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
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
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Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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