I have just return from a walking holiday in Japan where I was surprised to find that there were no public rubbish bins readily accessible. I was told that after the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway that public rubbish bins were removed to prevent further terrorist attacks and that Japanese people all carry a small plastic bag to put their rubbish in and dispose of it at home. It is an obvious cultural difference that I thought about when I was walking around Lake Daylesford on the Monday of the recent King’s Birthday weekend. I picked up several handfuls of rubbish and noted that every bin that I walked to had space for more rubbish. So why don’t we take personal responsibility for cleaning up our own mess but expect someone else to do it? What cultural change would be needed for us to do that here?
This week, 8–14 June 2026, is Infant Mental Health Awareness Week and it has particular resonance for me as a former child protection worker, and as the newly minted grandmother of 13-week-old fraternal twins. The 2026 theme is “attunement” highlighting the importance of parents and caregivers recognising, understanding and responding to the developmental and emotional cues of infants and toddlers. Tuning in to them (examples include making eye contact, responding to cries, talking with them, sharing in play) helps build secure attachments which are important for both brain development and helping them learn emotional regulation. Doing so teaches babies that they are safe, valued and understood, and helps support lifelong mental wellness. Council has a role in both supporting and providing early childhood services and the adage “it takes a village to raise a child” reminds us that we all have a role to play in supporting infant mental health. If you are interested, search the internet for more information on Infant Mental Health this week.
Over the last summer there was community discussion that I was aware of about whether the fire districts (Hepburn Shire was in Central which also included part of metropolitan Melbourne) were useful categories. The Victorian fire weather districts are being reviewed to ensure that they accurately reflect forecasted data and climate insights. You can read about it at https://engage.cfa.vic.gov.au/project. Final discussions are taking place, and it is proposed that Hepburn Shire along with Ararat, Ballarat, Central Goldfields, Mt Alexander and Pyrenees become District 6. More information will be available when the review makes its final recommendations.
And finally, I’ve been thinking over the last few months about understanding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly in an organisation such as Council and I’ve ended up with more questions than answers. What are its advantages and disadvantages? How and when should it be used? What are the ethical and integrity issues in using it? Should individuals have to clearly note when they use it? What are the ethics of using AI when the AI models have been trained on the work of humans whose work is not acknowledged nor paid for? Are there equity issues when huge profits are being made by big tech companies. How do we develop skills to identify when AI has been used and if it is accurate? This last week there have been several examples that highlighted the importance of these questions for me. Brittany Higgins reported that she has been a victim of deep fake porn. There was controversy when an academic from the University of Western Sydney used AI to produce an article supporting the use of AI by students in university undergraduate courses. And of course, there was Robodebt . We all know that the information provided by AI is not always correct. Indeed, we have seen the increased use of AI generated posts on local Facebook groups. How do we develop the skills to identify when something has been generated by AI given the potential for misinformation or false information. AI is here to stay. It’s used in a myriad of ways and it has advantages – it does save time and can increase productivity. Whilst I wrote this Councillor column I know that if I had put the ideas into an AI program, it would have been finished in about half an hour instead of the 3 or more hours that I spent. It was, of course, AI that helped with the spelling and grammar check! Does it matter if I did use it, provided that I put my ideas into the program? Should the extent of the use of AI be specifically acknowledged in whatever the final product is? Especially when we understand that unacknowledged and unpaid labor has been used to train the AI models, when we learn more about the environmental demands of AI centres (water and energy use) and when we understand who reaps the financial rewards. AI is here to stay. There are challenges not just for councillors and councils but all of us in thinking through these questions as we grapple with such a significant shift in how we all live and work.
