Barkly Regional Council (BRC) held its first Ordinary Meeting yesterday, chaired by Official Manager Peter Holt, after being placed under official management by the Minister for Local Government, Chansey Paech last week.

The Council’s 13 members are currently suspended until March 2024. However, four of them – Russell O’Donnell, Lennie Barton, Lucy Jackson and Sharen Lake – attended the meeting.

During the meeting, Mr Holt explained to the attending councillors what the official management meant for them.

Long-time Alice Springs lawyer Ruth Morley, has been appointed as the Investigator to look into the affairs of the council from early 2022 to the present.

Ms Morley will provide her report to the Minister for Local Government on 12 March 2024, when the councillors will be given 21 days to respond to its recommendations, following the legal process for suspension outlined in the Local Government Act (2019).

While they are suspended, Councillors will not receive payment during this time, but they are encouraged to attend Council meetings.

Mr Holt aims to establish several advisory committees to ensure community input to decision-making is ongoing and that the BRC takes this opportunity to re-engage with the broader regional community.

“I will continue speaking to the suspended councillors, honouring the fact that their communities elected them to represent their interests and, should the Minister determine, they may be reinstated,” he said.

“I’m particularly interested in working through how we can more equitably deal with the issues of both Tennant Creek and the remote communities.

“The Local Authorities and council committees, such as the Purkiss Park Working Group, will continue to function.

“One of the key issues for me will be to examine the grant funding that has come to the Council over the last few years and ensure that what we’ve been funded to do is actually happening in the agreed time frames.”

Mr Holt said one of the concerns that the Minister has talked about is that the local government is funded by both the Commonwealth and the Territory.

“So it is essential that a council with a comparatively low rate base (13 per cent of expenditure) maintains the confidence of the Commonwealth and Territory governments,” he said.

“While there were obviously delays during Covid, there are examples, such as the local authority funding from five or six years ago not being expended, and the result of that is that the government could potentially take those funds back.

“So we need to get progress on those grants and make sure that the Council is actually making sure what we’ve committed to doing is actually happening on the ground, particularly in our communities where the funding is critical to providing adequate services and infrastructure.

“Tennant Creek used to have a population of 6,000. So, the infrastructure in town to maintain, we’re now doing with basically half the rate base per capita that we used to have.

“So there’s pressure on maintaining assets in town and maintaining the construction of assets in communities.”

Mr Holt said In terms of the staff, there were absolutely no changes and Ian Bodill will start on Monday 6 November as the Chief Executive Officer.

“I’ll work with Mr Bodill over the next six months to stabilise those grant programmes,” he said.

“The most important thing is that the council takes this opportunity to examine how it can function more effectively, how it can enhance the confidence of funding bodies, but most importantly, how it can re-engage with its community and ratepayers and give constituents greater confidence in their council.”

Mr Holt has 30 years of experience across the NT local government sector, including a time in Tennant Creek as the acting chief executive officer of the BRC.

He has also worked extensively in Aboriginal community development and for the Territory and Commonwealth governments. 

This article appeared in  Tennant & District Times, 27 October 2023.

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