By Liam Wood
Welcome to the first of my regular updates for Sunraysia Daily readers.
I want this column to serve a few purposes.
It will provide me with an opportunity to tackle topical issues in our community, as well as updating you on what my fellow councillors and I are doing, and where our organisation is headed.
I’d like to kick off this first
column by highlighting the importance of age equity at all tiers of government, and the need for Mildura Rural City Council as an organisation to continue working and planning for our future
generations.
We recently announced the members of our region’s Youth Parliament team, which is an
initiative led locally by our Youth Engagement Services.
While this is a great initiative to help local young people in their personal and professional development on a whole range of levels, it also struck a chord with me – these impressive young people are our future leaders.
We need more young people in leadership positions across all levels of government, as they have the drive, the fresh ideas, and importantly, they’ll be making decisions that will directly affect their generation for decades to come – a great motivation for sound decision and policy-making.
It’s also about laying the groundwork now for our country’s future – the famous saying “we grow trees knowing it will be the next generation that benefits from the shade”.
As is the case with all tiers of government, the decisions and actions we take now as councillors will have impacts decades down the line for our region.
Take our recently adopted Waste and Resource Recovery Strategy as an example. This strategy is about taking action now to ensure our children’s children have a natural environment they can enjoy.
It’s a similar story with our diversion of waste from landfill, which has increased significantly over the past couple of years but will produce even bigger long-term economic and environmental benefits for our region.
We’re already seeing evidence of this, including saving $700,000 in government waste levies last year alone – a big thank-you must go to our community for their ongoing efforts to make this possible.
Another example are our various strategic Planning strategies, such the Mildura East Growth Area Strategic Framework – this is about laying the foundations for solid strategic planning in the region for the foreseeable future.
With this in mind, I strongly believe we need to be bolder now in our asks of all levels of government for the benefit of our region’s future.
Whether it’s calling out and
demanding a fairer property
rating system from the Victorian Government to ease the rates burden on our community, or
advocating for a larger share of Federal Assistance Grants – we need to ensure our voices are heard, and that our community receives the attention, funding and resources we all deserve.
