Cheryl Fuller - Growing Pride (along with other things ) in the Central Coast

Cheryl talks algorithms, exhaustion, and why she thinks pride is infectious.

We recorded this in the middle of the local government election, so Cheryl is speaking as a candidate and as herself, not as a council spokesperson.

Cheryl Fuller has been Mayor of Central Coast about four years.

She grew up in Ulverstone in the 1980s, when the ambition of her whole friendship group was to get out as fast as possible.

Outside of Tasmania, she built a career in logistics on the mainland and then came home.

We start where we met: a Devonport Chamber breakfast on red tape, where a local business owner explained that her sparkies fill in forms in triplicate, by hand, from books of 25, available only two at a time from Service Tasmania.

Cheryl's head, by her own account, just about exploded. Her question to the room was why the state wasn't using the AI tools some councils are already using.

Our conversation opens into something bigger: her view that state and local government "don't take enough opportunity to actually learn from each other and problem solve together" in a very small state.

We also get into what the current economic development strategy is actually for (measurement, not marketing), why Central Coast is the home of the glass and a half of full cream dairy milk and almost nobody knows it, the $106 million of agriculture tucked away in the hinterland behind the Bass Highway, why she has no interest in a Bunnings, and her completely unverified claim — unchallenged for four years — that Central Coast has more volunteers per capita than anywhere else in Tasmania.

Near the end, Cheryl describes a young man at the recent candidates' night asking each candidate in the room why people his age feel disconnected from government.

Her advice for anyone with a problem, a dream, or a business idea:

Don't get crabby. Get helpful.