The Great Southern Area Consultative Committee

The Great Southern Area Consultative Committee is one of 54 ACCs around Australia, funded by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

On 20 March 2008, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP announced that the ACC network would transition to become local Regional Development Australia Committees (RDA) from 1st January 2009. This transition has not been implemented and the ACC network in Australia will be wound up from 30 June 2009.

The Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia, the Hon Gary Gray MP* and the Western Australian Minister for Regional Development, the Hon Brendon Grylls MLA, have held discussions recently about the future direction for RDA in WA. They have agreed that WA would approach collaboration with the Commonwealth on RDA in a more integrated way than the parallel network model that was first proposed.

The State is now proposing that the Regional Development Commissions (RDCs) and the Department of Local Government and Regional Development (DLGRD) absorb the RDA network into the agency operations through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the Ministers, with service level agreements established between the WA agencies and the Commonwealth to detail services, resourcing and administrative arrangements at the regional level.

The new arrangements are to come into effect on 1 July 2009.  For further information on Regional Development Australia in WA please refer to

www.rda.gov.au

The office of the GSACC will be closing on the 30th June 2009.

* 6 June 2009 the Rudd Government announced that the Hon Maxine McKew MP will become Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.