Making connections outside your community

As well as building relationships within and across your community, it’s also important to identify contacts and resources outside your community.

Making and maintaining external links provides you with access to new resources, ideas, information and opportunities that you can use for the benefit of your community. It can help community members to engage meaningfully with government, forge connections with the corporate world, and leverage existing assets.

Sister relationships between city and country towns, for example, can promote cultural and environmental differences as assets that bring economic and social benefits to both participants.

Connecting with government at a range of levels can raise awareness of your town’s issues and priorities.

Extra resources

Building city–country relationships

City of Joondalup, Western Australia — this Council document includes a useful summary (pp. 16-21) of Joondalup’s proposal to link with the small country town of Cue, 640km north east of Perth.

Connecting with Queensland Government

The Queensland Government has put in place several ways to connect with community representatives:

• Ministerial Regional Community Forums – ten community representatives in each rural region have direct contact with Queensland Government ministers about issues and priorities in their region.
• Advisory groups – Community representatives raise and discuss issues with the Minister for Communities on a range of advisory groups such as the Queensland Seniors Council, Ministerial Advisory Council on Domestic and Family Violence, the Queensland Youth Council and the Child Care Forum.
• Community Cabinet – over 100 Community Cabinets have been held across Queensland. These provide an opportunity for residents to present delegations to ministers and interact with Cabinet members.
• Some ways you can have your say on the Get involved website include commenting on discussion papers, raising issues and providing suggestions for consideration by government.
• On the Queensland Parliamentary website, you can locate an e-petition, find out information about its status and, join the e-petition if it is current.
• Queensland Government Agent Program (QGAPs) are offices based in rural and regional towns which enable you to conduct business with government agencies or obtain information about a variety of government services from the one convenient location.