Webinars

Apprenticeships in the Outback

Mary Curran: Welcome to the Careers that Council, Local Legends: Community Career Stories webinar series.
My name is Mary Curran and I’ll be your host today.
We’re excited to have you join us for an insightful and engaging session.
Please note this session has been recorded and so microphones and cameras are turned off to avoid background noise. Before we begin our webinar, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all of the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today and my respects to Elders past, present and future.
Our first webinar of this series is focused on promoting apprenticeships in the Outback, and we’re pleased to welcome our two guest speakers today.
David Kirby, General Manager, and Tara Byrnes, Human Resources Manager at Brewarrina Council. All their expertise and insights will undoubtedly provide us with a deeper understanding of recruiting for apprenticeships in the Outback.
Throughout the webinar, we encourage you to actively participate by asking questions and sharing your thoughts.
You can submit your questions using the Q&A feature and we will address them at the end of the session. Before we dive into our discussion with David and Tara, I would like to introduce you to Careers at Council, an initiative of the State and Territory local government associations created by councils for councils established by industry to inform and attract local government’s future workforce.
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The Careers at Council platform highlights a range of entry level job opportunities, including cadet programmes that provide professional development for those starting their careers, cadetships that offer structured training and work experience in various fields, and apprenticeships that combine practical on-the-job training with formal education, allowing candidates to earn while they learn and acquire hands-on experience.
Today’s webinar will focus on how Brewarrina Council recruits and manages apprenticeships.
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So now it’s time that we hear from David and Tara.
So firstly, let’s go to David.
Can you share a bit about your career journey and what led you to your current role as general manager at Brewarrina Council?

David Kirby: Thank you, Mary, and thank you to Devika and a big welcome to everyone that’s online.
Ohh yeah, test my memory now. It’s been about 20 years this year actually since I’ve actually commenced and my journey is quite unique; obviously been born and bred here in Brewarrina.
To give people a basic understanding of Brewarrina and the town, we’re a small township located on the NW flood plains. We cover an area of about 20,000 square kilometres and we only have about 1800 people in the whole Shire and about 1000 of those actually live in the township of Brewarrina, which spread across smaller villages spread across to Shire, with Goodooga being the next biggest, with only about 280 people. So we cover a we cover a large area with a small population.
So as far as our Council size goes, our current demographics setup at the moment is around 75% indigenous to 25% non indigenous.
Our population demographics sits at around 60% indigenous to 40% non indigenous in the township. So I guess as far as our workforce goes, it’s reflective of our population demographic, which for us wasn’t always the case.
So I was born here in Bre in 1986, which wasn’t long ago, as you can tell, I’m very young. And back then, even in Brewarrina a lot of people don’t realise this, but we still had a semi segregated system in our hospital where we had separate birthing units for Aboriginal people and non Aboriginal people. Back then myself and three of my siblings that are older than me were all born in the Aboriginal birthing unit.
Obviously been born at a time where I think government policy in itself, after that civil rights era was still slowly making its way into Outback and rural Australia.
Growing up with those changes, I think shape a lot of who I am today and the way in which I interact with people professionally and personally. And so, done all of my schooling in Brewarrina basically by the time I got to year 12 to do my HSC, there was only two students in my class. It was me and my first cousin, and so we were quite fortunate to get one-on-one teaching for our HSC. Basically when I come to the back end of year 12, what had happened was I got a football scholarship to go to Argentina to play rugby basically, so I’d gone there pretty much as I was finishing school and coming from a small town of Bre, I really struggled for the first month, and I remember calling up mum and saying to mum, “Listen, you know I go to come home. I’m not cut out for this. I just wanna be in Bre.” And mums being mum, she said “Right, you better get over here, but first thing you do when you get back, you gotta find yourself a job.”
So fortunately for me, by the time I made it back at the end of 2004, Council had two traineeships open and obviously lucky for me and my first cousin, we filled both those positions.
And so at the time they were actually traineeship positions, which were really rare in Council, and I think the mayor at the time and the general manager had obviously put a bit of thought into introducing trainineeships to Council to obviously look at our own type of succession planning, which had never been done previous to that, which was really strange, you would think. And so I had taken on one in the tech services department.
Basically went on to do some formal training in civil engineering design and civil engineering construction. Over the next few years, by the time I was 23, I was appointed to my first managerial role, which was the manager for services.
As a 23 year old, at the time, I think I was the youngest departmental manager in the state, very daunting. And I think now that I think back about it that it obviously is a big blur, but I think the lessons I’ve learned in those early days dealing with staff, in particular in an organisation where I think our workplace culture was going through a major change, I think really shaped who I was moving forward as a manager and I think for me a lot of that obviously coming from Bre and understanding the workforce and the people, I’ve always thought I’ve based that on empathy and understanding others.
One of my earliest memories, coming in as a trainee was the HR manager at the time putting out a job advert for some more trainees in their council smoker room and I remember I’m asking when I saw the job advert, why would a trainee or a school-based trainee need all these qualifications to apply for a traineeship position? And her response to me at the time was basically “we only wanna attract a certain type of people.”
As a kid I was extremely offended by that because I knew exactly what she was actually referring to. And I remember going home and telling my mum, and she could tell her I was quite upset about it because it was really nothing, you know, I’m a junior, I’m in a new workplace, you know, there was really nothing I could say or do at the time other than I wanted to scream from the top of my lungs what the issue was, but I think that stayed with me. For the rest of my time, I never wanna be that person. I don’t wanna treat people differently. I don’t wanna recruit in a way that’s specific to how I think council and the community should be built.
And so, you know, people like that come and go in small councils like ours, and fortunately for us, she’d moved on.
And as time progressed, I’d stayed Services manager, which generally turned into eventually turned into what’s known as the utilities manager, where I managed water, sewer, parks and open spaces and basically everything in between.
And so I had the opportunity from a very young age to be able to build my own team within Council. And so the utilities crew that still exist now in that directorate, they’re basically the same employees that have come through the system as trainees and apprentices.
And so probably one of the things for me is and how to yard meeting with them this morning, you know, and getting to catch up with them and talk to them because they don’t get to do that much these days is it doesn’t remind me of the work that we’ve done to be able to get a team like that, which for us is probably our most stable team in council. And how important it is to be able to foster our own is because up until about 15 years ago, Councils main focus was to look at bringing people in all the time and trying to plug that skills shortage by bringing in people from out of town. It’s to obviously look at the short term fix which for me it never really worked. And so by the time, about three years ago now, exactly nearly, the  previous GM had left and as Tara would know, I spent a lot of time in the years prior to that acting as a general manager and I was quite fortunate enough and obviously extremely humbled by Council’s invitation to actually act in the position whilst recruitment took place and then later on that year I had the opportunity to apply and I got the role. And so a lot of my time, I guess for me was the biggest realisation was “Right David, this is your time. Everything you thought about, everything you wanted to do and the way in which you wanna build your organisation, this is your opportunity” and I think who I am and the way in which we conduct ourselves now is, is based on obviously how I felt coming into the organisation and realising that, especially younger kids, cause as Tara knows we employ a lot of younger kids now, and I always go back to remember walking through the door here on day one and it was the most daunting experience ever.
And so skip back to where I said Council has now roughly a 75% Indigenous to 25% ratio, back then it was the other way; it was the complete opposite, and so coming into an organisation that it didn’t really foster, that didn’t really foster um, that I guess support approach, with trainees basically the way in which the staff had seen me in those departments was, I was like a threat is because I’m here to take your job and I really struggle for the next couple of years in tech services because especially in small towns you get that attitude of you know, I mean everybody’s desperate for work and jobs and people become quite protective. And so for me, it was people putting their guard up and not wanting to share information, as you know, knowledge sharing hasn’t always been in local government one of our strong points is because I guess a lot of it succession planning didn’t really come become a thing until about 15 years ago, and so back then, it was really different and looking at it now three years, just one big blur.
Obviously, I’m very fortunate enough to be on this journey with Tara, which we’d started many years ago when Tara was the HR manager and I was the utilities manager and working in partnership, and obviously she played a big role in helping me build my teams and my crews in my department, which has been extremely, I think it really laid the platform for other areas within Council and the way in which we do stuff.
And so yeah, it’s like I said, 20 years. It’s just one big blur. I think you know as I look back, especially in the trainee and the apprenticeship space, it’s becoming more and more important for smaller councils that really struggle with the skills gap and the skills shortage, to really for us is getting in earlier now and looking at the SBAT programme where we have to engage while they’re still in school.
And I use that old analogy kids are like race horses; You break them as shearlings because you get them before they learn the bad habits and that we know, that’s true, because we see that and we find that the success of the school-aged trainees is a little bit higher is because one of the things we’re doing is we’re teaching them.
We’re not only teaching them how to work, but we’re teaching them out to live, how to act, and how to present themselves in society and communities.
Because, like me, a lot of them come from a really disadvantaged background to where working in a place like this was extremely foreign.
And so for me, I still feel that’s the key moving forward is to target them at an early age, get into the school system and we’re quite fortunate enough to have a number of schools to choose from and another of a number of really good kids, we do have a community of really good kids, and so for me it’s just about giving them the opportunity and experience to be able to do that, you know, and we were fortunate enough recently to in round one of the apprenticeship and traineeship scheme is to obtain four of those positions which we’ve filled now.
And so moving forward, you know, I really want Bre Shire to continue to lay a platform to demonstrate to others that you take just the most basic approach or understanding and appreciating other people and who they are and where they’re from. And it goes a long way to building your organisation and so that’s something that I’m really proud of and something that we’ll probably spend a lot of time doing moving into the future.
So I don’t wanna take up too much time, Tara’s very eager. I can tell she’s saying ‘hurry up’, but yeah, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell.
Like I said, 20 years just gone way too fast and it really does feel like I’ve just walked in here yesterday, to be honest.

Mary Curran: Thank you, David.

David Kirby: No, thank you.

Mary Curran: Now Tara, can you describe your career journey and what led you to your current role as human resources manager at Brewarrina Council?

Tara Byrnes: Absolutely.
I’m not as impressive as David and his storytelling, but look, thank you all for having us, Mary and Devika as well.
My career has just taken many different turns. I started in transport working for a logistics company, then transitioned into mining and construction and now in local government. I first joined Bre Shire Council in the tech services, so learnt my way from the ground up in the various areas and I progressed through to HR manager.
I then moved away for a little bit and now I’ve returned like sort of helping Council in a consulting space with some of their key projects.
So look, it has been many diverse experiences.
There’s some in there that I’m, you know, having done floristry and all sorts of different changes along the way.
But I just guess it’s given me a broad perspective on workforce challenges and also solutions as well. So it’s not just fixed mind set.
And also having the experience in regional areas and I guess really as Dave’s pointed out, like everyone in local government really does like we’re not here for big bucks, we’re here for a common purpose and that’s what we really do care about our communities and these programmes like our apprenticeships and traineeships, is my creative outlet.cIt’s the part that I really enjoy and getting on board with the students, going into the schools and just building that rapport with them so that they like Dave, can feel confident in walking into a space like council in the future.

Mary Curran: Thanks, Tara.
Some great insights there from both of you and your career journeys.
Thanks for sharing.
So now I’d like to hear from you both.
So could one of you share a memorable story or experience from your time working with apprentices or trainees in the Outback that highlights the impact of your efforts? Who’d like to go.

Tara Byrnes: I can go… Do you wanna go, David?

David Kirby: You go first. Yeah, you go you go.

Tara Byrnes: OK, um, well, one of my biggest learnings, it’s probably more a learning so it does, you know, tap into a few other aspects as well.
But one of my biggest experiences with doing traineeships in the Outback was through Elsa Dixon [Aboriginal Employment Grant].
We jumped right in, so we had like 10 trainees and apprentices at the same time, so it was a bit out of control to say the least.
We had to coordinate with the schools, all the sign-ups. I’d get to one point and then think ohh my goodness, there’s there be another body coming and saying we’ve got to do XY&Z; it was really quite stressful.
There were a lot of there were loopholes that we didn’t even recognise, so some of the students had were slightly older for their age in the year and then we ran into concerns with the finance department that were like, ‘you can’t keep spending the way you’re spending with regard to this’.
And it was just a really quite overwhelming, to say the least.
And there were moments, if I’m being completely honest, that I was just not able to keep everyone quite happy and the biggest disconnect that I was finding was happening between like their practical work and study.
So what we ended up doing in some of the students was actually bringing them in after school. The students weren’t paid for those instances and actually run, and there were many a days that us managers would be in there.
One person have one perspective on how to do something, David probably remembers. And others would have, but we would bring them in and encourage them with their studies and help them along the way outside of, you know, just the work experience, the work side of things as well.
There were the financial hiccups that I spoke about before with students who had repeated grades and they weren’t eligible for the full coverage.
So there were a lot of things that we were navigating at that time and also, you know, managers and supervisors maybe not being as experienced with young persons in the workforce as well.
And there were times honestly, that I thought I would never, ever, ever do this again.
Like, that’s the honest, real truth. Then we were holding this workshop with actually all the school based trainees that we had and this beautiful young fellow that we had working with us. He was like, we’re just sitting around chatting about work and nothing too crazy, and he said ‘Miss, are we gonna do this again? Are you gonna run this experience again?’
And I just looked at him and all of those thoughts, every single finance manager, this person, you know, sign up, all of it came flooding back.
And I thought ‘oh my God, no, I don’t want to do this again.’
And he looked at me, and he must have been able to read my face. And he just said, ‘You know, kids like us, we need opportunities like this, you know, they mean so much to us’. Even now saying that it gets me emotional.
But at that moment it just knocked me for six and I thought ‘I do not care all of despite all of these challenges, all of these things that I’m having to go through, if one kid gets through this, it does, it makes a huge difference to their lives.’
As Dave just said, then, like completely life altering, so I know I sound like I should be on a bumper sticker, but really that is probably the most meaningful experience that I’ve had in that space. Challenging, but most meaningful.

Mary Curran: Fantastic. So David, did you wanna touch on that or?

David Kirby: Yeah.
And I think just following on from Tara, and I guess you can hear the emotion in her voice. Um, that stems from those challenges that come from people’s attitudes as well.
A lot of resistance we get comes from within the schools, is because, you know, school teachers get busy and so being able to give the time to be able to push the kids or encourage them. Probably one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen is Tara getting really frustrated and basically going up to the school herself and recruiting the kids rather than relying on the schools to sort it.
It’s something that’s happened more than on one occasion now where we’ve just gone directly to the kids and their parents because we’ve had some of that push back and that’s people’s attitude, you know, and there’s many reasons for that.
But at the end of the day, that’s what our kids are up against here, right?
That’s what they deal with on a daily basis and I’ll just share something actually and it says, I guess the timing of this is, I stumbled across something yesterday where I was reading some Council minutes from a planning Committee meeting on the 16th of November here at Brewarrina Shire in 1973 and the subject heading in the meeting, and obviously I’m talking about people’s attitudes and how they’ve changed overtime and why it’s important for us to understand that.
But in 1973, which isn’t a long time ago, in a planning committee meeting, the subject line is ‘immediate work available for Aborigines.’
And it says ‘the Shire engineer reported that there was work immediately available for Aborigines and sought the view of the Committee on the matter.’
‘Recommendation: that the decision to employ Aborigines as of Monday the 19th of November 1973, be left in the hands of the Shire president’, which in those days was the mayor, ‘and that he be empowered to authorise the employment of such persons at his discretion.’
And then, um, following on from that, it’s got subject heading ‘Employment of Aboriginal clerical staff. Recommendation: that Miss X be employed as a temporary female clerk in the office of Council on the condition that she undertakes an appropriate Technical College course when one becomes available in Brewarrina and subject to formal notification first being reviewed after received that her salary will be fully subsidised by the appropriate government department.’
Now, like I said, that’s not a long time ago.
And obviously there are people still around here in community within the Shire system that were part of those decision making processes and people that, and you gotta understand the reality of it is, is that there are still people in our community that’s still share those views.
Now you look at the fact where, to be employed as an Aboriginal person in those days, they had this expectation that the government had the responsibility to be able to do that. So in order to be employed, you need it to be grant-funded.
And so, and Tara can vouch for this, as the general manager, one of the things that I’ve implemented here with Tara’s assistance, is we don’t wait for government funded programmes. We would have the four apprentice trainees starting this year, regardless of if we got the OLG funding, and we do that because that’s addressing Council’s needs. And I guess my clear message to I guess anyone that’s listening is I think the most important aspects of looking at trainees and apprentices is don’t have this expectation that it needs to be government funded. Base it on what your Council’s needs are is because you’re the one that’s getting the benefit; your community benefits; the kid or the grown up benefits from it and that’s really an attitude adjustment of how we actually view trainees and that’s something that’s going to come from us. And I think in a lot of cases we’ve inherited that from times like 1973 where we have this expectation where trainees and apprentices have to be funded by the government.
And I think there’s something really important in that, we can learn from that.
And I know for us moving forward, Tara and I had this discussion today about an SBAT from Goodooga. Obviously it’s not a funded position and her and I are on the same page, took us 2 seconds to decide whether or not this kid’s gonna come on and basically council will pay for it.
Um, that’s what we’re here for.
Obviously it’s a benefit to our organisation and I guess more holistically to our community. 

To the point of a memorable story… I’m fortunate enough to have many and I guess for me a lot of it does motivate a lot of what I do. I guess making the transition from being the utilities manager to becoming the general manager speaking quite honestly, that had taken a lot of the joy out of the work I’d done, especially being away from construction on the front line, being involved in projects and it was really hard for me to make that transition and having to, I guess for me, I draw motivation and desire from trainees and apprentices and what we achieve in that space.
I really do and it’s those memorable stories and experiences, that really humble me when I think ‘ I’ve had enough of this, I don’t wanna do this anymore’ and we all have those days. Like, I don’t care who you are. We all have days where we don’t wanna go to work or we think we’ve had enough and probably one of the more memorable ones is, um, a fellow that we’ve lost a few years ago.
And this fella, um, he lived the life of substance abuse, spent a lot of time in gaol, in and out of gaol, and he really, really struggled through life, and I’d known him since he was, since I was a kid and he’s probably one of the most kind, gentle, humble people you’ll ever meet. And he kept coming to the Council and asking for a job.
And we didn’t really have anything going at the time and he’d turn up each day.
And he’d annoy the hell out of Tara, everyday. Just turn up to the office and basically got to the point where Tara had no choice but to give him a job.
And so., this was a big step I feel for us in the direction of basically looking at how we actually recruit in the sense that how we vet employees is really important.
So anyone that tries to get a job within any Council, obviously the stringent guidelines around police checks and obviously people’s history, especially when you coming from, looking at referees and stuff, this human resource departments take it really seriously, and Tara knows how I feel about this, and obviously I have my own views and thoughts on that and we have these systems and procedures put in place to protect us from I guess from litigation, and obviously, when you’re looking at staff and future workers comp issues and stuff, but I guess it really give us a reality check on being able to take someone on face value and give them the opportunity and be able to determine ‘Right, is this person gonna be a risk within our organisation, given their criminal history?’ Well, no they’re not.
They’re not, because, um, you know, the offences that this man carried were just general offences based on substance abuse, where he’s harmed himself more than anyone else and he’s trying to turn a corner in his life and he’s got a family, got a wife, um, a few kids, couple of them grown up cause he was an older man and, in a short space of time, he became our best and most valued staff member. And to the point where you could see the attitude of the staff around him start to change in particularly younger ones, and the difference of employing that staff member with such a very vast array of experience in terms of life and what he could give to the younger kids within that team really made a difference. And it’s something we never anticipated, and seeing the change, that had happened over the next two years after employing him, at work and more importantly for me at home, was this is the first time that this 48 year old man, ever in his life had had a job, it’s the first time that he could finally afford a car for his family, it’s the first time that he could provide for his kids and his family network, and seeing that in real time, um and watching the impact of his home environment, probably for me, that’s probably one of the most memorable things. And I often think about him a lot. 

Back in 2021, it was Boxing Day, and he didn’t wake up. And so we’d obviously broken for Christmas and the impact it had on the workforce in losing him, it really, really, it really hit home, um, how important people like that are to small workplaces like ours.
Now we would have never got a Robert, was his name, had we applied the full breadth of our hiring recruitment procedures, because he would have never made it through that vetting process. But having the foresight to be able to see that there are ways in which we can do things better, and I think a lot of that’s gotta be, I think a lot of that comes from experience is one, but I think each and every Council, and I’ve said this before, is I really do think we need to be able to make that adjustment to be able to start looking at ways in which we can take things on face value for who they are, because that’s the only way we’re gonna be able to change our organisations. 

The human resource recruitment policy from Sydney City Council would look very similar to Brewarrina Council’s. 

Do we follow it to a T? No, we don’t. And I’m quite honest in saying that. 

Does it give us headaches sometimes? Sure it does. But I can hand on heart tell you that by applying, I guess common sense in a way, and I guess will to be able to do what’s best for the organisation and your community.
I think in the end you do see the ongoing benefits for that.
He was the best example of that and seeing the impact he had on our organisation is that, that will stay with me for a long, long time and he was a big loss, just not for our Council, but obviously for our Community. And you know, we’ve had more, we’ve recruited more people like him over time and obviously trained them and we’ve seen them move on, but a lot of stayed.
Um, you know, I guess my message in that is just be mindful of that in particular to I guess people that are in charge of recruitment is because there are a lot of diamonds in the rough; there really are.

Mary Curran: Thanks, David. That’s a really powerful story.
And you touched on there at one point about funding, so maybe I’ll throw this one to Tara. How do you collaborate I guess to have a successful outcome from the funding? And did you face any challenges implementing it?
And I guess, um, also as part of attracting and retaining, how do you actually get the most benefit? I know we’ve got a lot of councils here today, so how do they make that funding work to actually, I guess employ these important people in your communities?

Tara Byrnes: Yeah.
I guess just going back to the collaboration component of it.
So we are active with our schools; we’re really blessed to have some great principles so their proactive where proactive, we’ve done everything where we’ve gone to the schools showed the students like these are all the various areas, really pushed the work experience side of things.
So giving them a little taste, a little bit of exposure we’ve found with our students that the week-long or two week long work experience just don’t work.
So we’ve had to and change them slightly, so they might look like two days or three days, just dependent on what works for the student and also the school.
So being flexible, I guess being active, actually going to them.
So we do that interactive outreach, so where we’re drumming up interest and taking workers from the Shire with us when we’re doing that.
And oftentimes that might be an auntie or an uncle.
So the children are building that connection with you sort of straight off the bat.
We do practical workshops with them so and this is probably one of the coolest things, I think that we’ve delivered was the ‘how to interview like a boss’.
So we’re just trying to give them bite-sized stuff that they can digest, but also exposure, so in the ‘like a boss’ sessions that we ran at this stage it was Clontarf, mainly that we worked with.
So within the school and we had all the boys come in, we sat around the chambers.
They were like, ‘ohh, what’s this room?’ Because it’s quite daunting, but they got really comfortable there and so we’d run through like, how do you show up for an interview? 

What does that look like? 

What sorts of things? 

What kind of questions would they ask you? 

Some breathing exercises to calm the nerves.
You know, just the general things of that people might have exposed you to previously on interviews.
So we ran through those mock interviews together, altogether in the forum and then following that each one would go out and actually be interviewed, quite intimidating, by our general manager and two other managers within Council. And our general manager at the time, lovely fellow, a bit of a hardball, but he actually came to me following that and said ‘I cannot believe it, but those students I would have employed about three of them without any hesitation.’
I thought, well, that’s a real credit to the boys like they showed up beautifully.
So doing interactive sessions with them, running through the work experience placement, so giving them that ‘try before they buy’, following the work experience, also providing the students with reference letters so that they can use them.
It might not be a Council that they end up, but it might be somewhere else and helps within community.
And lastly, just supervisor training, so really bringing the supervisors in, getting them to know this is actually a little bit tough, you know, it’s not gonna be like your normal worker. There are gonna be a few barriers that we are gonna have to overcome and really getting them on board so that you’re not trying to push that uphill as well as others as well. So I guess they would be the practical components with collaborating with the school.
Obviously, there can be funding issues dependent on the age of the trainee or the apprentice, and I guess that’s just having the backing of your Council to say, ‘look, this is a realistic factor is that if I’m engaging in person at this age, it’s gonna be more than a person at this age, there might be some co-contribution that has to take place, and getting them on board’ and we’ve been really fortunate with not just our general manager, but our mayor as well, very, very supportive of all of these programmes and all of our counsellors, so they’re all on board to actually back and support the investment in our youth, so yeah, I guess there’s some tips. Hopefully I answered that OK, Mary. 

 

Mary Curran: That was fantastic.

 

Tara Byrnes: I’m mindful of the time, yeah.

Mary Curran: Yes, yes.
So I guess just finally and if you could answer this and then we’ll, we’ll go to David.
So what are the future plans for Brewarrina Council around traineeships and apprenticeships, and what recommendations would you give to other councils aiming to implement similar programmes?

Tara Byrnes: Hmm, they’re some really good questions.
I guess for us, what are we looking at in the future? I’m not sure really what curveballs Dave will throw at me. I’m just saying, but no, look, I actually sat in on an army, my niece wants to go to the army in the future, and I sat in on one of their recruitment drives, I was so enthralled in it. 

They do this exercise where they’ll bring cadets in and they’ll sort of do ‘try before you buy’ in a number of different areas. And I thought ‘I wonder if that sort of a system could work within Council?’
Obviously we’ve got, you know, issues around the term contracts and what they look like. I put it to my HR group that are amazing as well, if any of them are listening, and I thought ‘you know what, this is the avenue that I’d like to go.’
Because what I’m finding is these kids have just done X amount of years of schooling, they get out of schooling, then we’re like ‘Here, do more schooling. Learn, study.’
It’s a lot for them to digest, and sometimes they might just need that gap year and I think that’s they call it something like that in the Army/Navy as well.
And so I thought, well, if we could provide them with exposure, take the pressure off with the training component of it, which is unfortunate because that’s tied to the contracts, but if we can do something where we’re giving them exposure without actually having the training, the formal training and the pressure of the studies, then that way they can have a bit of a feel, sink their teeth into it.
And yeah, see whether that is what they wanna, you know, invest the next couple of years of their life into this training.
So that’s probably the next thing I’m looking to sort of tackle with in Council or help Council to tackle.

Mary Curran: Thanks, Tara. That’s great.
And so David, from a general manager’s perspective, what would you recommend other councils do, who are wanting to run similar programmes?
Do you have any recommendations?

David Kirby: Ohh look, I think the message is quite simple.
Do what’s best for your community and your Council, I think. Oh, you know, take a very localised approach.
We’re big believers in community based decision making and so we have a general rule of thumb here, a Council is we don’t rely on outsiders in particularly government agencies to come in and tell us how to do things in particularly when it affects Community Really have a look at what your needs are, what the kids’ needs are and what their experience is and what they’re bringing and try to capitalise on that and really I guess focus your energy on trying to make it work and understanding where they come from.
You know, is just like I said, my, you know, I have this. And it was funny.
I’ll just tell you a story really quickly and this one is Tara was sitting in an interview, for some trainees and one of them was actually a mature age trainee, and he walks in and he sits down and he basically really starts hyperventilating across the table  before we asked the first question.
Then Tara actually jumps up, walks over, picks him up, marches him out the door, standing out the front in the garden, teaching him breathing exercises, saying ‘take big deep breaths’ and after 5 minutes she brought him back in and I was quite confused, I’m going ‘Where did she take this bloke? They’ve gone’ and he come back in and he smashed the interview and so.
Don’t, and I guess the message to take away from that is give them a chance.
Give them a chance and try to understand exactly who they are, because like I said, back to my example of Robert, there’s plenty of diamonds in the rough should you be willing to give them a chance.
And we see that time and time and time again, people that come in for job interviews and they just get nervous and they just can’t do it.
And so look at ways in which, in particular, when you’re doing your recruitment, try to relate to them on their level and try to make them feel comfortable.
And obviously that is Tara’s greatest strength. I reckon she should be an FBI interrogator, um, or one of those, what do you call them? The ones that, the negotiator, she could be a negotiator because she really does get the best out of people like that.
And I think, you know, we see that in the success of our trainees and apprentices.
Localised community based decision making and take everyone on face value.
That’s probably the most important message I can give.

Mary Curran: Fantastic, and thank you both for sharing your experiences. 

It’s now Q&A time.
Does anyone have a question for David or Tara?
I can see we’ve got a couple in the Q&A section.
One’s quite long.
Um, so I think we actually looks like we’ve got a candidate here saying ‘Hi Tara and David, thanks for sharing your experiences. My question is, will relocation assistance be provided if I apply to work for a trainee ship? Is that something that’s covered by the programme?’

David Kirby: Tara, I’ll let you answer that one.

Tara Byrnes: I didn’t think it was going to come off mute there.
Look, we take relocation assistance is something that we consider with all of our applicants, so sure, we would definitely consider that absolutely.

Mary Curran: Fantastic.
And then we have, ah, I’m not going to read it out because it’s a really long response here from somebody who currently works for Aboriginal Affairs NSW, talking about a programme that he’s running for NSW Water Directorate.
So for those of you who are on the session, we can actually circulate, because I think there’s some details around there in terms of getting involved in what’s happening there.

Any further questions for David or Tara?

David Kirby: Just if you like. I’m just reading that question, just give me two sec.

Mary Curran: Yes, please do, David.

Tara Byrnes: I’m glad he’s reading it because I can’t find it.

David Kirby: So just really quickly.
So the Aboriginal Communities Water & Sewer programme, we actually have 4 discrete Aboriginal communities in our Shire. One in Goodooga, one in Gongolgon, and two in Brewarrina.
So we’re quite fortunate to, we’ve been doing that now for I think must be close to 8 years now.
It’s one of our, in my team, in my old directorate as the utilities manager.
What we did was, and this is probably a really good example, going back to obviously showing that initiative. When the programme first come about, the way in which Council set that programme up was we had two, we had one full time water and sewer operator taken from our town team and what we did was we created a traineeship position that serviced those communities and they had to take formal training with the crews, we actually budgeted for that as a part the contract itself and what we did in subsequent years after that we actually increased that to two trainees. It was about four or five years later the department finally called on to what we were doing and that’s when they actually looked at introducing the traineeship programme inside the Aboriginal communities water improve programme.
So I can hand on heart say that my team was actually one of the first councils to be able to do that before they actually started funding that and it was just us factoring that in because we knew at the time that the way in which to make it successful was to give people from those communities trained up and not only are they trained up now, they’re actually some of them have actually moved on to become supervisors within our Shire and moved on to other bigger councils.
And the programme was the catalyst for that.
So, it’s something we still do now. We still have two trainees and we turn them over every couple of years and basically they go on to become water and sewer operators inside Council or they move on.

Mary Curran: Fantastic. Thanks, David.
Does anyone else have any questions before we wrap up today’s session?
Getting lots of ‘thank yous’ for David and Tara.

Tara Byrnes: Well, thank you for listening to us.

David Kirby: Oh thank you. Glad to share it.

Mary Curran: Fantastic.
Well, I think we’ll wrap it up there, and keep a look out we’ll be publishing the Webinar recording, so if you have any colleagues who might not have been able to attend, please by all means encourage them to. 

And thank you both David and Tara for being the feature of our first Council Webinar.

David Kirby: No, thank you guys. All the best. Cheers.

Tara Byrnes: Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.

Mary Curran: Thanks everyone.