A visit this week to Melbourne, coinciding with council voting on a rate increase at COPP should have all residents and ratepayers interested in the outcomes of the rate decision.

Because there is another way and Port Phillip representatives should take note, from Wales, the land of the wild and song.

In 2016 Wales appointed its first Commissioner for Future Generations and Well Being, Ms Sophie Howe. She completed her tenure of seven years in January 2023.

Under Welsh Law passed in 2015, well-being was protected.

The public sector was expected to make joined-up, long-term decisions, helping people in Wales live better lives and leave a more liveable planet behind. They have also made a new definition of prosperity.

Ms Howes was in Melbourne to deliver the John Menadue oration at the invitation of the Centre for Policy Development.

Her brief, along with her powers to call out the madness of some policy ideas, was to embark on the biggest cultural change programme Wales had ever seen and protect the rights of future generations.

It included a moratorium on road building; a major transformation on transport, innovations like free bike hire; a transition to a low carbon society and protection for future generations so that they could live in a sustainable society.

Sophie Howes was in fact the guardian of Wales' future generations.

After her appointment, the United Nations Assistant Secretary General, Nikhil Seth, said “where Wales goes today, the rest of the world will follow tomorrow”.

Part of Ms Howes role was to introduce mandatory education on black history, develop ethical and informed citizens through the education system, help people re-connect with nature and to develop capable learners who were emotional and empathetic leaders for the future.

Ms Howes said despite a framework and legislation, human beings do not like change.

“We had to reconstruct or rebuild the society; we needed to turn a piece of legislation to walk a path to the new normal.”

The 'How' of the new legislation meant there were five ways to work; long-term, prevention, integration, collaboration and involvement.

This meant going back to bureaucrats and asking them if their decisions were in line with the goal of resilience, or a prosperous nation, would it damage biodiversity in the area, did it add to a healthier nation and would it add to rising levels of pollution?

Ms Howes said Wales had a passionate Environment Minister who led the legislation but it was all encompassing.

“He worked with NGO's, environment organisations and then cultural and creative communities were included.

“In hindsight, it was important to broaden the conversation to people and equality groups for a cross pollination of ideas.

“We took the community along with us, but you had to have everyone on board, the public servants, the politicians.

“We had community meetings, we had children write postcards to their future selves,... imagine if every single leader across the world, had been through an education system that taught them to be ethical and informed citizens?”

Sophie Howe said within the bureaucratic system there are always frustrated champions, the people in the system who know there is a better way of doing things.

“But the system has frustrated them, because these are the people who have been waiting for something like this and will become the first to use it to do different things to challenge the system, it's important to use them to channel that system and to walk a path to the new normal. 

“The best way is for us to walk that path with them and create it with them,” she said.

Professor Fiona Stanley, who was part of the panel at the oration, said after Ms Howe's speech that citizen engagement is really vital to the success.

“Citizens have not been engaged in Australia, and I think what Wales has proved, is that engaging citizens might increase democracy.”