
AS A newbie to the conference game I was keen to suck the marrow out of my first Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) conference and National General Assembly in Canberra held a couple of weeks ago.
It was a worthwhile experience but I wonder whether there is hope of solving the challenges that face pretty much all of Australia’s 537 local councils.
Things are bad when even the experts are talking about using caravans as “temporary” homes and suggesting that councils should “try everything”. This was the advice from Regional Australia Institute professor Andrew Beer, University of South Australia, during the Regional Forum on day one.