Anne Blakeway, Manager: City Partnerships at Tauranga City Council Community Strategies and 2023 AskYourTeam Overseas Manager Exchange recipient reflects on her time in Sydney and the Hunter Valley.
My exchange programme has been a bit of a roller coaster ride, starting with great excitement when I first received the award back in June 2023. I finally found out that I would be going to Singleton Council in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.
My programme began with me meeting my exchange host, Mary-Anne Crawford, at Doltone House, Jones Bay Wharf in Sydney, where we attended the LG Professionals NSW 2024 Conference. We hit it off straight away at a pre-conference dinner by LG Professionals NSW, where we were warmly welcomed by Chief Executive, Vicki Mayo, and her team. We also met some of the LGPNSW Board Members and other international guests, which gave us an opportunity to ease into the conference next day sitting next to some already familiar faces.
I was invited to speak on two panels at the conference, one about working with indigenous communities, and the other about insights from our international peers. The conference was a great opportunity to reflect on the fact that, while there are a number of differences between our countries on a global scale – including hearing from the CEO of Dorset Council in the UK, which has 82 elected members! – there are also so many similarities with the challenges and opportunities facing us all in local government. The three levels of government in Australia – local, state, and federal – means that there are more levels of bureaucracy, and it can take a while to get things done, but it also means that there’s far more funding avenues available to local authorities in Australia than there are in New Zealand. And the sheer size and scale of that funding was mind blowing!
Mary-Anne then drove me to her beautiful home, which is about 2½ hours’ drive north of Sydney, where I met her lovely family and Rocket, the foxy terrier, who insisted I play ball with him…every morning! Mary-Anne is a resident of Maitland City Council but is Manager Development and Environmental Services at neighbouring Singleton Council. She organised a fantastic itinerary for me during my stay, including visiting local arts and culture centres, as well as weekend wine tastings and lunch in the Hunter Valley.
The itinerary was tailored around particular areas of interest for my current role at Tauranga City Council, including meetings with the various staff at Singleton involved in economic development, tourism, arts and culture, community development, comms and engagement, sustainability, and community resilience. I also attended a careers expo hosted by Singleton Council, and had an insightful meeting with Councillor Sue Moore, Singleton’s popularly elected Mayor, who has served on Council since 1999, including 16 of those years as Mayor.
I met with representatives from Hunter Joint Organisation, a collaborative body that brings together the ten councils in the region to provide a united and local community voice with a mandate that includes identifying opportunities for shared services, along with key regional strategic priorities, and building collaborations around them with other levels of government, industry, and community. Current initiatives the team are working on include a business case on the freight strategy for the newly expanded Newcastle International Airport, as well as a water loss programme which ended up being picked up by Hunter Water.
In a meeting with the CEO of local economic development agency, the Committee for the Hunter, I learned more about what this independent body does to provide effective advocacy and civic leadership at the government level, while working with the community to identify long-term strategic goals, and to champion the sustainable and prosperous future of the Hunter region and wider metropolitan area. Recent achievements include the Port of Newcastle container terminal pathway and diversification, Hydrogen funding, social and affordable housing, and support for coal communities in transition.
I also visited the stunning University of Newcastle campus, where I met with Professor Roberta Ryan, Executive Director of the Institute for Regional Futures, and inaugural Chair of Local Government at the University, and has a wealth of experience in public policy and governance. Roberta provided me with some fascinating insights into the impact of the Kennett Government’s Reform of Victorian Local Government in 1994, which dissolved 210 councils and created 78 new councils through amalgamations. Roberta also shared with me some of the work led by the Institute focused on job containment and undertaking research and data collection to support the Hunter region transitioning away from the coal industry.
A meeting with a representative from REMPLAN, who are specialists in providing area-specific data and insights across Australia, provided some useful context in terms of understanding the local economic contributions to the Hunter region from industry, tourism, and supply chains. For example, I learned that coal continues to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, contributing more than $16 billion to the local economy – which presents the region with a significant challenge when looking to diversify to other industries in the next thirty years.
My final day was spent at The Melt, a hardware accelerator that provides programs, services, facilities, and investment attraction to help clean technology and manufacturing start-ups – from initial idea generation to supporting global scaling up. Based in Muswellbrook, their latest industrial prototyping hub helps businesses fast-track great ideas into ready-to-market products. The Melt’s vision is to transform the Hunter region into a clean energy super precinct to help secure the future of the environment and local jobs. The Melt was funded by a number of partners, including the NSW Government.
I had the most incredible trip to Sydney and New South Wales and am hugely grateful to the sponsors of the award and to my exchange host. I look forward to returning the favour when Mary-Anne visits me in Tauranga.
