For many years people elected to the Glenorchy City  Council have been referred to as “alderman”  — e.g. Alderman Smith — simply because our Council is a “city” council. And the aldermen seemed to like being referred to that way. A status thing maybe?

Our current Tasmanian Local Government Act has since 1993 given people elected to our council the option of demanding that they be referred to as councillor — as those plebs elected to non-city councils always have been.

We discovered just how much our council members liked the title alderman when Kendall and Quick demanded to be called councillor. No-one else joined them.

But no more.

Last night we learnt at the open council meeting that the incoming council after the current election will no longer use the old-fashioned alderman or rather quaint elected member monikers. Legislative changes have blown them away.

It’s worth noting that council has had the power to do that for years but couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

And council actually voted for a motion at the 2018 Local Government Association Conference to make alderman disappear, a motion overwhelmingly passed by those present.

The title alderman was about the only perk of any sort that came from Glenorchy becoming a city. The title city seems to mean as little as alderman did.