Weekly column from Counci Courier e-newsletter by CEO Greg Hallam, Friday 19 August 2016.
The LGAQ’s challenge to the lawfulness of Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace’s direction to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission regarding the future of the single Local Government Award has entered a critical stage.
Today, our IR team and junior and senior counsel attended a one-day hearing in the Supreme Court on that challenge. We will provide an update on the case next week.
Also this week, we held the inaugural LGAQ Future Cities Summit in Brisbane. The summit not only attracted a great line up of national and international speakers but also attracted a fair amount of media interest.
This was mainly generated by the speech federal Assistant Minister for Cities Angus Taylor made to the summit, which outlined how the Turnbull Government would approach the increasingly challenging subject of urban policy.
About 150 delegates heard the Minister discuss the future of infrastructure funding and give a spirited defence of the proposed Townsville stadium.
The summit is a demonstration of the LGAQ wanting to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to member engagement. We will alternate future cities summits with our popular Bush Councils summits every year and mix up the event locations as well. Already this year we have run specific events for coastal, indigenous and urban councils - testament to our commitment to make such events personal and relevant.
It’s great to be back after two weeks of annual leave. A big thanks to Greg Hoffman for so capably minding the fort in my absence.