Latest news with #Thaler
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Science
- Chicago Tribune
Conservation practices needed to protect Illinois farmers as topsoil loss increases, experts say
As the deadline approaches for Congress to renew the U.S. Farm Bill, agricultural experts and farmers are calling on legislators to prioritize protecting topsoil in the Midwest and throughout the country, especially as the federal government is withdrawing from conservation initiatives. Topsoil is eroding, on average, at a rate of three-quarters of an inch per year in the Midwest, a rate double what the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers sustainable, according to a 2022 study published in the journal Earth's Future. The study also concluded more than 57 billion metric tons of topsoil have eroded in the Midwest over the last 160 years. 'Not to sound alarmist, but we rely and a lot of the world relies on the Midwest producing a lot of food,' said Evan Thaler, a geological researcher who helped author the study. 'Fertilizing crops can't keep up with the amount of productivity that's lost by erosion.' Topsoil contains living microorganisms and decaying plant roots that are important for productive crop growth. Excessive topsoil erosion can lead to a decrease in soil fertility levels and a decline in potential crop yields. No-till and reduced tillage farming, as well as cover crops, are among the best ways to counter topsoil erosion, experts say, especially as climate change has led to increased rainfall intensity. But under the Trump administration, federal support for these practices could be dramatically reduced. Some experts, including Andrew Margenot, an associate professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, have expressed skepticism about the figures in the study, particularly as they relate to erosion rates in Illinois. But Margenot called topsoil erosion a 'silent killer' whose worst effects may not become apparent for decades. Thaler said erosion rates aren't expected to be as severe in areas with flatter landscapes like much of Illinois. 'So it's not the whole landscape that's eroding quickly,' Thaler said of the Midwest. 'It's just portions of the landscape, but those portions of the landscape are eroding quite fast.' Regardless, experts agreed that excessive topsoil loss is an issue that poses long-term risks for the Midwest and requires assistance for farmers looking to implement conservation farming practices. 'It (erosion) is a way that we destroy really what is the best resource we have in this state,' Margenot said. 'We have a lot of wind, a lot of coal, etc., but we also have the best soils in the world.' Tillage clears crop residue from fields after harvesting and helps prepare the soil for seeding. The USDA notes that conventional tillage practices are most intensive on the soil and can increase the likelihood of erosion and nutrient runoff into waterways. In contrast, no-till and reduced tillage farming incorporate practices such as field mulching, crop rotation, as well as less-intensive tillage equipment. 'When they talk about 'conventional agricultural practices,' tillage is our No. 1 offender,' said Emily Hansen, a commercial agricultural educator with University of Illinois Extension. The 2018 Farm Bill — an omnibus bill that includes federal funding for conservation programs — is set to expire in September after having twice been extended by Congress. This reauthorization deadline comes after President Donald Trump immediately took steps to suspend funding under former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act on his first day back in office. Billions of dollars earmarked under the act for farming conservation practices were frozen. This funding freeze came at a time when the impacts of topsoil erosion are becoming more apparent in Illinois. High winds over recently tilled farm fields likely contributed to a massive dust storm in May, the first to affect the Chicago area in 40 years. In 2023, a dust storm in central Illinois caused 84 vehicles to crash on I-55, killing eight people and injuring at least 36. Such incidents have helped to renew debates on agriculture's role in hazardous weather events and further discussions on the importance of topsoil conservation. Others emphasize that soil conservation is important for the long-term economic outlook of the U.S. Cash crops, hidden costs'For decades, we have rightly focused on protecting our most vulnerable soils,' said Garrett Hawkins, president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, in a statement. 'However, IL Corn encourages decision makers to think differently, to consider how programs can better protect our most productive soils.' The association is a farmer-led organization that represents the interests of Illinois corn farmers in Washington, D.C., and Springfield. 'Conserving our most productive acres is essential if we want to stay competitive in global markets,' Hawkins said. 'Modernizing our approach to conservation and creating programs that empower farmers to protect their most valuable soils with flexible and scalable solutions is vital. If we fail to deliver effective programs, technical assistance, and meaningful funding to our farmers, soil health and soil erosion will continue to be a challenge.' The association developed the Precision Conservation Management program, which collects data and helps farmers adopt conservation practices. 'What they've found over the last five years of data is that the most profitable fields in Illinois are doing no tillage with soybeans and one pass or less with corn,' Hansen said. In most cases, she said, data has shown there isn't an economic or agricultural benefit for corn farmers to do more than one tillage pass over their fields. According to data from the University of Illinois, 46% of soybean fields in Illinois had adopted no-till during the years of 2015 to 2017 but only 13% of cornfields. Illinois is the No. 1 producer of soybeans in the U.S. and the No. 2 producer of corn. 'Corn is a lot more challenging and that's where we see people doing those multiple tillage passes,' Hansen said. 'Corn, it needs good contact with the soil, so you do have to do some amount of tillage with it. But you know more than one pass is probably overdoing it a bit.' Among the first to get involved with PCM was Dirk Rice, a corn and soybean farmer in Champaign County. Rice said the genesis of Precision Conservation Management was the desire to help address farmers' financial concerns when adopting conservation practices. 'If you want a farmer to shift away from a practice that he knows has worked for him for 20, 30 years, there's always a concern of 'How does that affect me, financially?'' Rice said. 'And so the idea was, let's look financially at how farmers are doing this practice compared to this practice, compared to this practice,' he said. 'And I think after a decade or more of data, what we're seeing is the people that are doing less tillage are at least as profitable.' Rice, who said all of his soybean fields are no-till and over 80% of his corn fields are no-till or strip-till (a less intensive form of tillage), noted some difficulty in dealing with potential fungi that can grow in corn residue. He also said grain quality has declined in certain situations where he's no-tilled. Despite such challenges, Rice said soil conservation has been a tradition in his family for generations through practices like crop rotation, and it's a tradition he intends to continue. 'I'm sitting on ground my great-great-grandfather moved (to) in 1881,' Rice said. 'It's real personal to me that I leave that better than it was when I got here. And I think every generation in our family has felt the same way.' Rice added that fertilizer is a huge expense for his farm's operation and keeping soil nutrients in place helps with these costs and reduces runoff. 'Anything I can do to keep all my nutrients in place, that's how much less I got to turn around and buy next year or somewhere down the road. So that's a real no-brainer to me,' Rice said. Along with no-till and reduced tillage, cover crops — plants grown when the main cash crop isn't planted — can help keep topsoil 'anchored in place' and mitigate erosion and nutrient loss, Hansen said. She said cover crops such as cereal rye, which has a similar root structure to native prairie grasses, can help prevent nutrient and fertilizer runoff into streams and rivers that ultimately lead into the Gulf of Mexico. 'Cover crops have multiple benefits. They're tackling that erosion problem, they're tackling the nutrient loss,' Hansen said. 'So I like telling farmers to plant cover crops, but easier said than done.' Margenot noted that most farmland in Illinois is rented and not directly owned by the farmers who cultivate it, which can complicate efforts to plant cover crops. Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land, according to data from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management, a nonprofit association that helps farmers make management decisions. 'They're not farmed by the owner, and a lot of times the landlord just wants a check,' Margenot said. 'They don't have a patience for cover crops because that digs into the net profit.' Margenot compared cover crops to adding another ball for a juggler and said they 'complicate the operation' for farmers. While great at reducing nitrate losses from fields, Margenot said, cover crops aren't 'that common in the Midwest,' especially in Illinois, because 'they don't really make you money.' 'When it comes to the bottom line, farms are businesses. They have mortgages to pay kids to send to college. Cover crops are not a great proposition,' Margenot said. 'I think they're great ecologically and I think that they, in the long term, probably have a positive ROI (return on investment) for the farm. But in the short term there's good evidence that cover crops aren't a great financial decision for a lot of operations.' Margenot said a comprehensive Farm Bill needs to incentivize farmers and landowners to plant cover crops given the associated costs and complications to farm operations. Thaler, the erosion study author, agreed. 'We need to be able to feed people,' he said. 'And unfortunately, if we don't start farming in a way that conserves our topsoil (and) really take approaches to allow farmers to experiment with conservation techniques, then I think we're going to be in some serious danger.' Among federal programs included in the Farm Bill is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides technical and financial assistance for farmers implementing conservation efforts. Jonathan Coppess, director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois, worked on legislation for the 2008 and 2014 Farms Bills. 'What EQIP does is the farmer goes out and takes on a practice that will reduce soil erosion, like a grass waterway for example so you get a washout spot in a field,' Coppess said. 'So the farmer will go out and get that done, and then about 75% of the expected cost of that would be reimbursed, if you will, by USDA through this EQIP program.' 'There's a lot of uncertainty around' the upcoming Farm Bill, Coppess said. 'There was a significant amount of funding provided by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act, about $18 billion over multiple years for programs like EQIP, and the (Trump) administration froze a lot of that.' In April, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to reinstate this funding, citing a lack of authority on the part of the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. Coppess described the short-term impacts of this funding freeze as 'potentially catastrophic' for farmers who spent money on conservation initiatives and who had expected reimbursement funding, especially if they had taken out a loan. 'If the administration eliminated whatever's remaining of that (Inflation Reduction Act) money, which may be as much as $12 billion, then over the long term that is a reduction in the investment in conservation,' Coppess said. 'We're investing in practices that will keep soil in the field, and get it out of the waterways, not have dust storms on the roads, those sort of things.' Coppess said 'every dollar that goes out the door' should have the priority focus of: 'Are we helping farmers deal with risk issues in farming that matter to the food supply?' Coppess said such an approach would require recalibrating crop insurance, repurposing subsidy funds for conservation and refocusing conservation funds on risk-based priorities; something he said wouldn't be easy and is 'a little idealistic for what we've seen in Congress recently.' Legislators need to focus more on how to address the long-term challenges faced by farmers, he said. 'Problem is that's not the conversation we're having,' Coppess said.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
‘The global obesity epidemic is linked to palm oil inputs — so is the 21st century land rush'
Gregory Thaler is Associate Professor of Environmental Geography and Latin American Studies at Oxford University. Gregory Thaler is Associate Professor of Environmental Geography and Latin American Studies at Oxford University . He tells Srijana Mitra Das at TE about ways to ensure healthier oil: The pace of deforestation on Earth is breath-taking. The loss of forests itself is intertwined with the rise of humanity — in just the last three centuries, Earth has forsaken 1.5 billion hectares. Palm oil plays a huge role in this. Between 2001 to 2015, studies find its plantations expanded over 22.4 million hectares — a rise estimatedly of 167%. While the statistics are shocking, Gregory Thaler remains calm, discussing palm oil's worldwide web. Outlining his research, he explains, 'I work broadly on how power influences social and ecological change. I do this with two major research programs. One looks at the political ecology of tropical forest landscapes and how different actors, policies and power relations affect de-forestation, agriculture and livelihoods in Indonesia, Brazil and Bolivia. The second looks at global environmental governance and how different institutions structure environmental decisions — in this, I also study environmental NGOs.' Discussing palm oil, Thaler says, 'Its spread is extraordinary as is the role it plays in modern society. This oil is primarily produced from the West African palm — traditionally, this was done by small farmers in community operations. Over the last two centuries, it became a major industrial crop, grown in vast plantations, processed in massive factories. It is pervasive in multiple consumer goods, one of the most common inputs in detergent, cosmetics, adhesives, wet wipes and processed foods, from biscuits to chips, noodles to ice-cream.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like This Could Be the Best Time to Trade Gold in 5 Years IC Markets Learn More Undo Palm oil has a particular tenacity — it makes wafers crisper and keeps ice-cream from melting. Its impacts on the planet and people are somewhat different though. Thaler explains, 'Its widespread industrial expansion has tremendous consequences for both ecologies and live-lihoods. In Indonesia, palm oil plant-ations have caused massive deforestation — that comes with huge ecological effects in terms of losses of biodiversity and climate change as you replace carbon-dense natural forests with a single-crop plantation. Further, people in these regions lose their land, get pulled into exploitative labour regimes and exposed to toxic chemicals.' The health impacts don't stop there. Thaler says, 'This proliferation of junk food that oil palm is part of is affecting people's diets globally now — the worldwide obesity epidemic is driven in part by this expansion of cheap industrially produced oil inputs.' Yet, Thaler is sceptical of technological solutions which claim to address at least palm oil's ecological impacts, promising more oil from less land. As he says, 'There are problems with those narratives, the first being basic political economy — these innovations are deployed in an industrial capitalist system. So, these basically facilitate greater production and uptake globally — the driving incentive remains profit. Hence, there is no level of sufficiency at which industrial actors will stop producing and using more palm oil.' There is also some greenwashing involved. Thaler explains, 'These 'green' supply chains often depend on destructive nongreen ones — you separate zones of supposedly sustainable production but, in fact, their green palm oil is coming from one cleansource while overall expansion is still fulfilled through new deforestation, plantations and dirty palm oil.' Thaler pauses and then emphasises, 'I am also sceptical of these narratives because I think we should consider what goals we are working towards — a world wherefood oil, a fund-amental staple, is produced thousands of miles away and managed by a few multi-national corporations is not a recipe for environmental sustainability or socioeconomic development. We should question the industrial corporate system being the best way to satisfy people's fundamental food needs.' Yet, this system drives 'the 21 st century land rush'. Thaler explains, 'Following the financial and food crises of 2007-08, there was an increase in international land deals, arranged by different actors — some were government-linked entities, trying to secure food production for their citizens, as certain Persian Gulf states did. There was also a broader involvement in land by corporate actors and investors like pension funds. International land investment in the global economy is not new — but after 2008, we saw a dramatic increase. The fundamental idea was land as a key asset, especially in times of economic and climate volatility — hence, we continue to see states and global investors, seeking ways to control land and secure their supply chains. We also see conflicts over land between such interests and local communities.' Palm oil — the ubiquitous grease around this vast global industrial machine — is part of our modern epic. Can it be made more just? Thaler says, 'Yes, solutions include production and consumption. For the first, oil palm can be profitably and effectively produced by small farmers who use more biodiverse systems. It's not necessary to only grow it in huge corporate plantations. It's also important to shorten our supply chains — it will never be ecologically or socially desirable to keep shipping huge volumes of staples around the world. We should localise such production far more. Traditionally, people used a variety of crops to meet their needs — it's not necessary to use palm oil everywhere. We should explore alternatives which work better, according to local ecologies and farming systems. Re-localising and supporting smaller-scale production will lighten the world.' And many of its citizens, currently burdened under palm oil-based foods which are anything but nourishing.
Sydney Morning Herald
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
This serial pest called a woman a ‘fat dumb blonde'. He says he was being picked on
Andrew Thaler knew he was wrong to call a fellow Snowy Monaro councillor a fat liar, and for publicly arguing that if a non-binary council employee couldn't work out their gender – 'know whether it's a boy or girl', as he put it – they wouldn't be able to do their job, his barrister, the former Labor MP Adam Searle, told a tribunal this week. Thaler himself was less emphatic about his regret. 'It's hard to express remorse for telling the truth,' he said under cross-examination, arguing his 'robust' language was self-defence. He argued he was not speaking as a councillor, but he was merely quoting himself from a pre-election article in this masthead when he described fellow councillor Tanya Higgins as a 'fat dumb blonde, it's physically obvious'. Thaler also doubled down on his view that the staff member was a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire, invoking a Trumpian term. He also said his use of the pronoun 'it' did not necessarily dehumanise them, but rather highlighted their internal conflict. In fact, Thaler said, he was the one being picked on. He told the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), as it considered his appeal against a three-month suspension, that some of his fellow councillors had been hostile ever since his election last year, when they tried and failed to uphold a longstanding ban on his presence in council chambers (which arose from the risk council felt his behaviour posed to its staff; his election to the council in September automatically overturned the ban). But he thinks they dislike him 'because I'm a man', he told the tribunal. 'It's because I have five kids. It's because I've been married for 19 years … those are the things that [people are hostile about] at that council.' The drawn-out saga over Thaler's behaviour has gripped the Snowy Monaro region, where he was known as a serial pest before being elected to public office with little more than 100 first preference votes. His behaviour while a councillor has prompted the minister to issue a performance improvement order to the council, that says the drama is interfering with the operations of local government. His comments about the councillor and staffer in March earned him a three-month suspension, the maximum, from the Office of Local Government (OLG). But the Snowy's controversy is the pointy end of a bigger issue. Councillors are behaving badly across the state, yet the NSW system for holding them accountable is broken. This has been openly acknowledged across the sector for at least 10 years, but there has been no reform. A government discussion paper last year laid out the problem. Council debates are 'too often personal slanging matches', it said. Frivolous complaints clog the system, leaving little capacity for it to deal with serious issues. The system for handling misconduct should not be so unwieldy and ineffective that it inhibits 'the operation and function of local democracy'. Councils manage their own complaints (which can lead to politicisation), but can refer them to the OLG if they think it's warranted. In the financial year to June 2024, Bathurst clocked up the most complaints with 38 (none were upheld), followed by Lismore with 24 (none were upheld) and Sutherland with 23 (again, none were upheld). Of a total of 381 complaints, only 45 were found to constitute a breach. They cost almost $1.5 million to investigate. There were also concerns from the sector that penalties for councillor misconduct, when upheld, are too light. The maximum suspension the OLG can hand out is three months, while NCAT can issue a disqualification of up to five years. A 2022 report found the sector was concerned that the sanctions, and the OCG and NCAT's reluctance to invoke strong ones, was an ineffective deterrent to poor conduct. That earlier report, commissioned by the Coalition government, raised myriad problems with the system, ranging from conflicts of interest, partisan behaviour, incompetence, and the lack of appropriate penalties when misconduct was found. 'Key stakeholders in the sector have lost confidence in the current arrangements,' it found, and called for an overhaul. A road map for change went to cabinet in February 2023, just before the election. But when Labor won, the new local government minister, Ron Hoenig, jettisoned that plan and began his own review. Another discussion paper was released in September last year. There's not enough dignity in local government, it said, and proposed letting the OLG issue fines to councillors, suggested a privileges committee of experienced mayors examine allegations of misbehaviour, and said bans should be solely imposed by tribunals such as NCAT (they often end up there on appeal, anyway). It also proposes councillors have to rid themselves of real estate and development business activity and contracts. A spokeswoman for Hoenig said the Labor government felt the Coalition's solution would add more bureaucracy and complexity 'to an already broken system'. A new code of conduct, mechanisms to 'surcharge' councillors for frivolous complaints and a new meeting code would be released 'soon', she said. The behaviour problem is putting people – particularly women – off running for local government. A Victorian survey found 61 per cent of female local councillor respondents had experienced threatening or intimidating behaviour from fellow councillors, while another study found half of women left council after the first term. Women have been among Thaler's most frequent targets; he has called female elected officials dumb, fat, a pig, deliberately childless, a horrendous excuse for a human, and has told a state MP – and, on a separate occasion, this reporter – to go 'suck a dick'. Licia Heath from Women for Election said women were increasingly leaving councils due to bullying and harassment. 'We will shortly have a crisis of representation in local government,' she said. That will affect other levels, as state and federal MPs often cut their teeth in council. 'I'm getting increasingly concerned that there will be a pipeline issue of talented women in our state and federal parliaments, unless relevant ministers insist now on a similar review as the Kate Jenkins Set the Standard to be conducted at the local government level,' Heath said referring to a report by the former sex discrimination commissioner. Thaler is right that there are people in the area who don't like him. Before he was elected, he'd been banned from council chambers because his behaviour was considered a workplace health and safety risk. He'd also been banned from a few businesses. He was the subject of 19 complaints over a two-month period last year, the performance improvement order said; complainants alleged his behaviour left staff and fellow councillors feeling unsafe, anxious and in one case, physically sick (Thaler said he was never given a chance to respond, and those complaints have not been investigated). Loading He told the tribunal that the council had sought legal advice about what to do with him, which said it could not ban him but they could 'discipline me out of council'. In his appeal against his suspension on Tuesday, Thaler's barrister, Searle, argued the decision made by the Planning Department deputy secretary responsible for local government was invalid because he had not conducted a proper investigation first. He also said a three-month suspension was too harsh. 'We would say the applicant would say not much weight should be given to those incidences, they occur in the context of Councillor Thaler raising significant matters of public interest,' he said. Thaler insisted he was telling the truth when he used the word liar, despite not being able to produce evidence, but admitted he should not have referred to the councillor's size. However, the barrister for the Department of Planning, Matthew McAuliffe, said the penalty would be a deterrent to both Thaler and councillors statewide. 'He was barely able to accept that what he had done amounted to misconduct,' McAuliffe said. 'Each time I asked him whether he was remorseful it was heavily qualified, if at all. Any offer to apologise was only forthcoming if there was an order to do so. It's clear that despite the passage of time, he continues to believe that his conduct was justified.' The tribunal is considering its decision.
The Age
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Age
This serial pest called a woman a ‘fat dumb blonde'. He says he was being picked on
Andrew Thaler knew he was wrong to call a fellow Snowy Monaro councillor a fat liar, and for publicly arguing that if a non-binary council employee couldn't work out their gender – 'know whether it's a boy or girl', as he put it – they wouldn't be able to do their job, his barrister, the former Labor MP Adam Searle, told a tribunal this week. Thaler himself was less emphatic about his regret. 'It's hard to express remorse for telling the truth,' he said under cross-examination, arguing his 'robust' language was self-defence. He argued he was not speaking as a councillor, but he was merely quoting himself from a pre-election article in this masthead when he described fellow councillor Tanya Higgins as a 'fat dumb blonde, it's physically obvious'. Thaler also doubled down on his view that the staff member was a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire, invoking a Trumpian term. He also said his use of the pronoun 'it' did not necessarily dehumanise them, but rather highlighted their internal conflict. In fact, Thaler said, he was the one being picked on. He told the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), as it considered his appeal against a three-month suspension, that some of his fellow councillors had been hostile ever since his election last year, when they tried and failed to uphold a longstanding ban on his presence in council chambers (which arose from the risk council felt his behaviour posed to its staff; his election to the council in September automatically overturned the ban). But he thinks they dislike him 'because I'm a man', he told the tribunal. 'It's because I have five kids. It's because I've been married for 19 years … those are the things that [people are hostile about] at that council.' The drawn-out saga over Thaler's behaviour has gripped the Snowy Monaro region, where he was known as a serial pest before being elected to public office with little more than 100 first preference votes. His behaviour while a councillor has prompted the minister to issue a performance improvement order to the council, that says the drama is interfering with the operations of local government. His comments about the councillor and staffer in March earned him a three-month suspension, the maximum, from the Office of Local Government (OLG). But the Snowy's controversy is the pointy end of a bigger issue. Councillors are behaving badly across the state, yet the NSW system for holding them accountable is broken. This has been openly acknowledged across the sector for at least 10 years, but there has been no reform. A government discussion paper last year laid out the problem. Council debates are 'too often personal slanging matches', it said. Frivolous complaints clog the system, leaving little capacity for it to deal with serious issues. The system for handling misconduct should not be so unwieldy and ineffective that it inhibits 'the operation and function of local democracy'. Councils manage their own complaints (which can lead to politicisation), but can refer them to the OLG if they think it's warranted. In the financial year to June 2024, Bathurst clocked up the most complaints with 38 (none were upheld), followed by Lismore with 24 (none were upheld) and Sutherland with 23 (again, none were upheld). Of a total of 381 complaints, only 45 were found to constitute a breach. They cost almost $1.5 million to investigate. There were also concerns from the sector that penalties for councillor misconduct, when upheld, are too light. The maximum suspension the OLG can hand out is three months, while NCAT can issue a disqualification of up to five years. A 2022 report found the sector was concerned that the sanctions, and the OCG and NCAT's reluctance to invoke strong ones, was an ineffective deterrent to poor conduct. That earlier report, commissioned by the Coalition government, raised myriad problems with the system, ranging from conflicts of interest, partisan behaviour, incompetence, and the lack of appropriate penalties when misconduct was found. 'Key stakeholders in the sector have lost confidence in the current arrangements,' it found, and called for an overhaul. A road map for change went to cabinet in February 2023, just before the election. But when Labor won, the new local government minister, Ron Hoenig, jettisoned that plan and began his own review. Another discussion paper was released in September last year. There's not enough dignity in local government, it said, and proposed letting the OLG issue fines to councillors, suggested a privileges committee of experienced mayors examine allegations of misbehaviour, and said bans should be solely imposed by tribunals such as NCAT (they often end up there on appeal, anyway). It also proposes councillors have to rid themselves of real estate and development business activity and contracts. A spokeswoman for Hoenig said the Labor government felt the Coalition's solution would add more bureaucracy and complexity 'to an already broken system'. A new code of conduct, mechanisms to 'surcharge' councillors for frivolous complaints and a new meeting code would be released 'soon', she said. The behaviour problem is putting people – particularly women – off running for local government. A Victorian survey found 61 per cent of female local councillor respondents had experienced threatening or intimidating behaviour from fellow councillors, while another study found half of women left council after the first term. Women have been among Thaler's most frequent targets; he has called female elected officials dumb, fat, a pig, deliberately childless, a horrendous excuse for a human, and has told a state MP – and, on a separate occasion, this reporter – to go 'suck a dick'. Licia Heath from Women for Election said women were increasingly leaving councils due to bullying and harassment. 'We will shortly have a crisis of representation in local government,' she said. That will affect other levels, as state and federal MPs often cut their teeth in council. 'I'm getting increasingly concerned that there will be a pipeline issue of talented women in our state and federal parliaments, unless relevant ministers insist now on a similar review as the Kate Jenkins Set the Standard to be conducted at the local government level,' Heath said referring to a report by the former sex discrimination commissioner. Thaler is right that there are people in the area who don't like him. Before he was elected, he'd been banned from council chambers because his behaviour was considered a workplace health and safety risk. He'd also been banned from a few businesses. He was the subject of 19 complaints over a two-month period last year, the performance improvement order said; complainants alleged his behaviour left staff and fellow councillors feeling unsafe, anxious and in one case, physically sick (Thaler said he was never given a chance to respond, and those complaints have not been investigated). Loading He told the tribunal that the council had sought legal advice about what to do with him, which said it could not ban him but they could 'discipline me out of council'. In his appeal against his suspension on Tuesday, Thaler's barrister, Searle, argued the decision made by the Planning Department deputy secretary responsible for local government was invalid because he had not conducted a proper investigation first. He also said a three-month suspension was too harsh. 'We would say the applicant would say not much weight should be given to those incidences, they occur in the context of Councillor Thaler raising significant matters of public interest,' he said. Thaler insisted he was telling the truth when he used the word liar, despite not being able to produce evidence, but admitted he should not have referred to the councillor's size. However, the barrister for the Department of Planning, Matthew McAuliffe, said the penalty would be a deterrent to both Thaler and councillors statewide. 'He was barely able to accept that what he had done amounted to misconduct,' McAuliffe said. 'Each time I asked him whether he was remorseful it was heavily qualified, if at all. Any offer to apologise was only forthcoming if there was an order to do so. It's clear that despite the passage of time, he continues to believe that his conduct was justified.' The tribunal is considering its decision.
The Advertiser
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The Advertiser
'Six months of hell': review to sort vexatious council complaints from misconduct
Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said.
