4 June 2026). Council backed the path on 4 May 2026 (Minutes No. 8, item 16.1), on an amendment Aldo moved.
- Lighthouse Road: sealing has design money but no construction funding. Aldo on Lighthouse Road, on video.
Rural or suburban, Channel or island: every part of Kingborough heard, and every part supported.
No more great divide.
Anyone can print a flyer. Not everyone can back it up.
Every promise on the back of that flyer has already been tested before you read it: in the chamber, on the record, and in a 29-page paper that names the mechanism for each one. A budget I was the only councillor to refuse. Plans the community detested, withdrawn on my motion. Four years of votes you can check line by line. That is the difference between a candidate and a leader: the work is done before the election, not promised for after it. Do not take the flyer’s word for it. Take the record’s.
Postal ballots arrive from 5 October. Voting closes 2pm Tuesday 27 October.
Two ballot papers. Two boxes marked 1.
Formality rules as published by the Tasmanian Electoral Commission for local government elections. Deputy Mayor is a separate paper: number at least one box.
The flyer
Both sides, as delivered.
