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One of ALGA’s election priorities is to foster indigenous well-being and prosperity. Key to this is closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Only modest progress has been achieved, with only one target met, and Indigenous Australians remain well behind on a range of indicators. Stable, safe and appropriate housing is fundamental to reaching+
Posted 22 March, 2019 -
Local Government Workforce challenges revealed One of local government’s most valuable assets is its workforce and councils across Australia employ around 189,000 across an amazing 394 occupations. Most of our employees are full time (68%), committed, long term employees with the unplanned turnover rate in our sector being a relatively low 8.3%. But we do+
Posted 15 March, 2019 -
We are living through an exciting time in history where gender equality has become an expectation, rather than a far-fetched ambition. The community is increasingly questioning its absence at the same time celebrating a whole new era of heroes (or heroines if you prefer). The tenacious campaigns during the early 20th century by the suffragettes,+
Posted 8 March, 2019 -
The ALGA Secretariat in Canberra has been abuzz with preparations for the upcoming National Assembly of Local Government, which will be held on 16 – 19 June. At last year’s Assembly, the NGA encouraged you to donate coats to support our first partner charity – National Coat Day via Enormity – and we are excited+
Posted 22 February, 2019 -
Do you want to run a mile when invited to an annual Strategic Planning workshop? Yet we all know it is a vital process in local government to ensure our limited resources will be applied to the most important tasks in the coming year. Population, infrastructure and planning, waste and recycling, workforce development, and services+
Posted 15 February, 2019 -
Should there be consistency of Local Government Acts across states and territories in Australia? I had the opportunity last week to speak at the WALGA Future of Local Government State-wide Forum and offer a possible answer to this question by looking at Local Government Act trends in Australia. Local government is a creature of the+
Posted 8 February, 2019 -
New Year etiquette would suggest that today is perhaps a little late to send you good cheer for the new year, but as this is the first ALGA Newsedition of 2019, I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a prosperous New Year and every success in the year to come! I trust you all+
Posted 1 February, 2019 -
Improving population planning and management was the hot topic at Wednesday’s COAG meeting of First Ministers, which I attended as local government’s representative. It seems everyone has an opinion on population, and that would be reasonable given its far reaching consequences – be it pressures on infill, or fringe areas of the city being developed+
Posted 14 December, 2018 -
The nation’s environment ministers will meet today at Parliament House in Canberra to review the proposed updated National Waste Policy and discuss other national environmental issues. I’m looking forward to attending in my official capacity as ALGA President and ensuring the issues important to our sector get some traction at this influential forum. In particular,+
Posted 7 December, 2018
