This October 2005 edition marks 20 years of local Government FOCUS. We have come a long way since the founding directors took the plunge and started the first independent Local Government publication anywhere in Australia.
The graphic on the front cover of our first edition in October 1985 is worth closer scrutiny. There is the typical town hall having grown teeth and snarling out “Go away Cain I’m quite able”. Those involved in Local Government in Victoria back then will remember Councils and communities making it very clear to the then Cain Labor Government that in their view ‘bigger was not better’ and they would have no part in any move for forced amalgamations.
Twenty years on, mergers are an ongoing issue in a number of States and the Northern Territory. FOCUS began as a free newspaper distributed to all Councils in Victoria. It then relied wholly, and substantially still does, on the sale of advertising to a range of service and product providers of Local Government. It was our advertisers in 1989 who asked why don’t we expand to include New South Wales Councils in our coverage. We took up this suggestion and have never looked back, taking the next step to national coverage in 1996 and going online with our website in the same year.
Our editorial policy has stayed constant over the past 20 years – reporting on key issues impacting the sector and best practice initiatives and programs by Councils large and small.
In this edition, we are pleased that Janet Dore, General Manager at Newcastle City Council and our first regular contributor, has revisited Planning Issues in the article below. Our featured Council is Darebin City Council. The FOCUS office has always been located in this City and we were pleased when Darebin agreed to be part of this celebratory edition as it was the former City of Northcote, one of the two Councils merged to form Darebin, that was the first to purchase our regular four page Council lift out.
Moving forward, we have now introduced Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to our website (see adjacent story), and as founding Director, Eryl Morgan, described this advancement in technology, “What a leap, from galley proofs 20 years ago to this!”
