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Trials, tribulations and triumphs of a remote Council

By Andrew Hemming*

One could be forgiven in reading editions of the Local Government FOCUS for believing that Local Government in Australia is divided into two groups: metropolitan and rural Councils with access to the electricity grid/State water supply, and remote Councils responsible for all basic services utilised by State/Federal Governments to deliver a multiplicity of human services.

The issues are so different. For example, Coober Pedy's submission to the Senate Inquiry into Telstra dealt with access to services taken for granted by the majority of Australians. Metropolitan Councils in contrast were obsessed with underground cabling.

Remote Councils go to extraordinary lengths to secure a doctor in the town while scores of medical graduates educated at public expense attach themselves to the Medicare umbilical cord in the capital cities.

The tyranny of distance is an ever present curse, whether it is sending a staff member on a training course or getting the photocopier fixed. Of course, it is given that the further a Council is away from the funding source, the less the Council receives. A recently completed Business Plan undertaken by a consultant to the local Business/Tourist Association found that so poor was the support given by the

South Australian Tourism Commission, as well as the Flinders Ranges and Outback South Australia Tourism Association, that Coober Pedy would be better advised to form an association with tourist destinations in the Northern Territory.

The 'operational' environment will be familiar to many readers: a small static capped rate base, minimum consideration from the Grants Commission for special factors, limited ability to apply for programs requiring matching funding, no opportunity for resource sharing, and little contribution from ATSIC for joint community facilities despite a large Aboriginal population.

User pays is the norm in Coober Pedy with water priced at $5 a kilolitre to meet the costs of production as compared to 88 cents a kilolitre in Adelaide and Roxby Downs - where it is subsidised by Western Mining Corporation.

Several years ago, Coober Pedy residents identified a grassed oval as their most important priority in order to give the young people a recreational outlet as well as reduce juvenile crime. Coober Pedy football teams have had to travel to Woomera for 'home' matches, a distance of 750 kilometres for the round trip. In 1995, the team travelled 16,000 kilometres to compete in the local competition.

Responding to residents' priorities, Council embarked on the biggest project in its short history, assisted by Commonwealth funded employment programs. Every available carrier in the town was engaged. Given the saline clay soil in Coober Pedy, it was necessary to excavate to a depth of half a metre, truck in 3,500 cubic metres of gravel and 10,000 cubic metres of red sand from quarries 60 and 48 kilometres away respectively, lay 700 metres of drainage pipes and 48,000 metres of subsurface irrigation, and plant the entire oval with stolens or runners of saltwater couch imported from Alice Springs. Seeding is now taking place with winter grass.

The town is planning on playing its 1998 home football matches in Coober Pedy. To keep the grass in summer, when temperatures regularly hit 45°c and sufficient effluent water isnot available, will cost the Council 10 percent of its rate base. This is an unparalleled commitment to the youth of this town, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

Any job is what one makes of it. The responsibility of running an entire town, the mineral exploration prospects particularly gold and coal, the last frontier and underground living give the opal capital of the world a uniqueness not to be missed. The ABC recently screened a program called 'Rats in the Ranks' about a Mayoral contest in Leichhardt.

The Byzantine politics of Coober Pedy with 42 ethnic groupings, the forceful colourful characters and plain theatre of Council meetings provide a far greater insight into the political process.

And the final blessing? A Council entirely comprised of people in the workplace not given to accompanying their Chief Executive Officer en masse on forays out of town, and a Mayor not obsessed with hogging the media limelight.

Every cloud ...

*Andrew Hemming is Chief Executive Officer at District Council of Coober Pedy.

For further information contact Andrew Hemming on (08) 8672 5289.

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