The City of Launceston’s City Heart 2 project is out for public consultation at the moment, but only until this Friday, so you’ll need to respond quickly if you want to have your say. There’s not one bit of it we don’t applaud. It continues the People, Place and Lifestyle masterplan adopted some years ago; and builds on it to deliver a city centre that will be more attractive, more accessible, more walkable, and much more liveable. It’ll be a City Heart for which Launceston will be famous and will truly contribute to our vision for Launceston to be one of the great regional cities of the world.

Aside from traffic changes, an overt urban greening program is a noticeable feature of City Heart 2. Until this, urban trees and green spaces have been neglected aspects of urban amenity and liveability; yet the best streets in the best cities are usually tree-lined. Trees in cities centres encourage foot traffic, create economic activity, and increase property value. They provide shade, help moderate temperature, and beautify cityscapes by softening the hard edges and hard surfaces. Established street trees are a great asset to any city, so the Chamber is working with the City of Launceston, technical experts at UTAS, and Cityprom to build momentum for a more aspirational program of city greening.  We encourage future CBD regeneration projects to invest heavily in street trees in St John St and Cameron St. Street Trees that are appropriate, that don’t cause footpaths to be broken and dangerous and remain green all year round. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to walk through a green corridor linking City Park to Civic Square and onward to Royal Park. Wouldn’t that be something?

While patience may be a virtue, when it comes to improving our city, it’s not a virtue we possess. Three years is just too long to wait. There are circumstances outside the Councils immediate control, but we urge them to do all things necessary to bring forward the scheduled commencement of the City Heart 2 project.

With the firehose of terrible news gushing from the mainland and its COVID lockdowns, human misery in Afghanistan and localised business downturns across some sectors, you could be forgiven for having missed a critical HR decision handed down by the High Court of Australia recently. It’s important because of the increasing casualisation of the workforce and by an increase in underemployment; trends that have increased over the past 18 months as employers have had to grapple with changing economic conditions. Sectors such as Hospitality, Tourism, Agriculture, Arts & Events rely on armies of casual employees and may not be across the newest legislation.

The detailed findings of the ruling are here as interpreted by law firm Minter Ellison. It’s a longish read, but its theme is that casual employees need and have a right to predictability in the employment contracts issued at the commencement of employment. At first, that seems at odds with the whole idea of ‘casual’ employees, right?  The devil is in the details. It’s not about the predictability of shift entitlements; it’s about predictability in the nature of the employee engagement. Very meta!

The recommendations for those who employ casuals are to review those employees’ contracts to ensure they satisfy the casual definition test. They should contemplate matters such as:

• Written contracts with a specific casual engagement statement – Employers might provide a written employment offer for casual employees and include a statement such as, “This is an offer of casual employment, as such we are unable to give you a firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work”.
• Expressly state that a casual loading is being paid and what it covers – within the written casual contract, include a statement such as, ” a casual loading is being paid in lieu of all entitlements that would otherwise apply if the employee were not a casual. This includes, but is not limited to, personal and annual leave.”
• Casual loading is separately identified in payments – is advisable that you can clearly identify that a casual loading has been paid within the remuneration and as such there is no entitlement to leave payments. Ideally this should have been stated within the initial employment letter and preferably a casual loading payment should be identified in the employee’s payslip advice.    

This comment is provided for the benefit of Chamber members, but we encourage you to consult with an HR professional or employment law specialist to ensure your contracts are adequate. 

Chamber Platinum Member, Simmons Wolfhagen Lawyers, have a team of experienced employment lawyers.

Chamber Gold Member, Bishops Barristers + Solicitors, offer employment law services.

Chamber Gold Member, Quartz Consulting are your local, leading provider of workplace relations consultancy services.

There’s a comprehensive article in the Examiner today about the legal battle over the acquisition of the Paterson Street central car park site. A year on from the Creative Precinct’s announcement, there’s still a car park there and no sign of that changing anytime soon.

Without doubt, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes and ultimately, you have to let these legal processes run their course. Frustrating as it is, the Chamber would never endorse a position where the current owners receive a return on their investment less than it’s worth, but equally, there’s that and holding up progress. It’s hard to see a solution that doesn’t somehow wind up costing the City more than anticipated; and they’ll be pilloried if it does…  We KNOW they want progress as much as anybody else but they’re between a rock & a hard place. Any one of the options – a protracted lengthy legal battle, a cave-in to an inflated purchase price, or any other solution exposes Council to cost blowouts… but what is the price of progress?

You see, it’s not just about the car park… It’s about what it unleashes… It’s the relocation of the bus stops in St John Street to a newly created Bus Terminal on that car park, It’s the pedestrian thoroughfare between Paterson St and The Mall, it’s the opening up of St John St with the City Heart 2 project and associated greening & traffic calming initiatives; it’s the Creative Precinct that positions Launceston as a city of arts; it’s the pent-up private capital investment that’s wanting to invest and reinvigorate the Launceston CBD… It’s all the things we want for Launceston and the car park acquisition is the Keystone. 

We wish Council nothing but success here. We need Council to prevail – If it’s not solved soon, impatient investors will look further afield for opportunities and Launceston will be worse for it.

Commissioned by Atlassian Corporation and conducted by PwC Australia, the second annual Return On Action Report shows the extent to which expectations of employers have changed, with 77 per cent saying that businesses should speak up on societal issues, up 10 per cent on last year’s iteration of the same report. Notably, workers are prioritising their mental health more than ever before with measurable shifts attributed to work/life changes bought on by the pandemic

Mental health first

• Over 50 percent of employees surveyed say they’d consider changing jobs to access remote work opportunities, and even more are willing to forego a promotion to safeguard their mental health. Takeaway: To attract and retain suitable employees, access to flexible work arrangements will become normalised.
  
• More than 60 percent of workers also want their employers to take action on social and environmental issues like climate change, equality, and poverty. Takeaway: These are no longer just societal issues. Employers are increasingly expected to be part of the solution if they hope to attract quality talent.
  
• The report shows that ‘mental health and wellness’ has overtaken ‘cost of living’ as the number one concern of employees, whereas it only ranked in fourth place in 2020. Takeaway: This change suggests that the majority of workers have shifted from a “live to work” to a “work to live” mindset.

“The consequences of inaction are very real. We’re in a global war for talent and employees want change,” Scott Farquhar, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, said. “There have never been higher expectations on business, and how we respond as leaders is crucial. If this groundswell of support for action is ignored, it will open businesses up to the risk of alienating the emerging workforce.” 

So, given those shifts in perception, what can you/we/us be doing about it as employers? Where do you start? There are a number of local resources available you immediately:

• For you and your staff: https://checkin.org.au/  a Free resource from The Mental Health Council of Tasmania. It’s a wayfinder to help locate and access all sorts of resources to create and support a mentally healthy workplace.
  
• Knowing what you don’t know and then closing the gaps is a great place to start also. Head 4 Work is a resource free to Tasmanian registered businesses: https://head4work.com.au/
  
• If you’re in the Hospitality sector – checkout https://fromexperience.co a resource created and delivered by Bianca Welsh (Bbhavsc) from Stillwater and Black Cow Bistro, (and of course, Chamber Board member)

We’re pleased to see that the Tamar Estuary Management Taskforce (TEMT) vision has been released and are pleased with the initial results. The Chamber has been advocating for some time, a vision that delivers ‘triple bottom line’ value – economic, community and environmental benefit, and we believe this vision is a great start. The report has collated the science gathered over many years to outline a strategic path to a better, healthier estuary with improved utility, replacing the ad-hoc efforts of years past.  kanamaluka/Tamar River is part of the fabric of Launceston and its inhabitants want to see real action to restore and improve the estuary.

This is a great opportunity to create a world-class wetland experience that compliments the natural beauty of the Cataract Gorge and the Tamar Island Wetlands. Please click here to see the vision.

The question now will be how best to deliver that vision? 

The question contemplates TEMT’s ability to bring it to fruition. Likely (hopefully?) to be funded under the City Deal second stage we’ll be advocating to ensure that an appropriately resourced authority is established that builds on TEMT’s vision and to contract and legislate for its achievement.  The Federal and State Governments now need to commit to this plan and ensure funding is consistent and sustained so that work can be undertaken strategically.