State Governments Dodging Responsibility or Just Not Alert to Reality?
If there’s one thing that the #CaronaVirus has shown us loud and clear it is that we are reliant on the people AT THE CONTACT FACE to carry us through. For Individuals, it is those in Healthcare we rely on. For Populations, it is those in food creation and delivery and sanitation we rely on. For societies we rely on those who have the closest contact with us in daily life service provision. And that is NOT ‘State Government’. Rather we rely on Local Councils and their high support, close contact community support structures. Why then are Local Councils being ignored?
Maternal Health care nurses, in-home aged care, homelessness support services, emergency housing, parks maintenance. At the granular, close contact point it is Local Councils who do the work and provide the service delivery.
Right now many Councils are faced with laying off staff, as have their local employers. Right now State Governments around Australia are doing a massive job of coordinating responses and actions. And right now, State Governments are demanding that Local Councils increase their provision of services in areas related to vulnerable people, both those who have been vulnerable for a long time, and those who are new to what vulnerability feel and looks like.
But for reasons I cannot understand, it appears that State Governments are demanding Councils increase their service provision by, 20, 30 or 70% in some areas WITHOUT providing Local Councils with the financial resources to do so. I’ve spoken to people in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria in this space and all are saying the same thing: ‘We’re expected to do X+Y+Z when we now have an x – y capacity available to us’. So either that is a choice by State Governments to dodge responsibility for appropriately funding and resourcing Local Councils, or State Governments are blinkered to the on the ground reality of what the increased service provision requires.
I hope it’s just a case of blinkers needing to be removed
Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
Read More >Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’
Read More >Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…
Read More >In thinking about the year ahead I’ve decided to call it the International Year of Resilience. With everything that appears to be going on in the world there’s unlikely to be any quick fixes and so I provide for you here below, my Top 10 Tips for building more resilience into your lives. If you…
Read More >The United Kingdom’s Committee on Climate Change has released a report that shows rising household energy costs are not caused by the apparent burden of environmental policies. Instead the core factor is increases in costs increases of Oil and Gas as the Energy resource sector taps into a ‘growth’ market. You can have a…
Read More >After a great although too brief trip to Islamabad in Pakistan, I joined Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin to discuss the idea of official reports for travelers and who you should believe. Sometimes we fear the unknown because we aren’t well enough informed. In the absence of any other information, the Official line is…
Read More >It’s taken me a while to get the Tourism Thinking piece together given the extensive travel this year that has enabled me to assess where Australia’s tourism is not getting things right. This update won’t paint the full picture (a couple of clients have first crack at this research) but it is important enough to…
Read More >I alert you from the outset that I’m about to make a massive leap of potentially an supportable scientific theory in discussing a potential Wildcard event. If you’re only interested in the concrete real stuff, head elsewhere after you get about half way. I’m going to make a massive leap first of all and then…
Read More >n this MP3 with Paul Dale on ABC Darwin radio we chat about the recent fly past of a large chunk of rock called Asteroid YU55, and what we might do as a species in managing a potential Asteroid impact. We also diverge into the concept of mining Asteroids for their mineral content as the…
Read More >