The Local Government Association of South Australia (LGASA) has publicly launched the Strengthening Local Government program, which was endorsed at its General Meeting in April.
The program brings together the substantial work in Local Government on financial governance and management under the LGA Financial Sustainability Program, along with the Governance Program and the joint review of Local Government elections.
For the first time, it invites input from the public, MPs, media and any person or organisation beyond its traditional sources of input, which previously only included Councils and the State Government.
The program will further develop and assess the issues raised in the interim paper, ‘Strengthening Local Government’. This was released last December and contains proposals in relation to Council elections, accountability issues, Council CEOs and staff influence over decisions of a Council, access to information by Council members, community consultation and so forth.
LGASA has historically worked on reform issues as projects, rather than taking an integrated and rolling approach to issues. The Association expects ‘Strengthening Local Government’ to address this issue, by allowing it to assess new issues on merit, against existing priorities on which resources are focused and on input from State Government and others.
Issues raised in Parliament and in the media which are related to Council audits are one hot spot, with a discussion paper issued in August relating to this.
An Elections Review is being conducted by former senior South Australian and Victorian public servant, Margaret Wagstaff, and LGASA’s ongoing Financial Sustainability Program is another current priority.
LGASA is also working with Standards Australia and interstate Local Government Associations developing its handbooks on Australian Standards.
For further information contact Michael Barry on (08) 8224 2033 or michael.barry@lga.sa.gov.au
