Melissa Gibbs: I'm with Rosanna De Santis, Director of Corporate and Community Services with the Tiwi Islands Shire Council in the Northern Territory. Rosanna, in just a couple of sentences can you please describe your role?

Rosanna Di Santis: My role is basically working as part of the executive team for the Tiwi Islands Shire Council, so effectively I'm working very closely with the CEO and councillors to make decisions on delivery of services and also manage a significant number of staff beneath me. I now have three departments; I have community services, corporate and community development as well.

MG: Tell us about your transition from the NT police into local government, how did that come about?

RDS: That came about from me identifying an opportunity of having a change, because I'd been policing for 23 years straight and straight from school too. So I was looking for something different. One of the significant reasons for me taking up the challenge, or applying, was the fact that it took me back to remote communities. In my years of policing I went to a lot of remote communities and served away from Darwin which was by choice, so this being the Tiwi Islands, the fact that it was going to take me out remote again was one of the two reasons.

The second reason being that that's where my mother originates from, Tiwi Islands, so effectively I'd be doing or providing services for my own mob and I don't think I've been quite as satisfied in a job elsewhere.

MG: Tell us about the top three challenges for you in your current role.

RDS: The first – and it still is a challenge – is the fact that I've been policing for so long and in a relatively strict and regimented environment. You know, you've got chain of command and so one of the challenges for myself as a director is trying to be a little bit more flexible. Because I'm conscious of what we have to do as an organisation and our corporate image as well, and when I see that potentially being brought into disrepute or not being adhered to I know I take a strict line.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what I'm trying to work my way around is to try and be a little bit less the hard task-master, and appreciating more the difficulties facing the community or the more traditional Tiwi people being employed. So that's one of them. Another challenge is the fact that whilst at our level at executive we certainly have that chain of command where we get stuff from our managers and then it's fed upward to the CEO, but it often doesn't happen - for me I feel like it doesn't happen at all levels where it should.

I know that a lot of our employees - and I'm talking about our Tiwi employees - they actually feel disrespected when someone from a different business unit tells them that they need them to do something. 

MG: So I suppose an opportunity might be to take the best elements out of the policing chain of command model and applying it to local government in the Tiwis?

RDS: Yeah, that's right. I know you asked for three but they're the two main ones. I think everything else works pretty well. I guess communication would be another one. This happened particularly when we had vacancies in some of our executive structure so a lot of people were busy and doing extra work so we fell down in our communication. Instead of everyone being aware of what was going on, sometimes information didn't get to certain people.

I can remember one example where a decision was made with one of my employees and it was just to fill a gap, but I wasn't consulted about that so I was really quite angry. I then turned around and looked at it in the view of ‘oh well, we have some room for improvement in our communication’, rather than getting all argumentative and negative about it.

But I certainly feel as though there's been an improvement in communication, and it's because we've got those key positions filled as well. 

MG: It makes a big difference doesn't it?

RDS: Yeah.

MG: So reflecting on your time at Tiwi, what are some of the achievements that you're most proud of?

RDS: That has to be this one young Tiwi woman who was working with us in Milikapiti. She was one of the CDP [Community Development Program] participants. You know I'd see her float around, come in the office here and there, and I said to her one day ‘do you want to sit down with me and give some thought to what sort of work you want to do so you're not just on CDP all the time?’ True. It was like no-one had asked her that question before and she said I'd like to work with the children at the crèche. 'Alright, well if I said that I could maybe help you do that; would you be prepared to undertake training so that you get qualified?' 'Yeah of course.'

I just saw this woman that was always coming to work and thought 'I wouldn't mind giving her an opportunity'. She was 19 - in little under two years we transitioned her into the crèche, started her off in a children services qualification at certificate II level. She's just got two more units of competency to go and she'll be the first Aboriginal woman in the Northern Territory to actually enter the diploma level.

I love bragging about those good news stories. They always form a part of my report to the Council each month, that and some photos capturing some of where we're kicking goals. 

MG: It makes it all worthwhile doesn't it?

RDS: Yeah. That's the shining light for me, knowing that if I can do it with that young lady, there are bound to be others that I can do it with.

MG: There are so many opportunities in local government to do good. Did you have similar opportunities in the police force?

RDS: Yeah, absolutely. I can't remember who it was who said it this morning, but someone today talked about the opportunities for us to give training and experience and qualifications to our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mobs. It's irrelevant whether they stay with us because if we can help set them up for life I think that's the bonus. That's definitely how I feel and that's how I used to feel when we were in policing when we had our Indigenous employment career development strategy, which went across all streams of employment into the police force.

It had school-based apprenticeships, it had Aboriginal community police officer programs, constable programs, auxiliary programs, and we tried and achieved very well at it in terms of Indigenous employment. But that's an area for improvement. I was an integral part of that pre-development strategy being developed for the police perspective of things. I've only been here two-and-a-half years in local government, I know where there are areas that I'd love to improve on and I'm fortunate because Alan [Tiwi Islands Shire Council CEO Alan Hudson], no matter what you say about CEOs being stale, pale and male – he’s not stale! He fits two of those categories being male and pale but he's certainly not stale. Because if you're looking at measuring his performance against that stuff, I mean this old bugger gets a tick in the box in a lot of areas and that's just me talking personally where he's given us a hand and stuff. I know that I can write to him and say, ‘hey look, this is a situation, I need to change this, that and whatever, can you support it?’ And he goes, ‘yeah’.

MG: It's good to have that… Where do you go most commonly to get information to support you in your role?

RDS: Alan's probably the most significant person that I go to. I haven't explored people at my level in other shires, not for any reason, I just refer to legislation for guidance, or I'll ask Alan, or I'll bounce it off of David Jan or Tony Tapsell from LGANT. So they're the main sources.

MG: What's the biggest lesson you've learned in your current role?

RDS: Biggest lesson? It doesn't matter if you're family, you're still going to get sworn at.

MG: That would be a challenge that you face that a lot of other people working in senior levels at local government wouldn’t face.

RDS: Yeah, and that's okay. I tell my family that if I play favourites and I don't chip you for this or that, it will reflect poorly on me. It means that people can't trust me to do the job that I'm here to do.

MG: It's a big challenge facing Indigenous people working in local government because you're expected to support your family as well as the council.

RDS: Yeah.

MG: It's often difficult for family members to understand that.

RDS: Yeah, I mean I told you that shining light story. A perfect example of an opposite story is my own nephew, my own flesh and blood. Time after time after time I've put so much energy into that young fellow to help him to get a qualification in his chosen area which is mechanical, he just kept not turning up. I just kept having to explain to him, I needed to keep onto him to try to help him realise the error of his ways and get him to work and then he'd do good for a fortnight but then just fall away. His perspective was that I was always on his case. So trying to find a happy medium in that is difficult.

MG: Would one of those mentoring programs have helped him do you think, with someone who is maybe not part of the family?

RDS: I think his current place, where he's at now, is about him. He even told me in some correspondence that he was required to write in addressing whether or not we should continue to employ him, realising that he was only looking out for himself, not caring about his work or his family and stuff like that. That still is the case and he's going to grow up, he's only 21, he's going to grow up and we can only hope that he'll wake up soon.

MG: It sounds like he's got good people around him who can support him when he does decide to wake up.

RDS: Yeah.

MG: The final question is; what's so special about the Tiwi Islands?

RDS: Aside from it being just the most pristine waters and beautiful country, in terms of the shire, we really pride ourselves on two things which we think make us unique. The fact that we actually practice decentralised local government. The CEO, directors and managers all live on the island. We live in the general population in our houses, and that's pretty special because I know that the current minister, when he was holding a different portfolio in Darwin, believed that all shires existed on the Stuart Highway.

The second aspect is just the number of Aboriginal women that we have, not just women but Aboriginal women. I gave you some figures before but that makes me so proud. We employ nearly 46 per cent women in our shire, and when we are talking about Tiwi women at management level or above, we're at 35 per cent. So that's pretty deadly.

MG: Yeah.

RDS: I'm certainly no bra burner by any stretch but those things make me proud. You know that's gender equity and we promote that in every angle of our recruitment because that's something we're proud about. We're proud about the fact that we've got nearly as many women in our workforce as we do men. So come and join us, you're going to make our team richer.

MG: Wonderful.

RDS: That's about it.

MG: Wow, thanks Rosanna. You’ve told an inspiring story.

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