paul mallett advocates for the introduction of an annual Community Wellbeing Survey for the City of Launceston and the wider Launceston Tamar Valley, a consistent, suburb-by-suburb picture of how people are actually experiencing life here.

Every year, the City of Launceston tells us a great deal about the state of our physical assets. We know which roads need resealing, which drains need clearing, which playgrounds are due for renewal. That is good, sound asset management.

But ask a question like: how do people in Norwood feel about their safety? Are older residents in Punchbowl lonely? Do families in Invermay feel like they belong? Right now, Council cannot answer with any confidence. We manage what we measure, and we simply don’t measure this.

That is the gap the Community Wellbeing Survey is designed to close.

What the survey is for

The Community Wellbeing Survey is not another glossy report that sits on a shelf. It is a consistent, suburb-by-suburb picture of how people are actually experiencing life here: their physical and mental health, their sense of safety and belonging, their connections to other people, and the everyday barriers that get in the way of a good life.

Councils already track the condition of footpaths street by street. There is no good reason we should not track the condition of community life with the same rigour. If Launceston is to become fairer, healthier and more connected, Council first needs to know where things stand, and where the pressure is concentrated.

A model that already works: Geelong

This is not a thought experiment. The City of Greater Geelong has been running its Preventative Health Survey for years, and it works. Geelong surveys around ten thousand households across every suburb, tracking twenty wellbeing indicators, from loneliness and mental health through to safety and belonging, and publishes the results on a public dashboard, year after year.

Geelong’s experience shows what is possible when a council decides to listen systematically rather than anecdotally. It gives that council an honest, evolving picture of need, postcode by postcode, and the standing to go to state and federal governments with evidence instead of assumptions. There is no reason Launceston cannot do the same.

How Launceston would use it

A survey is only worth running if it changes what Council actually does, and this one is designed to. The Community Wellbeing Survey would:

Give Council and the community a shared, evidence-based picture of need across every suburb, updated regularly rather than guessed at.

Direct resources toward where they are needed most, whether that is a park, a walking track, a safety upgrade or a social connection program, rather than spreading investment thinly and hoping.

Feed directly into the annual Kanamaluka Convention, the civic assembly mallett is proposing to bring local government, Aboriginal organisations, community groups, businesses, educators, health services and other levels of government together each year to agree shared regional priorities based on the evidence in front of them.

Strengthen Council’s case when advocating to the State and Australian Governments for investment, because a request backed by data is harder to ignore than a request backed by a hunch.

Be reported publicly, at regular intervals, so residents can see whether Launceston is actually becoming fairer, healthier and more connected, or whether it is not, and hold Council to account either way.

This is what evidence-based, prevention-first civic leadership looks like in practice. Not a slogan, but a discipline: listen first, then act, then report back honestly on what changed.

What it costs

A survey of this kind, run properly across the municipality (and potentially with other Councils to cover the broader Tamar Valley), is estimated to cost in the order of $150,000 every two years. In the context of Council’s overall budget, that is a modest investment for something that shapes how tens of millions of dollars in Council services and advocacy are targeted each year.

It is also, on the evidence from places that already do this well, money that pays for itself. When investment follows evidence rather than assumption, councils avoid the cost of programs that miss the mark and services duplicated in the wrong places. Knowing where the need actually is, suburb by suburb, is cheaper than guessing and getting it wrong.

A simple starting point

mallett is not proposing that Council solve every problem in this community. What he is proposing is that Council do what only it can do: listen properly, measure honestly, and use what it learns to act and advocate with evidence rather than assumption.

If you support a Launceston that measures what matters and acts on what it finds, paul mallett would welcome your voice in this campaign.