CLOSING REMARKS TO THE AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

AS18/2009
25 June 2009

Parliament House, Canberra

Welcome back. Thanks Maxine.

It is fantastic to have someone like Maxine McKew as a Parliamentary Secretary. She's going to be sensational. She'll be great for you, she's engaging, she's smart, she's tough and she's hardworking and she'll get out there and get amongst it.

Certainly the only problem that I will have is that when I turn up to open some of these community infrastructure projects, people will say 'wasn't Maxine available?'

Having ministers give up hours of their time when Parliament's sitting prior to Question Time is a big ask and I just want to put on the record of how grateful I am. The fact is, every single minister in the building has participated in today's event and that is great.

I want to thank the Prime Minister once again. He didn't have to travel as far this time. We brought him back from the States you might recall, he travelled from the US to South America via the ACLG last time round because he gave a commitment and he didn't want to miss out. This time around he has given up his time last night and again today and I want to thank him.

One of the things that came out of the groups - I'm going to go through some of them today - one person in the group said they were stunned by the economic presentation. The quote was 'he treated us like we were government leaders and gave us a briefing. He didn't treat us as though there was one level up here another level down there.'

In fact that presentation, at the risk of being carted off by the wallopers, was the same presentation that originally was to the Cabinet. I think that says a lot about the way that he thinks about this body and about how seriously the Prime Minister takes that mutual respect. I think that was very much appreciated.

Certainly a couple of mayors have asked for copies of the presentation to give to their local business community because so much of the response to the global economic crisis is about confidence.

If you have a look at what happened to confidence when we did not go into recession on the 3 June - it was quite an extraordinary leap. So I would encourage you to take that message out. There's actually a tangible economic outcome for employment, for your economies, from the confidence that can grow from the sense that we are doing much better than other advanced economies.

Ken Henry won't forget today's presentation and there's another Treasury official apart from the obvious one who has now got a difficulty.

That was not planned but Ken is a terrific bloke and you know for him to give up his time as well to come along and give that presentation even though the CSRD which I'm told stands for Commonwealth State Relations Division. There's someone in there who I am sure has had a phone call from Ken. But it will be a friendly one. I thought he handled that incredibly well. I'm not sure I would have handled it as well. I'm sure I wouldn't have. He did remarkably well.

Look it has been an incredibly productive morning. I want to thank you all for participating. I also want to thank the staff. The staff who helped to facilitate the sessions, the staff of Ministers and Members of Parliament who helped to assist. ALGA for their ongoing consultation in the presentation today. The Parliament House staff, the workers who put on the tea and the coffee and fixed up this hall from last night, I want to thank all of them as well. These things don't just happen.

Now I did not get around to every room today but I did just about. I missed a couple but I got around to as many as I could. And what I found was that the dialogue that was occurring was just as positive as the buzz in the room here last night.

One of the things that comes from it is that people have common interests in local government. There is a collective sense of moving forward regardless of what people's political background is or what state they're from or whether they're city or regional, whether they're big or small. There is a common sense of a common interest moving forward and that is a great thing.

You have identified some of the big challenges facing your communities. Today's meeting has been around the theme of bolstering resilience in your local communities and we're focused on many of the big challenges.

The discussions have been underpinned by three main points. Firstly, how do we make our local communities more resilient in the face of the challenges? Secondly, what can we learn from each other to help us to respond to the global economic recession and natural disasters? And thirdly, how do we strengthen the partnership between our two governments to tackle these major challenges?

Firstly to the critical issue of the global economic recession. Families, business and governments at all levels have been impacted by this.  As the Prime Minister said 'we are all in this together.'

The Prime Minister outlined in his presentation this morning that our response has kept us ahead of the pack and he outlined that the measures in terms of local community infrastructure has been an important part of that.

The Prime Minister announced a $220 million boost for the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. This brings it to more than $1 billion.

When I became Local Government Minister it was suggested to me that if we could have a program for community infrastructure through local government that delivered $1 billion over 10 years, then that would be a great thing. It's been $1 billion since November.

I want to say something about the two components of this funding. The $100 million will be divided with a minimum component of $30,000 based once again on the grants formula with a formula there as well for growth. So that will ensure that each and every council receives funding from this section of the program.

You will be asked to make submissions as you were last time. We want to make sure that these are new projects, not replacement projects. So it has to add to community infrastructure, not just change who is funding it.

I'd ask you to think about - this is not compulsion -projects in which you can also make a contribution, be it directly or perhaps from state or territory governments or from NGOs so that the $100 million produces a much greater outcome than $100 million of community infrastructure.

We are still going through the process of the $800 million bringing activity. So in terms of timing and the detail of the roll-out of this funding we will, as we did last time, consult both with ALGA but also with the Australian Council of Local Government Steering Committee regarding some of the detail. That will occur very quickly and it will be on the ACLG website.

In terms of those projects, I would encourage you to think about projects which maximise job creation at this time. That is what we want to come out of this process.

The second Strategic Projects component will be $120 million; a co-contribution is what we are looking for, co-investment. Last time, $550 million produced $1.5 billion of outcomes. We want that to occur again.

When you look at the guidelines, you will see that consideration will be given to those councils which do not have outstanding work to be completed under the $800 million program. So get your skates on. That unapologetically means that if you have a very large project that's going to take a long time obviously you will be disadvantaged when competing against a council that does not have a project last time. That is fair. That is also about telling councils to get their skates on and get it done.

We are looking at that component creating activity in 2010 but we will look at whether the Strategic Projects, the 137 of course, have been opened or not and we want the projects to be opened this year. We want more projects to be opened next year in 2010 so the Strategic Projects component, it will close at the end of this year but 2010 early will be when the activity occurs.

People who applied before and were not successful are of course eligible to apply again. It was very difficult when the Senate ensured that because our Nation Building and Jobs Plan was not supported by the other major political parties, we had to rely upon the minor parties to get through the Senate. And one of their conditions was the re-opening of the projects. So we went from having 200-odd applications to having 484 of which a bit more than 1 in 4 were successful.

I suspect again everyone will not be successful but we will have an objective process that is not about politics, that is about outcomes for you. I think that is an appropriate way for taxpayer funds to be looked after.

The Prime Minister also announced $25 million for the Local Government Reform Fund to implement financial management and capacity building initiatives.

We have been talking on an ongoing basis to ALGA and will continue to do that about the best way to maximise use of that funding. We will also be talking to the Centre of Excellence for Local Government about that issue as well.

I want to just run through quickly some of the other key themes to emerge today. One of the key themes to emerge from urban areas was the need for neighbouring councils to work in partnership with each other. A good example of this is the work being undertaken by Sydney Coastal Councils who are working together to manage their infrastructure.

We also discussed the importance of the three tiers of government working together through the newly established Regional Development Australia network.

One of the other points raised by urban councils was the need to involve local communities and consult with them to ensure their voices are heard during these tough times.

Regional groups highlighted the importance of creating partnerships across neighbouring councils and industry groups to build economic resilience.

Prospect Council shared with us their experience of working in alliance with five other councils to share services.

Many of the regional groups also highlighted the fundamental need for economic diversification.

You spoke about the need to have good economic strategies in place and blue prints for the future.

It was heartening also to hear the levels of optimism in many of the rooms today. Cook Council said that the global financial crisis presents us with the unique opportunity to build resilience out of adversity.

Wangaratta Council said that now is not the time to be timid.

Whittlesea said that now is the time to focus on joining the dots between the three levels of government on issues like community health.

One of the common points that you raised today was the need for continued work on financial sustainability.

Many groups raised the need for collaboration for dealing with our ageing population.

The Rural Coastal Group in particular raised the idea of a national ageing taskforce to identify opportunities for national, state and local engagement.

Today we also looked at building resilience to respond to the challenge of climate change and the possibility that we will face more frequent and more severe natural disasters.

Across the board, councils stressed the need to work in a more coordinated way across the tiers of government and their communities to adapt to climate change.

One of the regional groups talked about identifying how risk and liability are managed when communities are affected by climate change.

The rapid growth councils talked about uniformity in planning for climate change including land use planning.

The metropolitan councils talked about establishing a specific forum for natural disaster management across the three levels of government.  I know that the Local Government and Planning Ministers' Council which I chair has commenced work on this issue.

Mildura, Kalgoorlie, Geraldton and Roma all talked about working together to introduce new greener industries such as solar power.  

In one of the groups, a Northern Territory council talked about building a water treatment plant that was ten times the area but only a quarter of the cost of the previous facility. And they did that by working with local business to share costs.

Of course all of these ideas will be put together and will be available as a communiqué on the website.

I must say as well all the pictures that people have taken with the Prime Minister will also be on the ACLG website.

Look it's clear that today we have covered a great deal of ground. You were able to get input to Cabinet Ministers and when you go into a room and see the Treasurer of the nation sitting there and you go into another one and the Finance Minister, it's a great thing.

It actually helps me as an advocate of local government and will help Maxine. The fact that you have had that dialogue and they have seen how serious you are about protecting the interests of your local community.

They of course knew that about their own mayors. But it is a bit like people say often about politicians. They think, 'Oh my local member works really hard but most politicians don't work hard at all.' You know one thing in common about people in this place is that they do.  One thing in common about you is that you do and an example of that is the work that you have put in this week at ALGA. You know it is a big ask to go through ALGA and then come here, to be here all week and the Government appreciates that.

We will continue to work with the ACLG Steering Committee in between these plenaries.

I certainly look forward to next year's meeting of this plenary group but in the meantime there is a lot of reform and a lot of work that we can do together.

The success of these meetings depends entirely on your input and the enthusiasm with which people were making contributions.  

There were a number of groups I was in where people were told they could not make a second contribution until new people who had not spoken were given that opportunity.

We apologise for the fact that this isn't as long as last year's but when Parliament is sitting, which is an ALGA request because obviously it is a lot easier for you to come to Canberra once a year than twice a year.

Many of you have travelled such long distances to be here, and that is fantastic. The Prime Minister certainly made mention to me last night about how many people were here from the Territory, from the west, from regional communities and he is certainly aware of what a difficult and large country this is to get around.

I think that we have really taken that next important step that I spoke about last night towards building this stronger partnership.

I conclude by thanking once again all of you.

I thank Ellen for her magnificent chairing of this event and last night.

If I can have the indulgence of thanking as well my staff who are underpaid and overworked, particularly Moksha Watts who put in an enormous effort for this event.

Thanks very much.