On Monday this week we had a very productive meeting involving Wellington Shire Council; Narromine Shire Council and Dubbo City Council. The Mayors and General Managers of the three Councils met to discuss information from the IPART report and the next phase in the ‘Fit for the Future’ process. To briefly recap, Dubbo was deemed to be ‘Fit’ but Wellington and Narromine were deemed ‘Not Fit’ despite passing all seven criteria due to the subjective additional criterion of ‘Scale and Capacity’. The ‘Not Fit’ rating requires both Wellington and Narromine to make a submission to the government by 18 November – but it also requires Dubbo to make a final submission as we are adjacent to a ‘Not Fit’ Council which is ‘Not Fit’ based on ‘Scale and Capacity’. Got it? After working through the process, the message that I have heard from the State Government is that we need to deliver the best outcomes for our residents. All three Councils currently believe the best outcome for people in each area is for each Council to remain standalone. It protects the local democratic process and allows for better local knowledge of what is required in each LGA. We also can’t see that just by joining three areas together that suddenly the residents will be significantly better off. What we do believe is that we have processes; equipment and resources that we could share behind-the-scenes that would deliver better financial outcomes for all three Councils. Conceptually we agreed on this path of action but will now await for the State Government to make their final decision before we explore resource sharing further.
While amalgamation discussions are high on the agenda for Councils at the moment, the normal processes need to keep on occurring. Last week we welcomed twenty one new Australians to our fold. I always receive a huge thrill performing citizenship ceremonies and I particularly enjoy speaking with people after the ceremony to find out about their journey. It is rare for a ceremony not to involve at least one Kiwi but last week we didn’t have a single person from New Zealand. They may have been aware of what was going to happen Sunday morning in the Rugby and wanted to hold on until the next ceremony.
Last week also saw the celebration of twenty years of our sister-city relationship with Wujiang. A total of 21 delegations involving over 200 people have been involved in our sister city activities. These have typically involved cultural; educational and commercial exchanges with students and officials. It was a wonderful celebration with a bright future.
Councillor Mathew Dickerson
Mayor of the City of Dubbo