By LGAQ President and Sunshine Coast Council Mayor, Mark Jamieson
Local councils are the fabric that draws local communities together. No other institution or tier of government is involved in more aspects of community life, from building roads and bridges to caring for the local environment to providing library services and recovering from natural disasters.
Increasingly, councils are also playing the primary role in building confidence in their communities and securing opportunities for their regions that deliver jobs and prosperity for their constituents.
Queensland has 579 elected councillors across 77 local councils, who employ more than 40,000 people. Local governments also oversee more than $108 billion in community assets. Our daily goal is striving to build strong, liveable, connected communities in Australia’s most diverse and regionalised state. If local government was listed on the stock exchange, it would be a bigger business in terms of staff numbers and assets under management than the State’s top three public companies.
But to do this consistently they need to develop or help to develop relevant and responsive public policy, services that meet the needs of their residents and reflect the expectations of their communities. With this in mind, the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) has identified improving integrity and accountability, as well as addressing financial sustainability as the two major challenges local councils will continue to face for the remainder of this local government term.
As the peak body for local councils in Queensland, the LGAQ exists to ensure councils - the tier of government closest to the community - can do their jobs better. We are not just another stakeholder.
We work with the state and federal governments to drive reforms in planning, economic and community development and environmental management that improve the well-being of all Queensland’s communities, be they based in urban areas, on the coast or in the bush, whether they are resources or agriculture based or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Our relationships with the state and federal governments are based on mutual respect, open and honest dialogue and recognition of our shared responsibilities in serving the people of Queensland.
I urge you to read this document and use it as a reference in your dealings with us. It identifies the goals Queensland’s local councils are pursuing as they work to improve the lives of the people and communities they represent