Hobart City Council’s jetsetters rack up hefty bills as Lord Mayor defends overseas trips

HOBART aldermen racked up nearly half a million dollars in expenses from 2015 to 2017, as the Lord Mayor declared overseas trips were worth the cost.

Hobart City Council aldermen at a city planning committee meeting. Aldermen spent almost $500,000 on expenses between January 2015 and December 2017. Picture: PATRICK GEE

HOBART City aldermen made overseas trips to countries including England, China, Japan, Hungary and East Timor during a period in which the council’s expenses for elected officials ballooned to more than $470,000.

Analysis by the Sunday Tasmanian of the period January 2015 to December 2017 shows Hobart City Council had $472,951 in total expenses for its aldermen, excluding their annual aldermanic allowance. This included $370,567 for travel, conferences, events and personal development.

Hickey declares trips are worthy HOBART Lord Mayor Sue Hickey has defended her council’s spending on travel and related activities for the past three years, saying the city will benefit from the knowledge and skills aldermen attained on their overseas trips. Three years since the Sunday Tasmanian and the Mercury looked in-depth at the spending habits of the elected members of the council, a new analysis of aldermanic expenses has revealed about $370,000 was spent by aldermen on travel, conferences, events and professional development. This resulted in the council’s aldermen spending $472,000 for total expenses from January 2015 to December 2017 — excluding their allowances. When she became Lord Mayor, Ald Hickey — who will resign to take her place in State Parliament for the Liberal Party — led a push for an overhaul of the spending culture at the council. The latest analysis shows she had the biggest spend of any alderman, at just over $120,000 — including her $21,400 mayoral civic budget. “Since becoming Lord Mayor, I have worked tirelessly to ensure that all expenses relating to aldermen have been transparently recorded and published online for ongoing public scrutiny,” she said. “Council’s policy on overseas travel adheres to the recommendations of a report documented by council officers based on the strategic significance of the delegation, which may only proceed with the full permission of the council.”

In 2015 the Sunday Tasmanian undertook a similar audit as part of its Your Right to Know campaign and for the period January 2012 to December 2014 Hobart City Council’s aldermanic expenses were about $350,000.

That campaign was instrumental in prompting reforms to put a more stringent system in place regarding expenses claims, and the previously largely unchecked spending of aldermen.

While the council has been successful in slicing about $60,000 in general expenses from its costs, the number of overseas trips rose from nine to 26, and the spending on travel and conference has blown out by almost $190,000.

When it comes to the total spend on international and interstate travel and conferences and professional development, Lord Mayor Sue Hickey spent about $88,000 over the three-year period, Ald Jeff Briscoe $59,000, Ald Tanya Denison $47,000, Deputy Lord Mayor Ron Christie $40,000, Ald Helen Burnet $23,800 and Ald Damon Thomas $26,700.

When Ald Hickey came to power as Lord Mayor in 2015, she moved to assure the community its rates were being spent appropriately.

The new era of transparency involved monthly allowances and expenses of aldermen to be published on the council’s website.

Through these monthly disclosures, and council agendas an analysis of aldermanic expenditure from January 2015 to December 2017 shows that the new policies did result in a decrease of $60,000 in aldermanic claimed expenses compared with January 2012 to December 2014.

However, travel and conference expenses ballooned out to more than $370,000 from January 2015 to December 2017 — well up on the $185,795 spent by aldermen during the last analysis.

Key in this was the increase in overseas trips by aldermen, with 26 taken during January 2015 to December 2017 compared with nine under the previous administration.

Five were to England, Germany and Hungary at the request of the University of Tasmania and three to eastern China for a tour by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Lord Mayor Sue Hickey during a visit to Hobart’s sister city Yaziu in Japan last year. Picture: FACEBOOK

Alderman Hickey has defended the international travel by HCC aldermen. Picture: FACEBOOK

Others were for trips to visit Hobart’s sister cities in China, Japan and Italy, to attend conferences in Poland and Singapore, or for self-directed learning in the US and Canada.

Largely, Hobart aldermen flew business class to their overseas destinations, which is allowed under the council’s policy.

Hobart general manager Nick Heath said every trip had been approved by the council and was in full compliance with the council’s policies.

“The City of Hobart is committed to transparency, which is why all travel expenses have been publicly available online since 1st July 2016,” he said.

Ald Hickey said many of the trips had led to beneficial outcomes for Hobart.

“In some of the overseas travel published online, aldermen have attended as part of a Tasmanian delegation, led by the Premier and senior government executives,” she said.

“Other delegations, led by the former vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania, Prof Peter Rathjen, were undertaken to facilitate more in-depth understandings of the significant benefits of promoting and developing our ‘university city’ status and to lobby the Australian Government to support the University STEM project and the recently announced City Deal for Hobart.”

Ald Hickey took the most trips overseas during the period, six, followed by chair of the council’s City Planning Committee Ad Briscoe with five and Ald Denison and Ald Bill Harvey with three.

Ald Briscoe said he thought he would be one of the aldermen with the most number of trips.

“All of them have been open and transparent and have gone to council,” he said.

“There has been some fantastic learnings from them.”

Ald Denison said the knowledge uncovered on the trips could be vital during such an important time in Hobart’s development.

“Aldermen need to be informed about what that means for Hobart in the future,” she said.

“We saw a lot about how other cities have addressed the issues we are facing.”

Alderman Tanya Denison in China. Picture: FACEBOOK

Ald Burnet took two international trips, as did Ald Thomas and Ald Christie while Ald Anna Reynolds and Ald Philip Cocker went on one international trip.

Ald Marti Zucco did attend two international trips for the council, but in one instance met the delegation while already in Asia on a personal trip.

He said a further review of the council’s travel policy was required.

“Some trips are deemed ‘council approved’, the argument used that it is ‘a council approved conference or trip’ must also be immediately reviewed,” he said.

“The current policy determining this is totally flawed.

“My opinion is that if a ‘person’ is representing council then it’s not as an audience member of a conference, it must be by presentation at a conference or event. This is part of the reason why there has been this massive blowout.”

Ald Peter Sexton has an overseas trip through the council’s professional development policy booked for Europe this year, the only international trip planned so far by the council for 2018.

Because it was approved and paid for last year it has been included in the costings of the analysis.

The analysis reveals that after an initial six months in early 2015 in which just under $22,000 was spent on aldermanic travel and conferences — in the wake of the initial clampdown of expenses at the council — the amount spent on aldermen’s travel and conferences doubled the following year.

It then rose to more than $200,000 for the 2016-17 financial year.

That included two large-scale trips – one to Budapest, Freiburg and Cambridge and another to London and Italy – that involved looking at the effects of universities in cities. The council said this was vital to look at how the University of Tasmania’s relocation to central Hobart would affect the city.

When it comes to other expenses claimed from January 2015 to December 2017, Ald Hickey claimed $32,315.04, although $21,400 of this was her “civic budget” as Lord Mayor.

Ald Sexton claimed $13,698.12, Ald Christie $13,291.46, Ald Zucco $10,432.70 and Ald Briscoe $9,298.44.