Organisation Profile
Issue No. 6 - July/September 2002
Information Junction
Area Consultative Committees are the Commonwealth’s ‘ear to the ground’, tasked with finding ‘local solutions to local problems’ and streamlining the flow of government resources to where they are needed most.
Funded by the Commonwealth Regional Assistance Program, 56 ACCs around Australia also give the Commonwealth Government a means of communicating directly with business and communities.
South Australia has five ACCs providing feedback on community needs, service and development requirements. Information flows the other way as ACCs inform communities and individuals on Commonwealth assistance programs and assist with funding applications.
Each ACC is guided by a Board, which encourages projects and networks throughout the region and works to attract as much Federal money as possible. The ACCs have wide ranging responsibilities, but we will focus on business here.
While ACCs could sit back and respond to enquiry most muck in and tend, as Adelaide Metropolitan ACC chief executive Anne Evans says, to “carry the baton” on solutions until being relieved of it by a more appropriate authority.
Some 85–90% of the State’s economic activity takes place in the AMACC area and Anne believes the organisation’s job is to find structural problems, identify stakeholders and organise joint action. AMACC maintains a dialogue with industry associations—“any organisation that represents a...
