Hi, I’m Digby Rayward, the Mayor of Dungog shire, and I’m happy to present this week’s Council Connect.
It’s been a challenge for the General Manager and myself early this week; we had plenty of talkfests, and we started off with a trip to Parliament House in Sydney to a meeting of the Country Mayors Annual General Meeting. Country Mayors is a group formed to represent the interests of smaller rural shires like ourselves. It’s a good opportunity to see what relevant policies we need, join together as a group, because there’s strength in numbers, and we get plenty of access to the politicians and to lobby those particular interests that affect us.
Then we took off for Tamworth, where we had the Annual Conference of the Local Government NSW. This is a combination of all shires in NSW. There are over 1000 people and little old Dungog sitting there. The General Manager and I certainly did our best to represent Dungog. There are probably 110 motions debated through the day, but you have to be at the table, even though we’re small, because the mantra of this organisation is one voice for councils, and there’s always strength in numbers when we’re lobbying politicians because they need numbers to get reelected. So, it was a challenge for us, but well worth it, and a lot of networking as well.
Also this week, we had our biggest council meeting for our new members on Wednesday night. There was a fair bit on the agenda. It was certainly pleasing to see that three of our four new Councillors put up notices of motions, which shows they’re listening to the community, and trying to get that message from the community back as policy matters for us.
