{"id":431656,"date":"2026-01-23T06:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431656\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T06:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:50:16","slug":"decision-to-suspend-tasmanian-councillor-louise-elliot-for-child-like-comments-upheld-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431656\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision to suspend Tasmanian councillor Louise Elliot for ‘child-like’ comments upheld in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tasmanian councillor says she is being “censored and unfairly punished” after being sanctioned for social media posts she made regarding a fellow councillor.<\/p>\n

Some of the complaints against Hobart City councillor Louise Elliot included her referring to councillor Ryan Posselt as “clown man” and insinuating he “hates women”.<\/p>\n

The collection of posts, which also included a blurred image of genitalia, were the subject of a code of conduct complaint by Cr Posselt from July 2023.<\/p>\n

An independent panel investigated the matter and determined in October 2024 that Cr Elliot had breached the council’s code of conduct policies.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Cr Elliot says she is being “censored and unfairly punished”. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)<\/p>\n

The panel found she had harassed and offended her fellow councillor, while also undermining the decisions of Hobart City Council.<\/p>\n

Cr Elliot applied to the Magistrates Court for a review of the determination and in December 2025 the court affirmed the code of conduct panel’s determination.<\/p>\n

She has since criticised the code of conduct framework, described Cr Posselt as being on the “fragile end” and flagged potential Federal Court action.<\/p>\n

Cr Posselt said the determination being upheld was a “win for democracy” as he felt Cr Elliot had failed to behave in an ethical, moral or respectful way.<\/p>\n

Councillor described as ‘clown man’<\/p>\n

The complaint by Cr Posselt centred on eight social media posts made or shared by Cr Elliot between April and July in 2023.<\/p>\n

In one of the social media posts, Cr Elliot referred to Cr Posselt as a hypocrite and “clown man”.<\/p>\n

The panel was advised that the clown comment was a reference to a retracted remark Cr Posselt once made, in which he likened the council to a circus.<\/p>\n

In another post, Cr Elliot posted an image of multiple councillors, including Cr Posselt, beneath the headline “Hobart hates women”.<\/p>\n

The post was made after Cr Elliot’s motion calling for a third type of public bathroom to be provided for transgender people was rejected by the council.<\/p>\n

The panel heard that another post, which was based on Cr Posselt’s body language during a meeting, resulted in him and his family receiving multiple threats.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

The complaint by Ryan Posselt centred on eight social media posts made or shared by Cr Elliot. (ABC News: Scout Wallen)<\/p>\n

Among the remaining posts included in the complaint was a retweet made by Cr Elliot, which shared a blurred image of genitalia.<\/p>\n

In her written submission to the panel, Cr Elliot said the image was hidden behind a warning, was not graphic and was deleted within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

The code of conduct panel held a hearing in September 2024, which Cr Elliot did not attend, writing in an email that it was “for her own safety and mental health”.<\/p>\n

She was given permission to have a support person attend the hearing with her or appear electronically, but did not take up either option.<\/p>\n

Seven-day suspension handed down<\/p>\n

The code of conduct complaint against Cr Elliot was ultimately upheld, although some parts were dismissed by the independent panel.<\/p>\n

It found some of the posts constituted harassment of Cr Posselt, did not treat him fairly, and caused him offence.<\/p>\n

Other posts were found to have undermined decision-making by the Hobart City Council, by including headlines that implied the organisation was dysfunctional.<\/p>\n

Referring to the post where Cr Elliot inferred some councillors hate women, the panel described the statement as “inflammatory, attention-grabbing, wholly unobjective and essentially child-like”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Cr Elliot was ordered to attend a training course to help her distinguish between her role as an elected member and private citizen when using social media. (
\n ABC News: Luke Bowden
\n )<\/p>\n

The panel suspended Cr Elliot from performing and exercising the functions and powers of her office for seven days.<\/p>\n

She was also ordered to attend a training course to help her distinguish between her role as an elected member and private citizen when using social media.<\/p>\n

These sanctions were affirmed by the Magistrates’ Court in December, although it was noted Cr Elliot had already served the seven-day suspension.<\/p>\n

Councillor says she is being ‘unfairly punished’<\/p>\n

Cr Elliot said the panel has too much power to censor political communication and she was unfairly held to a higher standard, compared to state and federal politicians.<\/p>\n

“The code of conduct framework and especially the way the panels are interpreting and applying the code is fundamentally broken,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I am bound by \u2026 these highly subjective offence and embarrassment terms, where the panel’s threshold is ridiculously low.<\/p>\n

“I am being censored and unfairly punished.”<\/p>\n

When asked about her social media posts, Cr Elliot said she has learnt to be more conscious of individual sensibilities.<\/p>\n

“Everyone has their own threshold in terms of their own resilience,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I do believe that Cr Posselt is on the more hyper-sensitive and fragile end.”<\/p>\n

Cr Posselt said his complaint was simply based on the objective breaches to the code of conduct policy.<\/p>\n

“It had nothing to do with my fragility and everything to do with the rules under which we are meant to operate as councillors,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Cr Posselt said his complaint was based off the objective breaches to the code of conduct policy. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

“You can’t go around in your organisation harassing people or sledging the organisation you work for as an employee.<\/p>\n

“It’s a win for democracy and a win for representation.”<\/p>\n

Cr Elliot said she was in the midst of working with lawyers to prepare a matter for the Federal Court of Australia.<\/p>\n

She said it would centre around elevating the threshold for terms like “offence and embarrassment” when used by code of conduct panels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tasmanian councillor says she is being “censored and unfairly punished” after being sanctioned for social media posts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,9785,7781,12804,18401,225941,44,225942,1314,26605],"class_list":["post-431656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-censorship","tag-comment","tag-hobart","tag-hobart-city-council","tag-louise-elliot","tag-news","tag-ryan-posselt","tag-social-media","tag-suspension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}