By Darrin Ray, Director of Impact, Sustainability and Partnerships, Polar Infrastructure
It’s budget day. A Council CEO sits in their office, reviewing the annual procurement schedule. They spotted something: a stack of exit signs across the Council’s property portfolio. Battery-reliant, ageing and failing.
Sixteen years later, a different CEO sits in the same chair. The battery-reliant, costly exit signs are gone. The thousands of hours and costs for twice-yearly discharge tests are a thing of the past. No batteries are ending up in landfill.
That’s the difference between a system that penalises long-term thinking and one that rewards it.
I’ve sat in that chair. As a Mayor, as a Councillor, as a senior local government officer, and in peak body leadership, I’ve watched this pattern repeat itself across Australia’s Councils. Not because Councils are poorly run. Because the systems that govern them are designed for a different era.
A System Built Against Long-Term Thinking
Here’s what I understand most powerfully now: the current funding architecture doesn’t just constrain Councils. It actively penalises them for making smarter, longer-term decisions.
Many want to adopt lifecycle costing to show true cost of ownership. The budget system doesn’t support it.
Many also want to invest in preventative infrastructure that saves money over 20 years. Yet with so many short-term procurement decisions, they’re penalised in year one.
Coordination of regional or shared procurement to leverage collective purchasing power sounds good, but many current procurement frameworks works against scale, not for it.
Importantly, this isn’t a failure of Council leadership. It’s a failure of the frameworks they must work within.
The evidence is clear
Consider the exit sign scenario across all 538 Australian councils. That simple shift; from battery-back-up exit signs to Smarterlite’s photoluminescent exit signs could deliver:
Cumulative savings of
$3.18 billion
over 16 years
Remove
46,000 tonnes
of CO2 equivalent emissions
Keep
1.35 million
batteries from landfill
The Pathway Forward
This is why Polar Infrastructure submitted 14 evidence-based recommendations to the House of Representatives Inquiry into Local Government Funding and Fiscal Sustainability – read the full submission #235 here for more information.
We didn’t do this as an outsider critique. We did it as advocates for Councils, drawing on our deep experience across the sector.
I’m not interested in longer-term constraints. I’m interested in better systems. Systems that recognise Councils as partners in building fiscal and environmental resilience, not as problems to be solved.
For Council leaders, infrastructure and finance officers, and sustainability professionals reading this: the full submission is available here. Read it. Share it. Use it to shape the conversation in your organisation and with your peers. This pathway is ready. The question is whether our systems are ready to support it.
Council’s don’t need better managers. They need better systems, funding support and the tools to make better lifecycle and environmental cost decisions. Let’s build them together.
