Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 4 November, the local election results came through in Geelong and 10 days later, on 13 November, Geelong elected its new mayor, Bruce Harwood. With both events, we now have in place a city council, which we've not had for some time. This is a really fantastic phenomenon and event for Geelong. We even saw it in this building over the last few days, as Peter Murrihy, the deputy mayor, came and represented the City of Greater Geelong at the annual Fed Cats dinner, the parliamentary highlight of the year.

Bruce Harwood is our new mayor. Bruce is a fantastic civic representative. He is not aligned with any political party. It does turn out that Bruce is the father-in-law of Patrick Dangerfield, but, while Danger can lay claim to a lot of things in Geelong, in this case it is all about Bruce. Bruce served as our mayor from 2006 to 2008 and he was acting mayor in 2013. He is the person with the most experience on our city council right now, and he is absolutely the right man for the job of leading Geelong at this moment in time on its city council.

Those elected are a nice combination of old and new. Anthony Akin, who is a ward councillor in the Windermere ward, has had a 16-year break in his time on council. He was last there in 2001. He's actually a former deputy mayor. He brings an enormous amount of experience. Then there is somebody like Kylie Grzybek on the council. She is bringing a whole new level of energy. I picked those two names, but they are very good examples of the kind of energy that we've got across the council more generally.

The opportunity for cooperation that this presents between all tiers of government to work to make our city better is fantastic. Last week I was with Kylie and Anthony looking at a feasibility study for a new walking track along the Rollerama creek, which would connect Corio with its bay. It's an example of the kind of work that we can do, and I think it has to be said that through a period of administrators, and prior to that a very unsettling period of local governance in Geelong, that kind of cooperation has not been possible. So it's fantastic to see it now.

A new structure has been put in place for this council, and I think it has every opportunity of working. If I'd offer one point, I think that with larger wards there is going to be a need to make sure that those regional townships—like Anakie, Lara, Leopold, Clifton Springs, Drysdale, Portarlington and St Leonards—feel a connection with a particular individual councillor in the new council structure. Sometimes that will happen naturally—Kylie Grzybek, for example, lives in Lara—but that might need to be thought through for some of those other areas. I offer that as a thought, and I do so in a context where the level of goodwill towards this council is unprecedented in terms of anything I have seen in local government, and that's great.