Hobart’s incoming lord mayor says he wants to end years of conflict on the city council, describing the past eight years as “vitriolic”.
Former 60 Minutes reporter Charles Wooley held his first press conference since the election across the road from the council on Friday morning, saying he could not yet use council chambers.
“I’m usually where you blokes are,” he said.
Wooley said he believed the council’s problems were partly due to the outgoing lord mayor.
“It’s been terrible and I think partly because we had a mayor who thought she was the boss,” he said.
“I am not the boss. I represent the council to you, the public and I will represent you, the public, to the council.”
He likened the previous council’s disputes to Gulliver’s Travels.
“They’re actually going to war over which end of an egg to open. It’s very silly,” he said.
Wooley said councillors he might have expected to clash with had already contacted him.
Ryan Posselt, who called Wooley a “washed up celebrity journalist” during the campaign, also called him before the result was known.
Wooley described Posselt’s call as “very conciliatory and generous”.
The council will shrink from 12 members to nine and only one woman looks likely to be elected. Wooley called that “extraordinary”.
“Women didn’t vote for women,” he said, noting women outnumber men on the electoral roll.
He suggested “a certain scandal or appearance of scandal” on council may have contributed.
Wooley agreed councils had a problem with how women were treated, but said it was broader than that.
“You cannot put your head up in public life and expect not to be insulted,” he said. “I’ll tell you how I handle it. I don’t do social media.”
Asked whether women should just cop it, he said no.
“People should behave decently,” he said, but questioned whether decency could be legislated.
Wooley said the local government code of conduct “encourages people with a glass jaw to sue one another” at ratepayers’ expense. The code is set by the state government.
Wooley said he had raised it with the premier and there was general agreement it was “more trouble than it’s worth”.
“There’s no point cancelling something until we know what we’re going to replace it with,” he said.
He said he and the premier had agreed to meet regularly.
Wooley said Hobart’s rates were twice those in Melbourne and the council’s roughly $200 million budget left “room for reduction”.
“My own inclination is to give everybody a $200 rate cut and say, go and spend it in town,” he said.
“My advisers tell me I can’t do that, but we’ll see.” He said he would cap rates “one way or another”.
He described the Collins Street bike lane, which he said had cost $1 million, as “a vast mistake, a gross mistake, but it’s not easy to undo mistakes”.
He said he did not know whether the new council would support “the partial removal of some inappropriate bike lanes”.
Wooley said Labor and the Liberals both supported the Macquarie Point stadium and that the council was “going to have to make it work”.
He would not be drawn on a possible cable car to the summit of Kunanyi/Mount Wellington, instead suggesting the mountain become a “federal park like Kakadu” in the Northern Territory.
He described Tasmania’s 29 councils as “an absurdity” for half a million people and said he would “love to see preliminary talks” with Glenorchy and Clarence.
Wooley said his slogan, Hobart for Hobartians, came from Barcelona’s first female mayor.
Asked what specific steps he would take, he said: “Wait till I’m mayor. I’ll give them to you on paper.”
He said he would serve only one term.
“I think one term is enough,” he said. “And you remember that when I stand for a second term.”
