On Thursday afternoon/evening, I had the great privilege of being a part of the 2nd Central Highlands Regional Assembly, held in the Hepburn Shire at the RACV Goldfields Resort. This event was different from the first assmbly. We have done a lot of work since then. The work included grinding down waht the community were telling us were priorities, working out how we talked to various State Government departments and developing a strategic foundations for our four year journey as the Partnership.

 I wrote about my hopes and aspirations for the Partnership and the first Regional Assembly last year. I reflected back on it before I wrote this piece, and if anything, I am now more committed and invested in this arduous but greatly fulfilling initiative.  There are some things we haven't gotten right. We found it hard to go back to the community and spell out excatly what we were doing. In those early stages, what we were doing is spending a lot of time listening and learning, developing relationships, building a strategic footing for that four year journey. It was much harder and more challenging than we thought.

But now that we are here at the end of our first year of this project, we've got so much more to say and we are so much better now at listening and getting the messages back to Government. In the first Assembly we asked what the region's priorities were; today we have articulated and refined those priorities and we are builing on them. Connectivity, both Physical and Digital, Primary Health, Waste to Energy,