Local Government, Case Study

When Local Government Acts Like an Association

For over two decades, I’ve been working with forward-thinking councils that didn’t just govern they convened. From Brimbank to Ballarat, Kingston to Port Phillip, Dandenong to Caulfield, these weren’t just speaking gigs. These were long-form collaborations where local government stepped into the role usually played by peak bodies: bringing together business owners, community leaders, and industry groups to ask what’s next and decide how to meet it.

In each case, the council functioned as a proxy association. They hosted strategy keynotes, ran foresight-fuelled planning sessions, and created momentum around challenges like small business resilience, retail reinvention, tourism strategy, and workforce shifts. My role wasn’t to tell them what was coming it was to create a shared language so they could move together. In Port Phillip, it sparked hyper-local collaboration between retailers and hospitality providers. In Ballarat, it led to the development of a region-wide foresight platform. Across Kingston and Dandenong, it reshaped how councils engaged their business communities not as constituents, but as co-strategists.

Shift: From service providers to foresight convenors local governments acting as real-time strategy hubs for the business ecosystems they serve.

The result? Stronger, more future-ready local economies where foresight became the bridge between small business urgency and long-horizon planning and where councils proved that you don’t need to be an association to lead like one.