Three elections in one year was draining, inspiring, and historic. For the elected officials that we have in 2023, I wanted to share a few hopes for your work in 2023.
#1 Create a high-performance culture.
The saying that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” applies to families, community groups, businesses, elected officials, and public sector staff. The culture eats strategy rule of thumb has been a lesson throughout my career and it has the persistence and reliability, but not always the timeliness, of gravity.
The call-to-action for all elected officials is to focus on real culture change – behavioral and work product – of the elected body and the employees every single day. This is a massive challenge and without intense focus, community support, and legal/HR resources you will fail. This failure will massively impair your efforts for improvement and impact.
The variance in performance culture (i.e. high through to low/abysmal) across the five South Australian councils The News interacts with is an insight I have learned while leading this newspaper. The impact on taxpayers and communities is huge.
My hope for 2023 is that councils like Naracoorte Lucindale Council can improve a lot. For council leadership and elected members to be more authentic and transparent in their work and consultation, and to participate in more open debate, decisions, post-mortems, and corrective actions.
These would all be indicators of moving towards a high-performance culture. For staff and elected members to live a culture of advocacy for taxpayers and work in service of the taxpayers and community; turning away from the culture of fragile councillor and staff egos, unwilling to authentically engage different perspectives and acknowledge issues, make adjustments, and share their learnings as they move forward.
#2 Local Government Act and Association: Part (A) & (B).
LGA in this context stands for both Local Government Act and Local Government Association. This one is a doozy of an onion. Plenty of layers and frankly it makes any taxpayer paying attention cry every time you pick it up. So, while it is on my wish list for 2023, realistically it will take a couple of years of sustained effort and political will to make inroads, albeit there are some opportunities for quick wins.
Part (A): The Local Government Act (LG Act)
The LG Act is the result of a late 1990s state Liberal government trying to reform local council, followed by 16 years of uninterrupted implementation by a city-centric Labor party. The combination created a near perfect example of city bureaucracy (the Adelaide bureaucrats try to disguise it by calling it “governance”; governance by the way is important) completely suffocating local quality, knowledge, and accountability plus (yes, as if you needed more) proof that you cannot legislate common sense.
Local Government Act version 2.0 is desperately needed. A reset of the role of local councils and a separation of urban and rural council requirements in the act. The corrosive weaponisation of the LG Act by low- performing council mayors and high-paid (and also low-performing) council CEOs is pervasive and includes areas like community consultation, quality and timeliness of information shared with the community, secret meetings, and suffocating councillor communication of personal views.
Compounding the failures of the LG Act, the Local Government Association (LG Association) has lost its way and needs to be broken into two parts.
Part (B): The Local Government Association (LG Assoc.)
A core and effective reason for having a LG Association is to support scale of basic functions like secure cash surplus investment options and insurance coverage options.
This part of the LG Association should be separate from its other offerings. With all areas being voluntary for any council, and the fees charged to councils should be nominal. With the only fees paid by a council being directly related to the services needed.
The second part of the LG Association is everything else this bureaucracy has ballooned out to do. There are 68 councils in South Australia and the LG Assoc website says: “The LGA employs a small staff team to manage its operations and deliver the outcomes sought in its policies and strategic plan. In addition to the staff funded from its own budget and project-funded officers it also retains legal and industrial consultants and engages other consultants from time to time.” – Please take a look at the organisation chart (see picture) and see if it aligns with council efficiency and impact, and your interests as a taxpayer.
The LG Association should not be allowed to bundle fiduciary-like offerings (i.e. investing surplus cash, general liability insurance, etc.) with mandatory training for our councillors. The description of the training approach is right from the bureaucratic Adelaide heartland and, in my view, completely misses the point of councillor service and areas of development that could help them thrive.
This Local Government Act and Association reform should be driven by State MPs like Nick McBride. It is a statewide issue, can give a platform to show deal making credentials, and can make an impact on South Australia.
Two investigations that Nick McBride should also be calling for in this area are:
- Are there satisfactory provisions in the new 5-year Naracoorte Lucindale Council CEO employment contract signed in the months leading up to the election to enable a new council (which we now have) to manage, and if needed, change direction on employment?
- How and why did the Local Government Association hold its election for President and publicise the results in the weeks leading up to election day? Should the LG Association be impartial to mayoral elections?
If you spend 10 minutes on the Local Government Association of South Australia website (https://www.lga.sa.gov.au/) you will have many more reasons to ask for explanations and appeal for reform.
#3 Council agendas and secret meetings.
This is low-hanging fruit. In my opinion there is a lack of leadership on these issues and my hope for 2023 is that we see some political will. Low-performing council staff love the agendas and secret meetings, the communities they serve are rightfully skeptical and disillusioned by the frequency, opaqueness, and lack of accountability in these areas.
Council staff and elected bodies can meet a low-performing interpretation (not the spirit) of the Local Government Act by including a lot of correspondence and exhibit pages in the agenda – literally dozens of pages – or just avoid an agenda altogether by having a meeting “in confidence”.
These items will likely be resolved if a high-performance culture is achieved by a council.
Secret meetings would only be used sparingly and with very explicit meeting titles and scope. So that the community knows the purpose and context for these meetings. And, whenever possible, the notes/minutes from these meetings should be released when the information is no longer sensitive and/or no longer impairs the council from communicating with and/or serving the community.
Voluminous poorly constructed agendas can help hide a low-performing mayor, council, and/or staff by not highlighting substantive and material items. So, low performers win, community loses. I see this every month; it is sad and most of all completely unnecessary.
The council CEO – often making $200,000 annual salary plus benefits, etc. – should be of the calibre to be able to write executive summaries to serve the elected mayor, councillors, and anyone in the community who wants to follow along.
As it stands today, the CEO report and the mayor report are in most cases nothing more than bureaucratic check-the-box exercises with little to no substance.
The elected councillors and community deserve legitimate, executive-quality, concise briefings with pros, cons, variables, assumptions and risks on each topic in each agenda.
Bookmarked with appropriate tabs for ease of consumption. And when that isn’t done it should need to be explained in a concise and clear way why not.
This responsibility for this work is the respective council CEO and staff that we (in Naracoorte Lucindale Council) pay collectively over a $1 million a year to. So, each main council meeting agenda will likely have 4-10 polished executive summaries. It will drive better preparation, debate, consultation, decision making, and outcomes for our communities.
The responsibility for ensuring this happens sits with the elected members: mayor and councillors. It is simply unfathomable that a high-performing mayor and elected council would accept, let alone tolerate and try to move forward with decisions, on the quality of the information they are currently receiving.
As the saying goes, the standard you walk by is the standard you accept. It is time that the elected members of Naracoorte Lucindale Council, and some of the neighboring councils, change the culture of low performance that has been accepted and too often professionalised by the council CEO and the council’s staff.
#4 Thought Leadership Columns.
I would love to see more ‘thought leadership’ columns in The News in 2023.
We have a steady flow of columns, and we are really grateful for that. I have asked Country Mile to consider writing every 3-6 months so that it can support local debate and discussion. Like with that column, I am happy to help anyone who wants to prepare a thought leadership column. We will run it with a by-line of your name or a pseudonym, whatever your preference. We have come to understand and appreciate how sensitive writers’ positions can be, and community reaction, and we would rather have the community hear your thought-leadership perspective using a pseudonym than to not hear your voice.
We love having people from different perspectives write columns. You would be amazed how many times we work with people on thoughtful columns that offer a different perspective only to then have them not allow us to publish their letter or column. A lot of councillors promised to write a couple of times a year for The News, we are excited about that, and we hope a new era of community council performance and maturity is upon us.
Well, there are a couple of hopes for 2023. We would love to hear yours! Please email them anytime to news@naracoortenews.com.
This article appeared in the Naracoorte Community News.
