Inaugural 'Share the Dignity' shows expanding social role

"Mission Creep” they call it in the military; the gradual, incremental expansion of projects or operations beyond their original goals, scope, and mandate.

Discussing a new social welfare program to provide period products from dispensers at community events and Macquarie Regional Library, former mayor Mathew Dickerson believes this trend, is inevitable.

He added also that, with a tendency for people in country towns to also think along those lines, local councils are now the go-to for any and every public issue they have in their lives.

“Very much so, I remember when I was mayor, people would ring up and say things like, ‘I’m going overseas in a few days, what can you do about the exchange rate?’,” Cr Dickerson recalled.

“I felt like answering, ‘Well, do you want me to get onto the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and have a chat to him about it?’,” he responded.

Along with cost-shifting, this is one of the burdens that local government faces as more and greater duties previously provided by other tiers of government — or not at all — fall to funds-starved local government entities.

However, sometimes that’s a good thing, Cr Dickerson recently told 'Dubbo Photo News', pointing to the new 'Share the Dignity Council Cares' program for free sanitary products at council events.

“I remember being at the Local Government Conference in Tamworth in late 2024 with councillors Matthew Wright and Jen Cowley, and Liz Ellis — the former Australian netball captain — gave an address, and one of the topics that she spoke about was ‘Share the Dignity’.

“I said, ‘Let’s do something with this’, and we came back and discussed it; with Jen Cowley putting the motion to council on the matter,” Cr Dickerson explained.

As with ‘Share the Dignity’, he added that, not only are the services that council covers increasing — such as expanded social program for families, the homeless, lonely, and old — but so are ratepayers’ demands.

“The expectations of residents is greater, what people expect is greater, and the expectation of what we can do, is greater,” Cr Dickerson said.

“Even in Dubbo, we run the caravan park, swimming pool, saleyards, childcare centres, tourist attractions such Old Dubbo Gaol and Wellington Caves, and the likely new Wiradjuri Cultural centre, as well as the theatre; we’re doing a lot more than now than just ‘roads, rates, and rubbish’,” he concluded.

Cr Cowley has been the driving force behind the project, pointing out that surveys have found that nearly two-thirds of women stated that they have struggled to afford period products due to cost.

“Being able to provide women and girls in our community with free period products is an important step in supporting those in need,” Cr Cowley said.

“This is such a great initiative for Dubbo Regional Council to utilise and have available for members of the community to access,” she added.

The portable dispenser holds 16 period packs and is refilled by staff as required. The portable dispenser has been taken to several community events and is located at the Macquarie Regional Library’s Dubbo branch when not being used at events, for the community to access.

“Over the first two months of use, approximately 60 products have been distributed from the dispenser both at events and whilst at the Dubbo Library,” Cr Cowley concluded.

This is the first dispenser for council and will act as a pilot program with data on usage to help guide future planning for possible expansion of the program.

“Be honest; tell us how we’re doing…”

Talking about delivery of services, Dubbo is also running its biennial (two-yearly) 'Community Insights Survey' in order to “measure the community’s overall satisfaction with council’s performance.”

The survey, council revealed, is in two parts, via phone (completed) and online, and seeks to gauge the importance of different services council offers, while also identifying areas for improvement, Mayor Josh Black said.

“We can’t physically survey every single person living in our region, which is why we have the two options for residents to take part,” Mayor Black said.

“The phone survey focuses on making sure the people we ask represent our community as a whole, providing us with a reliable, unbiased result that can be generalised to our population,” he added.

The timing of the survey ahead of the consultation process for the 2026/27 Budget provides an opportunity for the community to put forward their needs and wants from council, General Manager Luke Ryan revealed.

“We are continually working on a financially-sustainable future for our community,” the GM revealed.

“Insights from the 2024 survey guided improvements to our processes and strengthened how we communicate with our community, and the 2026 survey will help us continue to build on that progress,” he added.

The Community Insights Survey includes a statistically-valid phone survey of 400 community members, which was conducted by independent research partner Micromex over the past two weeks via phone and is now finished.

If you missed out, however, and have something to say, go to: https://yoursay.dubbo.nsw.gov.au/community-insights-survey-2026

The online survey runs until the end of the month.