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Waste Assessments and Section 17A

June 2016

Lately, councils have been asking us here at Morrison Low whether a Section 17A Review is needed for waste services given there is already a need to assess options for their Waste Assessments. Our vie...

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Enabling reform

June 2016

The Government proactively released its policy paper on the next tranche of reform of the Local Government Act 2002 (it’s available on the Department of Internal Affairs website).  We at Morrison Low ...

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Webinar: Procurement Essentials – strategic context for waste services (hosted by WasteMinz)

April 2016

Below is a recording of the webinar on Procurement Essentials – strategic context for waste services, as well as the accompanying presentation. The webinar was held on Tuesday 5 April 2016 and was pre...

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Develop a Compelling Business Case for Grant Funding

Grant Funding, Business Case

March 2016

Morrison Low has built an expert team of financial analysts, economists, engineers and business case specialists who have developed an extensive track record of assisting clients prepare funding applications for infrastructure grants.

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The next stage of reform and your influence as leaders

March 2016

Merger transition thinking and action has commenced. That means it’s time to look to the horizon and imagine the future state of councils. Yes, there will be an enormous resource burden on the transit...

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Community self-determination vs efficient local government

March 2016

The recent Boundaries Commission process served to highlight the passion some communities have for their councils and why community identity is such a key part of what local government stands for.  Si...

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Morrison Low Reviews Complaints System for Government Agency

February 2016

A Government Agency’s need for a more robust system for managing complaints about its staff drove a recent review of its complaints system. 

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Long Term Financial Plans

August 2015

Morrison Low analysed a number of long term financial plans while working with councils across NSW during the recent Fit for the Future process. The long term financial plans formed the basis of forecasting against the financial benchmarks as well as the asset based benchmarks such as the maintenance, renewals and backlog ratios. The information in the plans varied considerably between councils and we found a number of common themes across the documents and reporting structures that can and should be improved.

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Fit for the Future Lessons – Merger Costs, Benefits and Risks

Merger, Fit for Future

August 2015

Costs can be estimated by looking at other mergers. Information from the Queensland Treasury Corporation and the Auckland Transitional Agency about Queensland and New Zealand mergers provides examples of relevant costs that were reasonably consistent. However, we noted in NSW as the number of councils involved, size (staff, geographic and financially), location and even the services provided differs between councils and across jurisdictions, costs needed to be scaled to each individual merger taking these factors into account.

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Improvement Modelling for Service Reviews

August 2015

The process of developing improvement proposals has, in our view, been one of the most positive benefits of the Fit for the Future process. It places importance on the reality of steps to create susta...

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