By Oliver Lees
Hume council has agreed to shift its resident awards from Australia Day to a separate event, in a bid to improve community engagement and to separate it from council’s annual citizenship presentation.
At a meeting held last week, councillors considered a report that outlined the civic events schedule for 2022.
The report included a recommendation to introduce a Hume Community Awards ceremony, that would replace the Australia Day Citizen Awards from next year and be held in February.
Historically Hume council has held awards for its residents along with its annual citizenship ceremony at the same event on January 26.
Speaking in support of the report, councillor Joseph Haweil said holding the two ceremonies on the same day can “undersell” the contribution of residents.
“I think to honour those people and their achievements, particularly those who receive resident of the year, should warrant presentation of that award at a much larger community event where there are more people,” Cr Haweil said.
“We don’t give them a wide enough audience and platform to share their success with the community on that day.”
Cr Jodi Jackson said hosting a separate community awards event was a “reasonable proposition”, but believed greater community consultation should occur before making a decision.
“As I have said many times, community engagement is critical to helping council make informed decisions that are in the best interests of our municipal community,” Cr Jackson said.
“That community engagement that we do must be genuine, it must reflect the views of our community.”
Cr Jackson said she felt that the primary engagement with the Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group (RAPWG), which consists of seven members and one councillor, did not constitute appropriate engagement.
“I would feel quite uncomfortable making a decision about such a substantial change … without reasonable and genuine engagement,” she said.
Cr Naim Kurt, who represents council in working with RAPWG, said the event change was also hoping to address a “huge decline” in people nominating for council awards.
