LAST week, I joined well over 500 local government representatives in the seat of our nation’s government in Canberra. We travelled down with the very best of intentions, but I am afraid to say there was not much positive news to report.

I made it a priority to speak to as many of my counterparts as possible, many of those in attendance were themselves mayors and chief executives of local governments from all across the country.

One thing that was as clear as cathedral bells from these interactions is that not many capital grants, it would seem, make it past the cities, the peri-urban or the regional councils.

It’s well known in Canberra that there aren’t many votes out our way and as such, not much money makes the long walk out to our rural councils.

But what did I learn from my week in Canberra? Well, I learned politicians do a lot of talking, and a lot of repeating themselves.

They have a few commonly used expressions, their favourite of which is ‘yes, we’ve been talking about that.’

The other thing that they do is a lot of reviewing and the other saying is ‘yes, we are reviewing that at the moment.’

The question remains, who is going to review that review?

The subject of housing was brought up many times and particularly the 1.2 million homes that they intend to build over the next five years. In all my conversations, however, I failed to find a single council that had been allocated funds to build any of these houses.

Council representatives nationwide are in near unanimous agreement that the state roads were by far the worst roads in their areas.

I found many times that just like with the Southern Grampians Shire, council roads, the ones we have control over, are in reasonable condition while state roads often lie in disrepair.

As we continue to transition our energy grid to allow for more renewable energy, we know that this will mean a sharp increase in wind farms in Southwest Victoria, which is home to ideal conditions.

This is a fact of life and is something we can expect over the next ten years or so.

What we must do now is to negotiate to our fullest extent for compensation to be paid to areas who will bear the brunt of the changes made to our natural environment from this construction.

What I did understand is that southwest Vic is more advanced in managing solar farms and transmission lines than many other regions.

We have now set a compensation figure for transmission lines that run across properties and there are many towns which are already receiving annual compensation for hosting this infrastructure.

In the end, I think what I learnt is that the long-term financial plan that we set out in this year’s budget is the best operational model that we could have come up with. This budget and our long-term financial plan outline a significant shift for Council towards creating efficiencies and savings to fund our future projects, rather than a high reliance on external grants from other levels of government.

This demonstrates our fiscal responsibility and sets us up well for the future.

While in Canberra, I was able to sit in for a Question Time session in Parliament. I must admit, I was not impressed at all by the behaviour, the attitude or the calibre of work that was achieved in that session.

Sometimes as a mental exercise I think about what we get back in exchange for our taxes.

We’re taxed on everything from income to cars and houses and even our purchases, and often we can’t see the benefit of that money.

When you consider Council rates are significantly smaller than what goes to other levels of government, we get so much more bang for our buck.

While I acknowledge that people are doing it tough and rates are not something we enjoy forking out, every penny received in rates feeds into programs and services that you can tangibly see and benefit from every day, like libraries, sports facilities, community services, maternal health services and our magnificent local amenities.

These are part of everyday life in the region and things that we can be proud to have chipped in for. When all is said and done, this is our community and we built it.

I would however like to take the opportunity to thank our local member for Wannon, Dan Tehan, for organising meetings with ministers, shadow ministers and ministerial staff. It was important to get into a room so that we could discuss the particular issues unique to our shire.

On a brighter note, the trip provided a rare and extremely insightful chance to meet with the other local councils in the Wannon electorate.

It’s good to get together and talk to our neighbours and fascinating to see and discuss our shared issues.