Rosemary Armitage now advocates for more local control of LGH

It was the early evening of the October 2009 Launceston City Council elections, and the initial count had declared her the winner of the Mayoral race by 21 votes.

She says she was overjoyed, with friends and acquaintances - and even her opponent, Albert van Zetten - ringing to congratulate her.

It wasn't until later that night that a recount put Mr van Zetten ahead by three votes, and he was declared the winner.

Ms Armitage went to bed the mayor, but woke up a councillor.

"It was devastating," Ms Armitage now says of the snatched victory.

"If I hadn't won the night before, it wouldn't have been as difficult," she says.

But things happen for a reason, and she didn't take her mayoral disappointment to heart, she says.

"I love local government, I love that closeness to the community that you have with local government ... I think one day, I'd like to go back," she says.

In 2011, she left her position on the Launceston City Council and ran for the seat of Launceston in the Legislative Council.

She won, and has held the seat ever since.

Born and raised in the city, Ms Armitage worked for several years as a real estate agent, and was the executive assistant to the superintendent of the Launceston General Hospital.

She also spent many years as a stay at home mum, raising her four children.

In her first speech on the floor of parliament, she said she held no degrees or diplomas - except a "degree of common sense".

"What I believe I have is far more important. I am in touch with my community."

The voting support bares that out - she has won every election for her Launceston seat since then.

She narrowly beat a field of challengers in 2017, but thrashed Greens opponent Cecily Rosol in the latest election in May this year, taking 78 per cent of the vote.

"I just love to get out and about in the streets, whether it's election time or not, just to talk to people and help them when I can.

"Unfortunately I can't always help them, but I always do my best, I always try."

Speaking to her constituents around Launceston, she says the things that concern people the most haven't changed much since she first came to Hobart.

Power and water prices, the availability of gas in some Launceston suburbs, and the state of the Tamar river.

But healthcare and the LGH tops the list by a big margin.

It's a topic she knows well, having worked in the hospital and as an assistant in an oncology practice.

"Working in oncology, one sees true strength from people often facing the inevitable and you realise what is really important," she says.

It has also given her a better understanding of what needs to happen in the state's health system.

For a long time, she's advocated for a regional hospital network, instead of the present system where all decisions about the state's five hospitals are made in Hobart.

"I think the hospitals in the regions should have more say over their own entities," she says.

"At the moment, the decision-making is so far removed from where the actual decision should be.

"There needs to be a new way of doing it - what we are doing now obviously isn't working," she says.

She she chats to staff and medicos of the LGH often, and says one of their gripes is they are not being listened to.

Ms Armitage says she doesn't have all the answers to fix the broken health system, but listening to people at the coalface would help.

"I've always felt that the administration side down in the south, where they have their head offices that control our hospitals, they decide what happens.

"But they're not on the floor, they are not there, I don't believe they listen to our practitioners.

She says the doctors and nurses of the LGH know more about the hospital than administrators in Hobart.

"Practitioners are the ones that really know what's happening - the people on the floor, I think they should have more say, and their opinions are not being taken on board."

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