The final day of the convention included presentations to of the Long and Loyal Service and the Distinguished Service Honour Awards.
Mr Terry Gray was presented with the Long and Loyal Service Award for his services on the Shire of Kent.
Following the awards, our keynote speaker came to the podium and held the audience in the palm of her delicate hand for the next 45 minutes. I've never know such a hush to be held over the entire auditorium as there was when Gill Hicks spoke to the delegates.
Gill Hicks was severely injured in the 2005 London bombing and is a passionate advocate of inter-community relations and peace, worldwide. She is Ambassador for Peace Direct, an international peace initiative.
Gill's story was one of incredible survival, humanity, kindness and strength. Her near death experience led her to 'sign' a contract to stay alive and work towards making our world a more tolerant and peaceful place. She lost both legs below the knee and now uses artificial limbs and a working stick.
Her account of the struggle to live and all that took place during her recovery was one that brought tears to the eyes of many in the audience. One gentleman asked if she would marry him, during the Q & A session afterwards.
Her gentle demeanour and humble attitude had us all in love with her.
The WALGA AGM was held in the afternoon. Cr Crosby and I attended as delegates in order to vote on the numerous motions.
Councillors then joined the Broomehill/Tambellup crew at dinner that evening.
Overall, I'm not happy with the convention program this year. I've suggested in the feedback on the white board provided that concurrent sessions be held in future to cater for the huge diversity of the shires in our state, including rural, remote and indigenous councils.
Local Government Convention 2010 Day Four
Local Government Convention 2010 Day Three
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki led the opening session on Friday 6th August. His fast-paced rapid-fire presentation left us all feeling a little dizzy. His topics included and eclectic range of ideas, facts and figures such as Moore's law:
Transistors shrink in size every 18 months.
So, the silicon chip will soon be almost invisible!
If you cover your roof with solar panels and feed back into the grid, you will have an energy payback time (the time it takes to create enough power savings to payback the cost of purchasing and installing the system) is only 19 to 40 months. The systems should have a life of 30 years.
My ears pricked up when Dr Karl discussed the lack of government funding for alternative energy research and promotion. That's something I find untenable, given the issue of climate change that dominates the political landscape. But, what really made me mad was hearing him state, "Fossil fuel companies have received around $9billion worth of subsidies." I'm not sure of the length of time being discussed here, but it makes any climate change policy that either political party spruiks sound pretty lame...
The Danes have the largest alternative energy system in the world with their Wind Energy industry. Why isn't Australia tapping in to the most abundant form of energy in our land?
My belief? Developing a Solar Energy Industry should be a major policy for any government serious about doing something to help stop the use of fossil fuel for energy purposes.
Following on from Dr Karl's energetic presentation, Laurel Papworth, a social networking expert held my attention. If you click here, you can go to a slide show of the presentation which she offered. Her topic centred around the clever use of social media - eg, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. She advocated the use of these various applications for local governments to connect with their rate payers on a more personal level.
One Council went as far as to put up their budget online and allowed community input into the development of the budget for the coming year.
If you look to the side of my blog and down a little, you'll see a real time Social Media Count. This shows the incredible reach and power of social media sites.
An interesting snippet from Laurel showed that Facebook is being used by a huge number of over 50's people to keep in touch with family members. I find that so encouraging and think it's a great positive in reconnecting the GenX and Y to those born up to fifty years before!
I now have a Twitter account which I use to keep up with Laurel, Dr Karl, ABC Q & A, ABC News and various other Twits.
The next session was entitled "A Ministerial Dialogue". We endured incredibly boring speeches from Minister Castrilli, Minister Day and a reasonable one from Eric Ripper, Leader of the Opposition.
Following that was a presentation by Lord Mayor of Perth, Lisa Scaffidi, which should have been entitled, "Look at me, aren't I gorgeous". I did enjoy the light entertainment prior to this, an enactment by Edith Cowan's grand niece, playing her grand aunt. What an amazing woman she was!
I then chose one of the concurrent sessions being run and that was Laurel Papworth's. I was a little disappointed as she really didn't address the issue that most of the audience seemed to want and that was, the 'how' part of getting into social networking. Laurel focussed on the 'why' part, reasons we should be involved.
After joining Twitter and trying to find out more information, I now realise that it wasn't necessary to provide the answers as to how to get started as all that info is already available on Twitter sites. Laurel explains carefully how to start using social networking sites like Twitter here.
Local Government Convention 2010 Day Two
The first session of the Convention that I attended was entitled, Better Governance, From Good to Great and was presented by Cr David Parsons from the UK and Prof Graham Sansom, Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government.
I didn't take any notes during this presentation as it held little interest for me being not particularly relevant to small country shires. Aside from the fact that our little bags we received on registering at the convention held no pads or pens!!
The next session was far more interesting. This time I was able to take notes since I'd snaffled a pad and pen from the Census Booth at morning tea.
Richard Hill from the MindScience Institute discussed management approaches which can generate positive attitudes in the workplace. Though interesting, this session was predominantly for CEO's and Senior Staff. As a councillor, I have no input into how our office runs, how it is designed or how senior staff and administration staff work together.
The main topic of his talk was about change. His theory is that for good change and growth, people need to be creative, adaptive, flexible and engaged. Richard has a book out called "How the Real World is Driving us Crazy".
As I was taking notes, Cr Crosby wrote this word in my notepad:
Yes, I agreed with her
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dr Linda Friedland from the Health and Media Institute who introduced us to a new health issue affecting working people in Japan. It's called Karoshi and means death from overwork!
Her presentation focussed on mental health and the ability to cope with stress.
She emphasized the need for resilience and the ability to adapt and change - there we go again, change.....meaning get yourselves ready for amalgamation, or am I just being paranoid?
The final session of the day held little of interest to us, but we enjoyed listening to three young migrants tell their stories of life in their adopted country. Then our Local Government Minister launched a new government initiative, "Implementing the Principles of Multiculturalism Locally."
Good to hear that Katanning had input into this initiative with the Senior Finance Officer, Carl Beck being on the working committee during the formation of the booklet.
All in all, not a huge amount gained on our first full day. We hope for a better outcome tomorrow.
Local Government Convention 2010, Day One
Four councillors and the CEO, Peter Bentley attended this years Local Government Convention at the Convention Centre in Perth.
On the Wednesday, Cr Cathy Crosby, Peter Bentley and I attended a meeting of the Great Southern Zone of WALGA where Transport Minister O'Brien responded to questions from the group. One positive from the meeting was a pledge to spend a large sum of money upgrading the Chester Pass Rd.
We then attended an interesting meeting in the evening where a group of councillors from country shires met to express their dissatisfaction at the lack of representation of country shires by WALGA. Three motions were presented, but no one felt they could vote as these had not been discussed at council level.
I, therefore put forward a motion, "That this meeting form a working group to pursue a range of options to improve the representation of country local governments at a State level".
This motion was passed and, since I put the motion forward, I am now on the working group. I will keep my blog updated with the working groups actions.
