Queensland Government Champion Program
The former departments of Main Roads and Queensland Transport have been involved in the Government Champion Programs since 2003. The current Government Champion Program is coordinated by the Department of Seniors, Disability Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships and provides a direct conduit between discrete Indigenous communities and the Queensland Government to enable systemic issues to be escalated, support joint problem solving and build cultural capability within Government. The Government Champion Program provides an opportunity for Chief Executives of Queensland Government agencies to work together with identified communities towards improving life outcomes for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples, in a collaborative partnership.
Timeline
- 2003 – Main Roads' Director-General, Steve Golding, Government Champion for the communities of New Mapoon, Umagico and Injinoo.
- 2007 – Queensland Transport Director-General, Bruce Wilson, Government Champion for the Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Community in Cape York (co-champion with Department of Tourism, Fair Trading and Wide Industry Development Director-General).
- 2008 – Main Roads' Director-General, Alan Tesch, Government Champion for 3 Cape York Aboriginal communities – Injinoo, Umagico and New Mapoon.
- 2009 – Queensland Transports' Director-General, David Stewart, Government Champion for the Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Community in Cape York.
- 2014 - current – Department of Transport and Main Roads' former Director-General, Neil Scales, Government Champion for Woorabinda Aboriginal Community.
View the current Ministerial and Government Champions.
Former Director-General Neil Scales, Government Champion for Woorabinda Community
Our former Director-General, Neil Scales, is honoured to be Government Champion for the Woorabinda community since 2014. Woorabinda is located about 170km south-west of Rockhampton and situated on the traditional lands of the Wadja Wadja/Wadjigal Aboriginal people.
Our Director-General is passionate about improving the economic and social outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and we are proud of the great progress we are making. As part of the long-term vision to reinvigorate a community outpost and develop a training facility, we continue to support the community’s Blackboy Camp, recently supplying additional accommodation cabins. We are also delivering projects such as the BlackBoy Creek Bridge works, under the Memorandum of Understanding between Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council, Central Highlands Regional Council and us. This partnership has delivered some wonderful outcomes for the community—increasing local employment and traineeships, improving the capability and capacity of Woorabinda Council and improving the community’s infrastructure.
We also entered into a 2-year partnership, facilitated by Australia’s CEO Challenge, with the Woorabinda Gumbi Gunyah Women and Children’s Shelter. The shelter offers a safe place for women and children escaping domestic and family violence, who may be at risk of homelessness.
Over the years the relationship between our Director-General and Woorabinda has grown and matured allowing achievements that come from working in true partnership.
We are now a key partner in Woorabinda's journey to self-determination, with our relationship now having longer-term, more strategic focus. This focus has fostered work programs and a Memorandum of Understanding that has created training opportunities and jobs and will help underpin a successful workforce for many years.
The new Mayor, Councillor Josh Weazel, and his team of councillors, have a vision and plans for Woorabinda's success and our Director-General is supporting Councillor Weazel and the community to help them achieve this for the community.
Former Director-General Neil Scales (pictured second from right with Mayor of Woorabinda Joshua Weazel, pictured left) on a visit to Woorabinda in February 2021.
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Our former Director-General, Neil Scales, meeting with members of the Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council and its Chief Executive Officer in 2014
Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council member of Bowen Basin Regional Roads and Transport Group
Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council is a member of Bowen Basin Regional Roads and Transport Group. They have set the benchmark for collaborative participation in the Roads and Transport Alliance.
Their achievements include:
- a joint reseal project
- undertaking an asset condition assessment and gap analysis for project identification
- a trial program to support learner drivers to receive driving lessons which involves a part-time road safety officer in the community
- developing a 10-year plan for roads and other projects.
In March 2017, we established a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council and Central Highlands Regional Council. The MoU formalises arrangements for the provision of road construction and maintenance works to support the development of a sustainable works program. It also includes contracts for seal and resealing projects, a contract for weed spraying along the main infrastructure and job shadowing opportunities. As a result of the MoU and ongoing partnership with all parties, Woorabinda Aboriginal Shire Council now has a long-term plan for roads and other projects, which is delivering improved road infrastructure in the community as well as increasing local employment trainee opportunities.
Gumbi Gunyah Centre
As a part of his role, our former Director-General is very passionate about supporting the Gumbi Gunya Women and Children's Wellbeing Centre. The Centre has been operating for 20 years and responds to community requests for a safe place for women and children escaping domestic and family violence and who may be at risk of homelessness. This centre provides an incredibly important service to the families of Woorabinda.
We have been a proud supporter of the centre for over 3 years and continue to fundraise to support the centre.
The Government Champion Program
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Video transcript
[What is the Queensland Government Champion Program?]
The Government Champions Program run by the Queensland Government and by this department, is a program that sees a Director-General allocated to a particular remote or discrete Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community. It represents an opportunity for a Director-General, one of my colleagues at the most senior levels of government, to have a very explicit relationship with a remote or discrete Aboriginal community and what that does is allows that particular individual to have to confront and be engaged with the complexities that exist in, in the lives and livelihoods of some of our people in some of our communities—even things as simple as distance, you know appreciating that it's not as easy as just getting on a flight and flying to a particular place, sometimes it takes two or three days to get to some places. Coming to grips with some of those things makes us realise that communities are different and we need to engage them and we need to understand them differently.
It's a program it's, it's had a long life but the latest iteration of the program started in 2014 and that's when our Director-General was assigned to the Woorabinda community and I've supported him in that role ever since. The program itself is designed to break down barriers to service delivery that all Indigenous communities are subject to, as well as provide them with a voice in government, so our Director-General will come back liaise with his cohort and just get things moving that the community need rather than go through the red tape and bureaucracy.
[What role do you play in supporting this partnership?]
Well I directly support the Director-General, so we have, we are required to be out in the community four times a year that's one of the DATSIP performance measures, but generally speaking I do all the administrative side of things as well as liaison points across other departments so obviously not everything gets done at Director-General level, so all the sort of I guess the grunt work that has to be done across departments—there's a network of government champion support officers, so we all work together to get whatever needs to be done for individual communities as well as Woorabinda.
[Why are these partnerships so important?]
It's just a good way to work, in partnership. It's, it's sort of, I mean having been assigned to a community would sort of imply that yeah we'll go out there and we'll say well this is what we need, but it's, it's not like that at all. It's, it's our invitation comes from the community and the work that is required is what they tell us, not sort of the other way around, and we're just getting better results working that way, as you do in all partnerships you know, there's a recognition of each other's strengths and making sure that you know if they, for anyone dealing with government bureaucracy it's, it's quite painful, so to eliminate that for a community or a body of people is a really good thing to be able to do—and then the benefits that flow into the community are really great as well so, obviously being there since 2014, we've seen a lot of tangible outcomes in terms of the infrastructure that's been developed and that has worked really well as a transport and infrastructure agency. It's also providing that long-term, sustainable employment, economic development opportunities, all of those things that just come from having a job and having a sustainable industry, so we've been able to work with the community to do that as well.
[Where do you see these partnerships going towards in the future?]
You know we're very lucky to have our Director-General who's very focused on advancing these opportunities, so I think you know we'll probably go from strength to strength to be perfectly honest but, it'd be great to get to a place where targets are important right now because they're, as the DG says, they're giving communities a hand up rather than the handout—so it's, it's great to get people employed and give them jobs and opportunities, but the day needs to come where it's just natural, it's just how we do business and regardless of who people are, people are employed on merit and they do a great job, and that's what you hear from the community as well, they don't want to be sort of treated as the poor cousin, if you like and given these opportunities just because of who they are they need they want to be competitive and they want to have, they want to determine themselves for themselves.
[A program to facilitate a better understanding of communities]
I like to think that, through the Government Champions Program my colleagues as very senior Directors-General, have really had their thinking stretched and I think have been energized and excited by having to confront those complexities, and the nuances, and the differences, and the magic, and the richness of our remote and discrete communities and put them in a position where they are better placed to be able to understand them and how to respond to the needs of those particular places.
