Sue Hickey says her comfortable re-election as Glenorchy mayor shows voters want a council that sticks to “roads, rates and rubbish”.
Hickey finished with 12,661 votes after preferences, more than 5,000 ahead of deputy mayor Russell Yaxley, according to Tasmanian Electoral Commission figures released just after 12pm on Thursday.
Yaxley was second on 7,423 votes. Greens candidate Nathan Volf was third on 4,482.
Hickey almost won on first preferences, taking 45.6% of the vote in a field of six candidates.
She told Pulse the result was “really reassuring that we’ve been on the right track for the last few years”.
“I think it’s recognition of the fact that the community want councils doing what councils should do,” she said.
Hickey said the council had focused on community safety, cleaning up the city, restoring the pool and finishing the youth hub.
She said the city’s reputation mattered too.
“We’ve been very much about roads, rates and rubbish, but also and reputation,” she said.
“To grow a city, you need people to really want to come and live there and raise their children and start a business.”
Youth crime has been a hot topic in Glenorchy. Hickey said police and government figures pointed to “a very small group of about 60 kids across the state who are hardened criminals”.
“The rest of them are like little troublemakers,” she said.
She said the council’s youth hub was drawing about 60 young people each afternoon, instead of them going to Northgate shopping centre.
She said youth workers there connected them with help for housing, mental health and problems at home.
Hickey warned the incoming council against “gung-ho behaviour”, saying “that’s very disruptive, as you’ve seen from Hobart”.
“There’ll be a steep learning curve. Local government’s one of the trickiest businesses I know,” she said.
Her priorities for the next four years include attracting hotel-style accommodation, building more sporting grounds and getting access to school sporting grounds.
She called the lack of grounds “probably the biggest weakness we have”.
Hickey became mayor at a by-election in June 2024. She was previously Hobart lord mayor and speaker of the House of Assembly.
