I recently had the honour of running a session with 220 federal managers from the Australian Department of Regions, Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (a bloody mouthful! I call them DirtyCar for short. I probably shouldn't tell you that, because I don't think they'd like it catching on.)
They asked me to bring my expertise to their team to help them better understand and work with local government, and I leapt at the chance to talk about how great you all are.
Here are the three key slides I used, that sum up my key messages pretty clearly.
The last one was what we ended on, and my call to action was simple. Here it is, paraphrased for your benefit:
Local government are great. They're delivering significantly more, for significantly less, and under significantly more constrained conditions than any other tier of government. They're not perfect, but if you really want to help, here's three things to remember:
1. Believe them - Local Councils are compromised of well-informed, deeply connected local voices. Believe what they tell you about their place and their people.
2. Relieve them. They have more than enough administrative, bureaucratic and regulatory burden already. If you're asking them to fill in more forms, you're not helping.
3. Don't deceive them. Local Councils understand politics and the machinery of government. But broken promises and ambiguous funding arrangements are a fast track to low-trust. Give it to them straight, they can handle it - and your relationship will benefit.
The good news is, they liked it - so we just have to keep on plugging this one!
