Melissa Gibbs: I’m with Edwina Marks from Barkly Shire Council in the Northern Territory. Edwina, can you just tell me in just a couple of sentences, a bit about your role?

Edwina Marks: Hi Melissa. I’m the Executive Director of Communities and my role is to oversee the municipal and essential service delivery in six of our remote communities, so it’s a very broad role. It is very much about roads, rates and rubbish, but it’s also about community service delivery as well. So it’s aged care, childcare, and in those remote settings they can be very challenging.

MG: I can imagine. Can you nominate the major challenges facing the Barkly Shire? 

EM: The Barkly Shire is about one and a half times the size of Victoria and we have 8,000 residents. So logistics and geography are our daily challenges, including everything from getting people to work or getting contractors to a job. It’s also about keeping essential services such as water, power and a whole range of other essential things continuing to be supplied to communities.

MG: And what are some of the personal challenges in your role? 

EM: The most significant challenge that we look at on a daily basis is just guaranteeing the delivery of services. The communities are remote, but there are also a lot of cultural reasons as to why workers might not be at work. So you work through a whole process of legitimising those services to the community, but also respecting that each community has its own way of doing things. Also, it’s a cultural identity which needs to be respected. 

The Barkly Shire is also only five years old, so as a new council it is important to take that step back and look at things strategically so that you’re actually maximising best effort. Day-to-day life can easily consume all of your time so it’s really important that we look at some of that longer term planning.

MG: I know you’ve only been at Barkly Shire for a relatively short period of time, but what are some of the achievements that you’re most proud of?

EM: I’ve only been at Barkly for six months but I think in that six months what we’ve done is really connect with the Shire’s employees and start to make our employees feel valued. We have a much larger executive team now than we did before and we’re able to do more. So we’re able to engage where we have a lot more connection points across council, both formal and informal, so that people know what’s going on as a local government provider. But also that we’re getting to know each other as people and have a bit of fun. 

We have a wonderful animal management program, which is one of the best in the Territory and we’re taking that to another level. We’re getting recognition both at the Territory and the national level for that program. But a program like that doesn’t just worry about animal health; it actually makes a big difference to population health. It actually keeps people healthy by reducing dog numbers and looking at things as a whole. When you see a vet in the bush operating on a table on a porch to spay a dog, that’s just something to be seen. 

MG: So where do you most commonly go to get information and support?

EM: I think in local government, anyone with experience realises that it’s not important to be original, but it’s really important to network within you own and with other councils. I’m really proud of the fact that since I’ve been on board at Barkly I have developed a really strong relationship with the neighbouring councils; Central Desert and MacDonnell Shire. They’ve been invaluable support to me. Both CEOs opened up their executive to me to ask for any support that I might need. As a result, we’re working right across a range of strategic issues but now we can do it from a Central Australian perspective, not just a council perspective.

MG: This is most certainly a reflection of the evolution of the shires over five years, where they are now at a mature enough stage to being looking at addressing issues on a regional basis – and it’s a very large region.

EM: Absolutely. I come from local government in another jurisdiction and I think you forget that, despite all the challenges that local governments face in other states, they are generally more highly evolved. When you bring that experience back into the Territory it gives you the ability to be a time traveller, to know what the future looks like. To bring that back and to look at where things are at a grass roots level, you can see what kind of steps you need to get there - to actually get you into a legitimate space for service delivery.

MG: What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learnt in your current role?

EM: I think the importance of people power. We’re an Aboriginal organisation. Sixty per cent of our employees are Aboriginal. Our President, or mayor as you’d call them in other jurisdictions and councils, the majority of councillors are Aboriginal. So we’re the guests in country and that’s the most important lesson to learn, and it influences everything that we do.

MG: Everybody I speak with in local government proudly tells me that their council is unique. What is it that sets your council part from others?

EM: I think that we are truly smack bang in the middle of Central Australia, so it takes a long time to get there. You can’t fly in to Tennant Creek other than by charter and I think that does make us special. However, Tennant Creek is an urban area that’s been a land mass for a long period of time and we’ve got these small remote communities we also look after. We feel like cowboys or frontiers people. I think in some ways we are a little bit more raw than other councils, but at the same time we’re certainly striving to modernise and contemporise ourselves.

MG: Thanks for speaking with me Edwina. I wish you and your colleagues at Barkly Shire well.

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