A resounding number of respondents to Hobart City Council's elector poll have voted in favour of installing hard building height limits, but for the council the issue is far from resolved.
The $180,000 postal vote was triggered by activist group Hobart not Highrise, which presented the council with a petition containing more than 1,000 signatures.
The electoral commission confirmed it had received a return rate of just over 42.4 per cent, which it described as a "strong response for a stand-alone elector poll" for a large council.
To put that in perspective, 61 per cent of people voted in last year's council election.
Of those who responded to the poll, 77 per cent said the council should "support the building height limits", a figure Hobart Not Highrise's president Brian Corr is celebrating.
He said the results were hugely significant, particularly given the turnout.
"It's a message from the people to the aldermen and councillors to actually put these limits in place," he said.
"I would expect them [the councillors and aldermen] to just do what the people want them to do … bring it back to council and put it through and then everyone's happy."
But the council has always maintained that the poll would not be binding and some councillors have no intention of taking the result into account.
Alderman Simon Behrakis described the vote turnout as "quite pathetic".
"The results were always going to be skewed [due to the questions] and based on the very, very low turnout, I think it's more of an indication that people of Hobart have seen this for what it is and that's a farce with no credibility," he said.
"Even if 100 per cent of the respondents of this survey voted in favour of this, it's still less than half of Hobart that's said they want height limits."
He said he would not take the poll into consideration when making a decision on height limits.
"I think it has no real statistical value and I'd be encouraging all my colleagues to do the same and do the responsible thing and wait and get the findings of the social and economic impact study," he said.
Call for respect
But Acting Lord Mayor Helen Burnet said the number of people responding was statistically significant.
"Quite clearly there is a mood for this issue to be resolved," she said.
"This is a statistically significant number of people who have voted and it's incumbent on us as a council to really give this credence."
She said during council elections last year there was "an overwhelming sense that people were really concerned about building heights" and the poll reaffirmed this.
"Personally, what I want to do is listen to the community and I think the community have spoken," she said.
"I think that we should be listening to this message, which is loud and clear, and I think it's really important to be respectful of this elector poll."
Political analyst Kevin Bonham said he did not consider the turnout to be particularly high, but said it was a strong result from those who did vote.
"It does actually indicate that there were very few people willing to put up their hand and say, 'yes I want Hobart to be open to very high buildings', so yes it's significant," he said.
"For anyone who is considering supporting very high buildings, this doesn't show that there is a lot of support out there for that."
Mr Corr said although the poll was not binding, he hoped the council would reconsider its position and vote in favour of hard limits.
"We've always said that we will do what the people of Hobart ask us to do in the poll," he said.
"We would expect the council to do what the people are asking them to do as well."
