AT just 42 years of age and with 12 months of Local Government experience under his belt, Mildura businessman Liam Wood this week became Mildura Rural City Council’s youngest ever mayor. Sunraysia Daily journalist ALLAN MURPHY sat down with the civic leader this week to find out what makes him tick, why he took on the challenge and his aspirations and goals over the coming 12 months.AM: When did you decide that you would run for mayor and how did that come about?
LW: It has basically been a three-month process of thinking about it. The real reason is that I got on council and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I’m a person who is either all in or all out. I wanted to be closer to the coalface and see what the true decisions are and the true workings of council and councillors. I was very surprised at how much time that the new council donate, it’s a huge amount of hours for a small salary, so they are clearly doing it for the love of their community and not the dollars. The COVID situation really allowed me to think about it seriously because I managed to get my businesses to a point where the managers and other owners really stepped in to help me. I certainly wouldn’t have run for council in the first place if I knew that I had to put in the hours to my businesses that I had done in the past. It was more about the convenience of the time when the stars had aligned a little bit with me stepping back from other businesses and allowing me to give 110 per cent to council. I’m an inquisitive person and I want to know the ins and outs of things and I want to know the answers so, as I said before, it’s getting to that coalface and hopefully having a bigger influence. The toing and froing came down to the 11th hour for me to make a true decision. It was the family support and the business support that allowed me to just go for it.AM: On a personal level as mayor, what would you like to look back on in 12 months’ time knowing you had achieved?
LW: Approachability is the biggest thing. We are terribly resilient people in Mildura, largely through necessity because we tend to get forgotten a bit up here. But we still stand up and that attracted me to the job as well as wanting to do more. We’ve got amazing people here who I don’t think get tapped in to enough. Our communication skills can always be better between community and council and that’s where the approachability comes, too. We’ve got 55,000 people here now and growing exponentially and a lot of them are ratepayers or customers, but we’ve technically got 55,000 shareholders and they need to feel a part of the machine. I think we can listen better, I think we can react quicker and there’s always room to work harder.AM: From a council perspective in a growing city, what are the projects and what are the issues that you are looking to address in the coming 12 months?
LW: Being the youngest mayor ever is a bit of a downfall moving forward with the community. Our youth is a huge untapped resource here. It’s getting better and we have talked about starting a youth council which is in the works. They are our future and they are also the ones who, if they do get in council or they do get into a leadership position, they will actually see a lot of projects come to fruition. Attracting business and industry into the town is really important and I’m not sure why it hasn’t happened on a much larger scale. The industries that are here tend to flourish. It’s the affordability of it, the tri-state location — I know I would certainly rather build a $5 million industry here than a $5 million shoebox at Tullamarine. Mildura Regional Development have been very good at attracting things like that, but they have also been very good at their tourism campaigns. But how do we sell people the dream of coming here and setting up for a much less cost and a much better lifestyle? That comes out of talking to people. I certainly know everything, but when I don’t know something I’ll try to find out and that’s by doing the research, but also getting out and speaking to people. Hopefully, people will remember me as someone who was prepared to go out and talk to people and hopefully tick some things off and get some things done. Coming from a private business perspective, if there’s a situation I turn around and fix it — I understand the wheels of the machine work differently and if council can meet me half way and we get a quicker outcome or a shorter outcome, I hope people will respect that.AM: How important will it be for council to form partnerships with private investors and other relevant agencies into the future?
LW: Industry and people in the community need a seat at the table and they need to feel that they have got a seat at the table. Is it as simple as getting those people involved in industry in one room and getting a whiteboard out and jotting things down? There’s so many ideas that a lot of people think about that probably don’t see the light of day. It’s the synergy where council and private business, tourism, different factions such as Mildura Regional Development, when they do meet how do they work together, so the interface is really important. The biggest thing that COVID really brought to the forefront is that border relationship — we need to work collaboratively because at the end of the day we’re almost an entity of our own in the Victoria/NSW municipality. It’s really important that even though we seem to be coming out of this COVID situation, this will rear its head again in one way or another and it’s how we keep moving on to create a situation where if it does come back we put these things in place. That’s not only the relationship of talking to cross-border councils, but also advocating to our state and federal leaders from both sides.AM: How critical will it be to you for the nine Mildura councillors to work as a team and leave their own marks on the region’s future?
LW: A lot of people might question whether one year is too green to be mayor and I totally understand and respect that because of the amount of learning that I have had to do in the first year. I don’t think I’ll get to the end of my four-year tenure and know half of the stuff that I need to know, but there are a lot of people on the council as councillors that have worked in their industries or they have had their passionate projects for their whole life. You can’t expect to learn all their knowledge in a day, so you need to give those people leadership as well. Deputy Mayor Cyndi (Power) comes from a totally different background than me which is fantastic. I have only briefly spoken to some of the councillors in the wake of Tuesday night’s vote, but they have put their hand up and said they want to spread their wings a bit and I’m all for that. You play to your strengths, so it’s simply about working together.AM: What are the key challenges moving forward as a team?
LW: Coming out of the COVID situation — people have got to understand that some of these businesses have been in this situation of opening and closing for two years and those businesses also bleed into a lot of other businesses. Two years is a long time, how long is it going to take for them to get back to making a profit? I don’t know, but we can be supportive as a council. The challenges with council is the relationships — a year sounds like a short amount of time — and I’m probably sure it will whizz by, but at the same time I’m sure there will be many issues that rear their head and how do I deal with it as the mayor in-house? We have got a diverse group and we are not always going to see eye to eye, but it’s really important to deal with that situation, put it to bed and come to work the next day with a clean slate. That’s a really important way because if you start holding grudges, the wheels fall off.AM: What response have you had since being elected Mildura’s next mayor?
LW: It’s been positive. I didn’t make the decision to run on those accolades — it’s more self driven and wanting to do something for the community. But you can’t help but to be happy and proud when the messages of support flood in and there’s been a lot of people who I don’t know who have said ‘well done’ which is fantastic. You’ll always get the knockers and the only way to fix that is to work your butt off and hopefully you can change their minds.
