Mr. Michael Ewing:

I notice that Senator Mulherin has joined us again, and I did not respond to her question on local government. Clearly local government has a very important role in adaptation. It is also important in mitigation. It comes back to the question of how we get people talk and engage together. As members are aware, for the last three years we have had a new model of local engagement with communities called the poly-participation networks. They now beginning to develop a vision for the well-being of their communities for this and future generations. We are running a series of pilots to enable communities to work together to come up with these visions for well-being. Thankfully, these pilots are funded by the EPA. This covers all aspects of their lives, including food production, health, education, etc. Everything about their community is involved. It is a visioning exercise, designed to develop ideas and policy at a local level for action. There is potential for these questions to be examined at very local level.