General News
14 October, 2026
Eden set on a return to council
WITH years of experience as a councillor and expertise in financial and governance matters, Kate Eden believes she is the right person to rejoin Tablelands Regional Council as the Division 1 representative.
Ms Eden said if she is elected at the 31 October by-election, she knows what needs to be done to regain community trust in the organisation and to ensure locals are getting the best value from ratepayers’ dollars.
Ms Eden served on TRC from 2016 to 2020, and is keen to get back to the chamber to improve transparency, open debate, and true community engagement.
She said her strong understanding of local government processes, financial management and governance would allow her to get to work straight away and achieve real change.
“You can’t drive the car before you can change the tyres,” Ms Eden said.
“Similarly, I’ve worked for the three levels of government, so I’ve got the tools to drive changes in bureaucracy.
“I’m passionate about robust debate, community consultation and transparency. I want to investigate what is going on in there and to be a watchdog for constituents.
“I’m also very aware of the rise in the cost of living and in order to minimise rate rises, council needs to reduce operating costs. This means taking a good, hard look at the budget.
“With my financial literacy and experience managing multi-million-dollar budgets, I know the questions to ask.”
Ms Eden is critical of the way the council has handled some matters in the past year, particularly the asset divestment program which drove a lot of angst within the community.
“I have spoken to the Mayor about the process that they went through to do that, and I was just horrified,” she said, adding that stakeholders should have been consulted before assets made their way onto the list.
“Consultation is about having constant conversations with community, and it’s about making them aware why we’re thinking this way.”
Ms Eden is an advocate of allowing robust debate in the chamber, saying it was important to consider all the views around the table before a decision is made.
Currently, council’s standing orders only allow five minutes for a councillor to speak and they are not allowed to speak again on the same item.
“I’ve got a lot of background in policy development. I actually wrote those standing orders and we put in five minutes just to manage it if it got really out of hand,” she said.
“It sounds to me like there actually needs to be a really thorough policy review because policy should be a guideline. This is where I think the bureaucrats are using those policies, sticking to the letter of the policy or the law.”
Ms Eden said that the six years away from government, running her own business had given her a fresh vision for the Tablelands.
“My aim is to return balance to council, with a focus on services, fairness, openness and approachability.”
