Thank you to Mayor Adam Shultz, CEO Morven Cameron and the Lake Macquarie City Council team for hosting our August meeting at the Hunter Sports Centre. It was a productive and exciting meeting with the endorsement of our new Hunter JO Strategic Plan 2035 and Delivery Program for 2025-2029. Thank you to our Mayors and General Managers for their extensive input and to the Hunter JO team for their considerable work on this important document which sets a clear shared vision for our region’s future.  

We also explored new approaches to support our Mayors build communications and social media to promote the work they are doing through the JO for the benefit of local communities right across the region.  Thank you to Mayor Leah Anderson for leading this discussion and to those Mayors participating in and piloting new content and videos across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to spread the word of the JO.   

Other focus areas included updates on key regional advocacy initiatives, planning for our October Board meeting in NSW Parliament House, advocacy and program updates from the Hunter JO waste and circular economy program, and presentations from Regional Development Australia Hunter and the Federal Net Zero Economy Authority. Meeting at the Hunter Sports Centre also provided us with the opportunity to see firsthand this amazing facility which is providing benefits to our whole region. 

I also recently had the pleasure of meeting with our Joint Organisation colleagues from across NSW at our JO Chairs Forum held in NSW Parliament House. We enjoyed putting a spotlight on our own JO’s operating structure, systems, processes and priorities as part of a new approach to sharing information on how each JO operates across the state. Importantly, the meeting also explored the merits and potential of a coordinated statewide approach to building councils’ capabilities, developing policies and procedures and undertaking advocacy with respect to establishing appropriate community benefits-sharing arrangements for large-scale energy projects across NSW, something we are now working on together to progress.