LGMA Queensland Annual Conference
This week the LGAQ attended the LGMA (Local Government Managers Australia) Queensland Annual Conference, which was a great opportunity to be with many CEOs from councils across Queensland, focussing on the important topic of leadership.
For local government for the past 18 months or so, leadership has been a matter of flexibility; of adapting to changing community expectations and to changing legislation.
The feedback was that it was a very valuable conference and strong leadership in the local government sector is more imperative than ever.
Building Our Regions Round 6
This week regional councils received details about the State Government’s $70 million for regional water infrastructure projects.
Look out for the guidelines for Round 6 of Building our Regions, as applications will open in the next few weeks.
The funding is an important first step in what will be needed to deliver critical water and sewerage upgrades to address the infrastructure cliff many rural communities are facing across Queensland.
The LGAQ had been advocating directly to the State Government about the need to fund critical water and waste water infrastructure and planning projects; and this $70 million was announced within the June State Budget.
Advocating on three important topics
Meanwhile, this week the LGAQ has submitted a Mid Year Fiscal and Economic Review submission for three important topics:
- To restore Works for Queensland funding at the historic levels of $100 million per year
- To ensure advance payments for the waste levy continue beyond June 2022
- And to continue to fund the QWRAP program, which is $2 million per year.
We will keep you updated on how the State Government responds. And you’ll see more on our Works for Queensland request, as we roll out a social campaign featuring many of our member councils to support our #Backto100Mill ask.
Regional Telecommunications Review
Meanwhile, don’t forget we are fast approaching the 30 September deadline for submissions into the Regional Telecommunications Review. A big thank you to the mayors who have been recording video messages to support their submissions, and the council teams who have been preparing detailed responses to this once-every-three-year review. The LGAQ will be lodging a very significant statewide submission, and we will be making a very strong case about black spots, voice and data access and the need for mobile roaming.
Rural and Remote Councils Policy and Legislative Committee
Finally, this week sees the first meeting of the Rural and Remote Councils Policy and Legislative Committee. This committee underpins the Rural and Remote Compact, which was signed at the end of June. In its first sitting, it is looking at the Strategic Roads Policy and legislation issues that have been identified by Queensland’s rural and remote communities. Thank you to the Policy Executive Rural and Remote members who are the guardians of this compact, as they’ve been helping to gather up these issues and take them back to the committee to resolve. A communique will come out shortly from the committee, which will then prepare an action plan to tackle the issues raised.