It has been sad to lose Anne Champness from our executive staff. She may be difficult to replace, however I see an opportunity to form partnerships with her and her council at Tatiara.

Wimmera Mallee tourism has got some really good runs on the board in recent times, the standout being the silo trail instigated by the Yarriambiack Shire.

Buloke Shire has just had a huge injection of funding to enhance facilities at Lake Tyrrell, the Dimboola caravan park and recreation reserve precinct continues to blossom, with a new skate park being installed. 

The Aviation Museum at Nhill has recently had a Tiger Moth added, with hopes of a Wirraway arriving next year and the Rainbow Desert Euro is on the calendar for August 10-12.

West Wimmera Shire also has many great attractions and is the gateway to Tatiara and the Limestone Coast. It is here that I see some great interstate partnerships forming.

The conditions of our country roads are of great concern and very much need of attention. We need to continue to lobby both state and federal governments for funding for their maintenance.

This has always been and always will be a tough challenge. Somehow, we need to get back the money that was taken away from the rural road funding.

We have discussed a new round of farmer/community consultations and I am hoping we can implement those in the near future.

I also hope to work with our building department to make building permits an awful lot easier to negotiate, as it is one of the things that rate poorly in our customer satisfaction surveys.

Our ratepayer/citizen satisfaction surveys show us performing very well as a rural shire, but I have the ambitions of them being even better or maybe best.

Hindmarsh is a great shire and I look forward to working with all our communities and our farmers and industry to make it even better.