Tag: Tasmania

Council elections are coming around again for Tasmania's 29 municipalities and candidates (with rat cunning or not) are gearing up for their campaigns. There used to be an elected member at one of the Coast’s councils who would just keep on getting elected. He was a nice enough bloke and seemed to genuinely care about people, but he was no great policy generator and the reasons he had such a loyal following were not always obvious. Then, our man would doorknock those areas and introduce himself to the residents. “I’ll look after it.” In the days or weeks following, along would come the works crew and fix the pothole, lay the footpath and so on. You’d never guess who got those residents’ votes at the next council election. None of this was lost on a rather clever MP many years ago, or so the story goes. Some of those doorknocking areas were even in the electorate where the young candidate was trying to get elected. One of those two kept getting elected. These days, council candidates can be elected as mayor without having previously served on a council.