Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliot has been suspended for two months following a Code of Conduct panel finding over her social media activity, with the ban to start next week.
The panel found Elliot breached four parts of the Code of Conduct covering causing offence, undermining council decisions, bringing council into disrepute and failing to show respect.
Two other alleged breaches were dismissed.
The complaint was brought by Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds in June 2025 and related to several of Elliot’s Facebook posts made between February and May that year.
The suspension related in part to a post in which she shared an image of a historical document alongside a political comment about the Greens.
“The Greens are today’s communists, but with many more men in dresses and young girls with double mastectomies,” the post read.
The document Elliot shared was dated December 4 1967 and references the parents of Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds
It states that Anna Reynolds’ father, historian Henry Reynolds, had attempted to join the Communist Party while a student at the University of Tasmania “but his application was rejected”.
The document also suggests Anna Reynold’s father and her mother Margaret “would probably join the Townsville branch of the Australia-USSR Society in 1968”.
Elliot said the document was freely available online and not confidential.
The panel found the post “had no purpose other than as an attempt to cause political harm to Cr Reynolds by association”.
It found the caption sought to infer Margaret Reynolds and Cr Reynolds were members of the Greens.
In a witness statement, Margaret Reynolds said she was “shocked” by the use of her personal information and felt Elliot had “exploited” her and her husband’s names.
As part of the outcome, Elliot has been ordered to apologise to Margaret Reynolds for causing “embarrassment and offence”.
In a statement to Pulse, Elliot said she had been punished for “fair political commentary”.
“I’ve been suspended for two months for sharing publicly available information with fair political commentary, for comments made on my social media by other people and for criticising council decisions,” she said.
“The Reynolds family implied that I’d misused some ‘secret police file’ when, in reality, I shared information that is freely available online for the world to see.”
The panel also cited comments left by followers on Elliot’s pages that she did not moderate quickly enough, including one describing Cr Reynolds as “a grub” and others referencing the Lord Mayor’s appearance.
The hearing was told Elliot had been “hiding” some offensive comments rather than deleting them. Elliot agreed at the hearing to delete the relevant posts.
The panel also found some of her criticism of council decisions was “misleading”, “inflammatory” and could make people see the council as “dysfunctional”.
Elliot accused the panel of bias and described its members as “unelected, contracted bureaucrats that act as the speech police”.
She claimed Cr Reynolds had “stockpiled comments” rather than raising concerns directly, though Cr Reynolds told the hearing she had tried to raise issues by email and messenger but was wary because Elliot had previously posted correspondence on Facebook.
The panel relied on a 2024 Tasmanian Supreme Court ruling finding there is nothing in the Local Government Act requiring panels to consider the implied freedom of political communication. Elliot has reportedly lodged a Federal Court appeal on that point.
She called on Local Government Minister Kerry Vincent to step in, saying the “current system is faulty and impacting human rights and democracy”.
In a statement to Pulse, Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said she welcomed the outcome of the independent process.
“I brought this complaint because I believe Hobart residents deserve a Council that can debate tough issues without turning disagreement into personal attack or online pile-ons,” she said.
“We can disagree strongly, that’s democracy, but we still have to meet a basic standard of respect and accuracy.”
Reynolds noted this was her first Code of Conduct complaint against Elliot, while Elliot had taken three against her.
“When [the] umpire makes their decision, we may not like it, but we accept the findings,” she said.
She pointed to the panel’s finding that Elliot was “offensive and underhanded” in posting personal information about her family.
Elliot says she will continue posting on social media “as a ratepayer” during her suspension.
She has a right to apply to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for a review.
She will return to council duties at the end of June, ahead of October’s local government elections.
