Ten years in council
I have been elected to Burnie City Council for 10 years.
I served in the role of Deputy Mayor between 2007 and 2011 and I was elected as Mayor in October 2014.
I had been living away from Burnie, had moved home, was newly married and I wanted to get involved in the local community.
I also thought it would be good for a younger person to be involved on Council as all of the elected representatives were much older than me.
I was 27 at the time.
I hadn’t intended on being involved in Local Government but life takes you in many different directions and I really enjoy getting to know our community and being involved in cultural change, community development and planning for infrastructure and financial sustainability.
I love Burnie’s beautiful coastline, green rolling hinterland and many local attractions and recreational spaces.
I love visiting the beach with my children or going for a walk along our coastal pathway.
I currently work casually for the Hospice at Home Program as a Care Coordinator.
Hospice at Home is a federally funded program in Tasmania aimed at providing additional support to people and their families living with a life–limiting illness.
My role with Hospice at Home provides me with great perspective to my role in Local Government.
I also have a very important job as the mother of three children.
Having children makes you think a lot about prioritising the important things in life.
The fact that women are caregivers and lead extremely busy lives especially during their child bearing ages is sometimes a barrier to them taking on leadership roles.
I don’t think being female has made my journey more challenging.
The hours of work in leadership positions are also challenging for family life and women and families need to be very well supported to take on added responsibilities. I am extremely fortunate in this regard.
Collective impact
The Burnie City Council in partnership with the Burnie community is pursuing a Collective Impact approach to social and economic development and supporting a number of significant long-term community collaborations to improve school retention rates, promote the importance of education and to provide greater opportunities for employment participation.
The Community and Ecnomic Development Team at Council provides backbone support (administration and coordination) to a number of Collective Impact initiatives.
The work that Burnie has been doing in these areas has been nationally recognised through being awarded winners of “The Search” competition being conducted by the Centre for Social Impact.
Our community is the recipient of one million dollars of financial and in kind support to continue the good work we are doing.
Learning and community
The role of Mayor is multi-layered and balancing all of these roles and responsibilities as the leader of your community council team can be very challenging at times.
The best part of being a Councillor is that local government is the closest level of government to the community and has the real ability to create change and engage with the community.
I hope that my presence in local government and the initiatives I have been involved in over the last 10 years has demonstrated my commitment to being cognisant of ratepayers’ ability to pay and improving our city and the range of services and facilities made available to the community.
I feel very strongly about promoting the importance of learning, the growth of the presence of the University in our city and the development of strong relationships between our University,
Industry, Business and the Community right across our region.
A greater regional response to issues of significance is required in the North-West of Tasmania due to the nature of the interconnectedness of our economy and the need for us to have a diverse economy and to ensure we have an equal voice with other major population centres in the State.
I was the chair of Making Burnie 2030 our community’s plan for the future which is well regarded in our city, and I am genuine in my endeavours to ensure Burnie gets the level of attention it deserves from the State and Federal Governments.
The three qualities I appreciate most in people are integrity, humour
and empathy.
