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21 October 2003 Interview
Transcript Topic: Young leaders in regional Victoria - Local Government Bedford: First this hour, we're going to look at getting the young leaders of tomorrow into regional Victoria and southern New South Wales. Earlier this year the Municipal Association of Victoria conducted their own Census of Councillors. It's probably no surprise to learn that the vast majority of our Councillors - and thatÕs a total of 90 percent - of Local Government Councillors are over 35 years old. It gets worse - 70 percent are more than 45 and only two percent of our Councillors are aged under 25 years. So we want to know from you this morning if you think this is a good thing. Do you think maybe that we should be forcing Councils to elect at least one person under the age of 25? Give us a call - 1300 303 468. Did you know that there are as many Councillors eligible for the aged pension as there are aged under 35? Darren Chester is with us - he's the Executive Officer of Champions of the Bush and he's concerned that we're not getting enough young people into leadership roles in regional areas. Darren, good morning. Chester: Good morning Kathy. Bedford: Darren, what's so important about young people anyway? Don't we get experience and knowledge with older Councillors. Chester: It's not about picking on the older Councillors. It's certainly not a case of getting rid of all the oldies to make way for the young. I think that young people can offer many different perspectives on life. They help to present a diverse range of views and give another section of the community a voice on Council. I think people want to know that their voice is being heard and I suppose itÕs only natural that younger people are going to relate better perhaps to a younger Councillor. For example, they probably have more recent experience in the education system; they might be involved in different sport and recreation. It just adds a different perspective to the Council structure if you like, and also we're really aiming in a democracy to have our Councils represent the demographics of the community and if we haven't got any young people involved we're not really fulfilling that role. Bedford: You've proposed this idea - it's fairly radical, do you think it could work? That Councils actually make it compulsory to at least have one Councillor under the age of 25. Chester: As a rule I'm not generally supportive of enforced rules or targets which have the potential to distort a democratic system but in this case I'd love to see a Council in regional Victoria undertake a trial, take a more active approach to encouraging young leaders. The problem is at the moment - it's not like we have a lot of young people who are contesting elections and just missing out at the ballot box. At the moment, they're not even nominating. I think we need to address some of the fundamental issues about the time and money and those sort of aspects about running for Council. Most Councils at the moment run youth forums or information meetings in a bid to get the views of young people but I think there's too many grey hairs in the room a lot of the time and the good exchange of ideas just doesn't happen. Bedford: So what are some of the ways we can look at Councils perhaps restructuring the way they do things to get more young people involved? Chester: From my experience with Local Government there's a lot of reasons why younger people aren't getting involved but a lot of it just comes back to time and money. It takes a lot of time to be a Councillor - probably more than 20 hours a week in most rural Council settings and you're not going to be well paid for your efforts. In some parts, a Councillor might get $15,000 per year or a Mayor gets about $35,000. If you put that into real terms, if a Councillor is working 20 hours a week for his $15,000 - that amounts to about $15 an hour which is probably what a shop assistant gets paid. Shop assistants do a great job - but they're not in charge of multi-million budgets which we expect our Councillors to do. Bedford: Yes, but if you want to pay our Councillors more then I'm going to have to pay more rates Darren, and I'm not happy about that. Chester: That is the issue that will come up straight away - the cost to the community. But then again what price do you put on our democracy to get a fair and representative view from across the community? I think it's a debate that our communities need to have. Do they value the level of decision-making made in Councils enough to be willing to attract a better standard, or a better range of candidates I should say. At the moment we're excluding some people who can't possibly run because if they've got young families or if they've got a full-time job... how can they possibly balance the demands of Council with the commitments they've already got in their life. Bedford: Well we're putting this debate out there this morning, you are welcome to comment. Would you be happy to have a bit of a rise in your rates to get more younger people into Council if we paid our Councillors more. Do you think the community generally lacks respect for younger people and their ideas? Maybe we need to see a whole shift in attitude. Chester: We do need to encourage young people more wherever possible. Let them know that we want their views - that perhaps we're willing to change the system if at the moment it excludes them for whatever reasons. We also need to help them in this mentoring role that's been talked about a lot in recent years. We've got a lot of older, experienced people in regional Victoria and southern New South Wales who have a great deal to offer their communities. One of the things they can offer their communities is to help the younger people... to train them to be the next generation of leaders. I think we're perhaps a little bit weak on that at the moment, we could do with a lot more in that area. Bedford: Another interesting figure that you've given to me from the MAV Census is that 79% of Councillors are male. That sort of surprises me Darren because when I've done a bit of travelling around the regions, meeting local Councillors, we've encountered a lot of female Mayors. Chester: I thought the figures were getting better too - and I think they have probably improved over the last 10 years. The good thing about that is the more positive role models we see with women being Mayors or women being elected to State and Federal Parliament is that it encourages more young women, or women of any age for that matter, to get involved in nominating in the future and having a go at running for Council. It's giving people confidence to have a go. I'm reasonably comfortable with the figures of 79% - I think it's starting to come back a little bit more to the field - but I would love to see some more young women perhaps nominating for Council. Bedford: I guess the ongoing benefit is a lot of people who get into local council go on to the next level of politics and we get more younger people involved at Federal and State level. Chester: Traditionally Local Government has been a breeding ground for our State and Federal politicians and that's something that we've got to think about as well when weÕre at the ballot box. What are we expecting from this person, where would we like to see them in the future? One thing - I think we've been a little bit harsh on our political leaders or our elected leaders in country communities - afterall, we elect them. Then we seem to indulge in this tall poppy syndrome a bit too much that we try to cut them down just because they've had the audacity to nominate for Council or State and Federal politics. Sure, we need to have this robust debate about our leadership and the decisions they make but a lot of the time I think we can get behind them with some of their ideas and help them to become more successful. Bedford: Just to finish up with you Darren - for that 70 percent of our Councillors who are aged 45 plus, you're not being ageist are you? Chester: Not at all - I think they've got a great deal to offer their communities. I'd just love to see them working with younger people as well. I think it would be a more vibrant and more potent mix around the local Council table. Bedford: Darren, thank you for your time this morning. Darren Chester is with Champions of the Bush just raising a few issues which we can look at this morning. Creating a bit of debate in our community. While we're on the topic of getting younger people into Council. We've found one. Brendan Ryan is the Mayor of Corangamite. Discussion continues with Cr Ryan and Kathy Bedford. Media
information: For further comments contact Darren Chester on 0351 55
3719 or 0412 153 719.
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