Not the least, of course, will be the council’s financial predicament and attempting to reign in the excessive expenditure of recent years, especially the inflated payroll. While we do not want to see local people lose their job, no-one doubts the multi-million dollar growth in wage costs is not sustainable.
The community also expects a significantly improved culture, and elimination of the ‘bloc’ voting mentality which we have seen, to the region’s detriment, for the past three years.
One important project the new council must discuss is the community’s application for a Connected Universities Centre, which has the potential to support further education for young people, in particular, thus helping them to remain living locally.
Before the candidates’ forum hosted by Deniliquin Business Chamber, there was a positive response to the CUC from those seeking a seat on council. It is imperative this is transferred into genuine support.
While we acknowledge this will be difficult within the financial constraints that are expected to emerge, the council will need to find a way to make it a priority.
Local CUC chair Leanne Small says the CUC in our region would be “game changing”.
We encourage local government and businesses, large and small, to get behind this initiative and ensure our community makes the most of this important educational opportunity.
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Bureaucracies work in unusual ways. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority was this month responsible for a workshop to discuss how it can improve communication in our region.
It paid a consultancy firm, which in turn paid participants $200 to attend and provide their feedback. But in another typical MDBA ‘tick a box’ exercise, it appears poorly organised and unlikely to have any meaningful impact.
It seems only about eight people fronted up to the workshop (even though they were getting paid) because very few knew anything about it. Trevor Clark, a prominent water advocate who sits on the NSW Irrigators Council, explained he found out about the workshop “by chance” and other participants only had a few hours’ notice to attend.
Not surprisingly, media representatives who could offer a few valuable tips to the MDBA were not on the invite list.
Mr Clark laments that the NSW Irrigators Council puts “proposal after proposal” forward to the MDBA, but “no-one takes any notice of them”.
That has been happening for well over a decade because the MDBA, like the Federal Government, has never been serious about community engagement. A prime example was the government’s recent $12 million Murray-Darling Basin advertising campaign, which many considered to be deceitful because of the messages and false imagery that it portrayed.
There are many people and organisations across our region, this newspaper included, who would welcome bona fide engagement and communication with the MDBA and others who are trying to control our destiny, including the ‘missing in action’ Water Minister Tanya Plibersek.
But we do not expect it to happen. Like this month’s ‘research’ and the history of communication over more than a decade, there will be little other than disingenuous ‘tick a box’ exercises unless there is a change of attitude at the MDBA including a genuine effort to engage with local communities.
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