Local Government Week, Day One

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Today started with a bang. Frans Johansson, author of the Medici Effect, delivered a fast paced, loud and fascinating talk entitled 'Renaissance - The Medici Effect'.
This guy was incredibly dynamic, energetic, clever and funny. But it was what he had to say that made the most impact.

Frans talked about how teams and organizations can create an explosion of remarkable ideas at the intersection of different fields, cultures and industries. The main points from his talk were as follows:

-'Intersections' -Develop new ideas from combining ideas from various perspectives

-'Diversity drives innovation'.

-All new ideas are combinations of existing ideas eg. The Bikini + The Burqua = The Burqini

-Diverse Teams see things differently  - therefore, make sure your teams are made up of very diverse minds and cultures

-The more ideas you have, the more likely you are to have a good idea. (Simple really, but not something we always do!)

A wonderful example was given about the challenge given to architect Mick Pearce. He was asked to build an attractive, functional tall building in Harare, Zimbabwe. But, the catch was, it was to have no air-conditioning! Now, Harare tends to get pretty hot in summer and temperatures can drop to single figures overnight.

Fortunately, Mick was a pretty broad thinker and he was able to achieve the seemingly unachievable by studying termites. Termites use a clever system of cooling and heating in their mounds that are built in the African plains. They direct breezes at the base of the mounds with cool, wet mud and channel these through the mound when needed. They build new vents and close old ones in order to regulate temperature precisely.

The company which hired him immediately saved $3.5m simply by not purchasing the air conditioning hardware. Temperature is a constant 22 degrees and the buildings use 10% less energy than those around it.

The two speakers who followed held little interest for me as their talk was all about City Revitalisation. Of the two, Evan Jones, National General Manager of Planning, Mulitplex Living, was very interesting and had some great examples of good and bad town planning.

After lunch, Brendon Grylls presented an update on Royalties for Regions. He also explained his support for Minister Castrilli's reform strategies. Brendon spoke eloquently and showed his passion for the survival of rural communities.

The President of the Shire of Roebourne presented a really interesting look at what it's like to have a community that is booming due to mining, but then has to cope with all the negatives that come from this including artificially elevated living costs, difficulties getting infrastructure on the ground and the fly in, fly out population problems.

The following speaker sent everyone to sleep. We all headed for the coffee when he finally finished! The sad thing was, he had a lot of interesting things to say, he was just unable to say them in an interesting way.

The afternoon finished with the man of the moment, the Minister for Local Government, Hon. John Castrilli MLA. He once again re-iterated his plans for the state. It seems he will not move beyond his single and only idea of amalgamation as the one size fits all solution for structural reform in Western Australia.

Following this, we had the CEO of the new entity of the City of Geraldton-Greenough. Since this was an extremely sensible amalgamation, I was prepared to turn off, but this young and dynamic guy was very interesting and had a lot to say about how WA is so Perth-Centric. Other states are not so Capital City oriented.

The next speaker was also very interesting and topical for me as he is the Chair for the South East Avon Voluntary Regional Organisation of Councils. This group has been successfully running for five years and follow a model of organisation which is based on a South Australian model. Section 42 of the Local Government Act (SA) allows for a local government to establish a subsidiary. The system uses a Body Corporate Charter. The Minister approves the application and the Charter. The group is lobbying State Government to change the Western Australian Local Government Act to allow for the same system.

A panel of the previous speakers then took questions from the audience. Confusingly, the Minister strongly dismissed the idea of VROC's as a suitable strategy for reform. He stated that he is looking at amalgamation and amalgamation only as a reform measure.

I wish he'd been around at the first session and listened to Frans Johansson. He may then realise that there are many ways in which a local government can achieve reform without having to amalgamate.