Key issues for local government in South East Queensland

Brad Marland

[Transcript]

The issues with local government in south, I’m talking about South East Queensland primarily. Human capital is a big issue at the moment. The workforce is ageing, there’s a lot of people at retirement age, close to retirement and they’re having trouble with bringing younger people into, into the industry. So having to look outside of the local government areas, having to embrace hybrid work from home and they’re going to have to look interstate and even offshore to fill those positions. So that’s probably the biggest issue.

South East Queensland is absolutely booming at the moment. There’s 1.8 million people are predicted to move to South East Queensland in the next 20 years. That could be even more with the eyes of the world on South East Queensland for the upcoming Olympics.

Some of the infrastructure projects coming up leading into the Olympics are going to be significant. The problem’s going to be attracting that human capital from the private sector to come into the local government with the necessary experience to work on those large infrastructure projects.

Digital transformation is one of the trends. A lot of the local governments that I work closely with are really working hard at transforming digitally – updating their websites, updating their social media and along with that there’s a lot of improvements to the engagements with local governments.

The ratepayers know about community programs, especially post-Covid and post-floods. It’s very important they’re reaching out to their ratepayers about community programs such as rent relief, small business grants. The real trends are improvement to digital transformation and engaging better with the ratepayers.