Spotlight on Community Councils

Hosted in partnership with the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy as part of the Reimagining Governance for the ACT public event series

Community Councils are representative volunteer non-partisan community organisations in the ACT, supported by the ACT government.

This next event will explore what Community Councils themselves, the government, other parties in the Assembly and the community think is their role in governance (not government) of the ACT.

The recent poll on reforming ACT governance elicited these ideas regarding extended roles for community councils:

• Make Community Councils directly elected by citizens, receive funding from the ACT government, and require their consultation on issues,

• Create development committees in each suburb to provide responses to all development applications affecting the suburb,

• Consultation needs to be real. Community submissions taken seriously and genuine attempts made to achieve best outcomes for all development (this catches the current role of community councils as consultative bodies).

Panelists:

• Jeff Bollard, Tuggeranong Community Council President

• Nelson Tang, Woden Valley Community Council President

• Andrew Braddock, Greens MLA

• Fiona Carrick, Independent MLA

• Peter Cain, Liberal MLA

• Taimus Werner-Gibbings, Labor MLA

MC: Genevieve Jacobs

A small donation would be appreciated to cover printing, stationery and the occasional room hire as we are a small unfunded community group.