Study tours on hold

Concerns over Hobart professional development policy

HOBART City Council has suspended its professional development policy and any international travel associated with it after what Lord Mayor Sue Hickey said was a number of concerning applications by aldermen.

Alderman Hickey said no offences had been committed but three independent reviews had raised serious concerns about the policy.

The scheme allows aldermen to claim $5000 a year, which can be rolled forward so elected members can get up to $10,000 in one year for profession development activities.

Ald Hickey wrote to the Integrity Commission, Department of Premier and Cabinet and Hobart’s external Audit and Risk Panel requesting reviews of the scheme.

She said recent applications by a third of aldermen prompted her to request the reviews. The applications in question were lodged just before the cut-off for this term of the administration — which would have allowed the yearly $5000 available to aldermen to be pushed forward into the following year.

Ald Hickey last night successfully moved that the council’s response to proposed changes to the Local Government Regulations be amended for Hobart to immediately suspend professional development and international travel applications until a workshop next year to review the council’s “clearly deficient” policy.

“I have been deeply troubled by the use of the council’s professional development policy when it emerged four aldermen had applied in the death throes of the last financial year to take advantage of the ability to use two terms of funding to give them between $6000 and $10000 for individual overseas study tours,” she said.

“Whilst these bodies clearly stated that no breaches of council policy had occurred they did all strongly recom- mend that the policy be urgently reviewed because it is clearly deficient.”

Ald Hickey said she was worried the applications for professional development concerned the council’s sister city relationships and self-directed learning. She said the three reviews indicated that those were not appropriate activities under the policy. She said in multiple cases little information was provided about the aldermen’s trips, especially how long they would be overseas.

“My concern was that the applications were deficient in detail such as how long the alderman would actually be away despite the length of the conference,” she said.

Ald Damon Thomas said overseas trips could help the council.

Ald Thomas earlier had a proposal knocked back for the council to develop a way to measure the value of the council’s international relationships, after a recent trip to friendship city Xi’An in China.

“These decisions were made with all the information and people can ask questions of the aldermen applying,” he said.

“I thought I was going to advantage council, I’m comfortable with what I did.

“It’s not reasonable that we were asked to suspend it [the policy and international travel] only on pieces of paper that we didn’t see.”