Webinars

The People Side of Planning: Leadership, Mentorship & Community

Jane Partridge: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Careers at Council Talent Attraction ‘What do you do at Council?’ webinar series. My name is Jane Partridge. I’m Strategy Manager here at Local Government NSW and I’ll be your host today.
Please note that your microphones and cameras will be turned off to avoid any background noise during the webinar, the presentation. As a planner myself and a member of the Planning Institute of Australia or ‘PIA’ as you may know it, I’m really pleased that you’re able to join us to get a glimpse into the world of planning in local government this afternoon. I’d like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and the traditional custodians of all the lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Welcome also to any First Nations people joining us this afternoon.

So our webinar today is focused on planning; highlighting, leadership, mentorship and community initiatives. At this point, I’d like to just acknowledge the team at PIA NSW, the Planning Institute, for assisting us with nominees from the planning community for this series,to share their experiences about working in a council. So now I’m pleased to welcome our guest speaker today, Martin Amy, Development Assessment Manager at Inner West Council. Martin has over 20 years NSW planning experience in both the public and private sectors dealing with a variety of planning matters, including planner recruitment and promotion via PIA’s Become A Planner program.

And so we’re excited to hear from Martin about his journey and insights on how you can become a planner and the diversity that planning has to offer. But before we dive into our discussion with Martin, a brief introduction to Careers at Council. It’s an initiative of the state and territory local government associations, and was created by councils for councils. It’s been established by industry to inform and attract local government’s future workforce, and as you’ll see, it’s much more than just a jobs board.

So you can access Careers at Council through various channels. You can check it out at our Local Government NSW website or portable touchscreen devices, laptop, desktop and smartphones. And Careers at Council also has a dedicated LinkedIn and Facebook page, and an active YouTube channel for sharing videos of the various job roles in local government.

When you go to have a look at the Careers at Council page, there is a dedicated planning and development page which showcases the diverse careers available in local government planning and development. Whether you’re passionate about strategic land use planning, urban design, environmental sustainability, infrastructure, community engagement or more, you’re sure to find a role here that aligns with your interests and values. The page highlights career pathways in urban planning, design, surveying, and its other related job areas, real stories from professionals making a real impact in Australia, so planners working in local government study options from university degrees to vocational training, and live job listings, which are updated regularly with opportunities across councils nationwide, and a suite of other resources to guide your steps, including industry bodies and course directories. So you’ll see that the planning and development page is a lot more than a jobs board, as I said, and we encourage you to explore it, share it with others and consider how all your skills and passions might contribute to sustaining and building better local communities.

Just a couple more bits of information about Careers at Council before we start our discussion with Martin. Careers at Council is going from strength to strength. It’s got more than, it’s had more than 10,000 jobs posted to date. Our scope spans 14 unique career areas and we currently have 630 active jobs. So to narrow down your selection, you can do a keyword search on planner jobs and view the opportunities available in local government.

There are 14 career areas at council available on the platform where you can discover a wide range of roles and responsibilities, opportunities tailored to various skills and interests.

As I mentioned earlier, you can also hear or read and listen to employee stories which offer insights and experiences shared by current council employees, and that gives you a glimpse into what it’s like to work in local government. The employee testimonials highlight personal experiences, day to day insights, career growth and development, skill development, the work environment and culture, and making a difference and community engagement. And we’re going to hear some of that when we speak with Martin today. So these testimonials provide the opportunity for job seekers to gain a better understanding of the diverse and rewarding careers opportunities that are available in local government.

You can join in the Careers of Council community is a great way to explore those opportunities and connect with local government roles across Australia. You can sign up for job alerts, you can attend our webinar series and view our podcasts and read the employee stories that I mentioned. You can also apply for jobs and connect with us on social media and become a part of the careers at Council community.
So if you want to sign up, you can register to receive the job alerts as I mentioned, and also provide feedback via the feedback section.

So that’s quite a lot to take in. But without further ado, let’s move on to our discussion with Martin, who’s been sitting patiently waiting.

And while you listen, I encourage you to actively participate and post any of your questions using the Q&A feature. We’ll get to these a bit later and hopefully we’ll get to all of them, but if not, we will get back to those get back to those questions or answers to those questions if we haven’t been able to address them all today.

So, thank you, Martin, for joining us. We’ve got some questions that we’d like to just chat with you about, and I guess to kick off, could you tell us a bit about your journey into planning and what drew you to work in local government?

Martin Amy: Thanks, Jane, and thank you for having me. I could talk about planning for a long time, but I know I’m under time pressures.
It was a bit of a falling into it for me, actually, I was into economics quite a lot when I was a kid. And then I gravitated a little bit more to geography and places. And then I took a degree in the University of Western England in Bristol UK, and then I got a job out of that in Jersey in the Channel Islands for the States of Jersey there, which is their local government authority. I think the pathway to local government probably came from my mum and dad. My dad worked at our local County Council and my mum was a teacher, so I think there was always an air of like community within our family. So I think that essentially drew me to local government.

When I had a contract there in Jersey for about 18 months, I think or two years. And then a decision was made that, I can’t tell you the age, but when I was a bit younger that I would come to Australia. That was a bit of trepidation. My mum wasn’t too keen on that at all, but ultimately I thought that I’ll give it a crack and see what, see what comes of it. I went to Queensland initially, and people who are aware of the tightness of local government areas in England, I assumed that if I was to apply for work experience or things in Queensland, just because the lines were joining, they would be pretty close to each other. I was pretty naive at that age and ultimately I found that, you know, Rockhampton wasn’t very close to Brisbane. Whilst I did do those thinking about work experience, unfortunately I didn’t get any bites and then I thought well, I need to try to be a bit of a different tact and then I came to Sydney. I did the same there and similarly I didn’t get any bites in terms of work experience. But during that time I was learning about the systems I was trying to get myself a bit more prepared for hopefully a job in planning. And luckily for, I was going to say for the council, for me, Ashfield Council, which it was [known] then took me on, they sponsored me. It was a job back then that was sought after for skilled migration, so they took me on and I stayed there. Back then it was very small council. You were put into the complex stuff, the simple stuff and you were there, right go and have a go, see how you go. Super supportive, learnt so much in the time that I was there. And then I thought it’s probably somewhere where I need to grow my knowledge a bit further. So I then got a job at what was then Smythe Planning, who Richard Smythe and Meg Levy took me on there and I stayed there, and similarly they gave me stuff that can’t be repeated in terms of planning, probably, and going into what you deal with, but great diversity of things to do and I think that stood me in good stead when an opportunity came up at then Leichhardt Council for a role and I took that. And again, very diverse area, very interested community and very people who are knowledgeable about planning. And I’ve stayed there ever since and we’ve amalgamated with Marrickville and Ashfield. And through that I’ve worked in the different areas of that. And then I’ve moved from planner to a team leader, and now I’m one of the development assessment managers, so I’ve sort of, that’s 20 plus years of stuff, but it’s been extremely rewarding, I would say.

Jane Partridge: It would have been a huge challenge coming from the UK and trying to navigate the Queensland and NSW systems and apart from the geographic kind of naivety that you had, but the systems and learning all of that would have been yeah, a mountain, I imagine. So that, yeah, thank you.

So you worked across both public and private sectors and have those experience, you know, how those experiences shaped your approach to development assessment and perhaps in responding to that, you could share one or two examples of a particular project or issue, or an initiative that might stand out.

Martin Amy: Yeah, I think they work really well to be aware of the other. So when I moved from local government to private practice, I was pretty aware of the local government mechanics, if you like. And that stood me in good stead for when you’re talking to local government as a private sector planner, to know what was coming and then how you would maybe deal with it, your relationships and your networks of people, but also the process. I think it also helped like in the preparation of documentation or the preparation of information. That was, I knew what was wanted really.

Jane Partridge: That’s a key thing, isn’t it?

Martin Amy: Yeah. And sadly, that’s very difficult for non-planning people, I would say, to be across. But I think that really helped. And then when I reverted back to local government, the experience that I’ve held in private sector made me more aware of what was the objectives or the pursuits of the proponent or the applicant on that side. So then you were just a bit more conscious of their approaches and why they were doing certain things. So you could relate to them a little bit more, which I think is extremely useful, and I think relationships or relating to things is really helpful. And I think some of the cool things that you’re sort of involved in, in both ways, I mean back in it was a bit unusual that we when I was doing theory of planning, we would talk about garden cities and we were doing things, and all of a sudden here I am at Haberfield, with the ‘Garden City’, like dealing with applications, and my lecturer like it’s I could hear my lecturer talking to me about this and I was like here I am dealing with these applications at Haberfield here.

Jane Partridge: The other side of the world.

Martin Amy: Yeah. And I think that and it’s just interesting to say you were talking about the systems like it’s the trend obviously that came over as well and that’s pretty cool to actually be across here. I think in terms of some of the other projects that were, I was out at like a big subdivision down at Wingecarribee, that type of, like they’ve been going on for years, that was quite an interesting project to be involved in. I do like a bit of adaptive reuse, and when I was at Ashfield, there was a commercial, old state government department building there and then someone got into it. They kept the columns. They kept the floors and everything, and they just put apartments in. That was a pretty cool outcome. And then more recently, I guess more recently, probably about 10 years ago, there was a retrofit of an old church hall house at Balmain. And that was quite a cool one, because they retrofitted for a couple of apartments and they did it in such a meticulous way that that won the medal for conservation in in this area or the Inner West Council. So that was quite a cool, cool thing to be involved in.
And more recently, and it’s probably become a bit more not, I’m trying to think of the right word, but it’s a bit more not sexy, but like murals like I don’t know why, but like murals are pretty cool.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.

Martin Amy: And like they have become, if you go to Enmore now like to see how the council system are a perfect match, but also like how we look at them in conservation way and try to promote them like it’s a real like great sort of landscape now to see all these different paintings and murals going on. So they’re some pretty cool projects that I’ve dealt with.

I think in terms of how some of the initiatives that I’ve seen over the years in terms of planning outcomes, from a strategic sense as well, where I’m more of a, I’m in the development assessment area, but some of the things that we deal with out of that for example like the Blue-Green Grid Strategy here at Council or the indigenous studies or the infrastructure contributions, like all of those come back to, like, come to us in the end and it’s understanding like where they’ve, how they’ve eventuated to then how we can apply them. And Inner West has been quite fortunate because they some of those have been recognised by PIA and of course, at the moment we’ve got our Fairer Future Plan, which is enormous in terms of what it’s going to hopefully achieve. So yeah, from a development assessment world, we’re all about trying to get the balance between good outcomes and timeliness as probably a lot of people are aware. And a year or so ago we went through a lot of different improvements within our process, we talked to the industry how we could like be better if you like and like that’s that was a huge effort on a lot of people in the development assessment team and kudos to them, but that has improved how we do things just process-wise a little bit.

Jane Partridge: Yep.

Martin Amy: And also hopefully given the customer a bit more of a responsive way and quicker responsive way to how we manage things. So a lot of effort and a lot of resources and engagement in some of those things, yeah.

Jane Partridge: Yeah. Well, of course, as a development assessment manager, you’re part of a much wider team in council that comprises not only of the planners who assess the development proposals, like your team, but also all those colleagues who work in strategic planning, master planning, rezoning, etc. And of course, the other departments in the in the in the council. What leadership qualities do you find most essential when managing diverse planning teams and how do you support emerging planners in your team, especially those who are new to local government?

Martin Amy: I think the main thing for leaders these days is being present. Like, not generally physically, but just like being there for the people within the teams, and they feel that you’re there for them. Like work and life is challenging, like planning is a challenging industry to be around and a lot of the skills that you have in life are transferable to planning, really in terms of your relationships and how you communicate and vice versa really. Like my wife would sometimes say “stop planning me”. Really. In terms of how maybe I’m communicating with that, but I think a lot of it as well, like it’s down to your team as well. Like we have like a management team and team leaders as well who have really invested in supporting each other and supporting the people who are within their team, and if you build that then hopefully it just rolls on and does what it can for itself. And we are continuously trying to improve and be better really. I mean we fortunately, have a really good cohort of student graduates here and we they are a good pool of hopefully people that we can bring in. They’re really keen and enthusiastic and then we can actually grow them to develop, probably not only their planning skills, their technical planning skills, but like how to work in an office.

Jane Partridge: Yes.

Martin Amy: How to communicate with people. How do you deal with situations that come up. And I think that can only benefit not only their planning career into that, but also, you know, into new roles, but also life as well. I think so it works both ways.

Jane Partridge: Exactly. Yeah. It does sound very supportive. So you’re a peer mentor, speaking of being supportive. And involved in the Become A Planner program. What motivates you to invest in mentoring that next generation of planners, the emerging planners? Some of whom aren’t always young planners, they’re often emerging planners. Not, not always, you know, starting out, they’ve shifted careers. And perhaps when you, when you’re responding, you might share a memorable mentoring experience or a few of your observations about what those emerging planners could expect to gain if they joined, you know, PIA’s mentoring program.

Martin Amy: Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing I think for all the mentors, I guess, is that they’re willing to share and impart some of their knowledge or experience to and how they feel so passionately about planning or the career or that they’ve chosen that they can hopefully give that to someone else and they carry on and use that as well. I think for me, I’m quite proud to showcase planning, like I think it’s an awesome career. I think it’s so varied, the breadth of it is just unlimited in terms of what you can do.
And at the end of it, I think you’re involved in something that’s going to shape like lives and the world that we live in. And I think if you know, that is a really cool thing to be a part of, really. I’m a big engager with people. And as part like, one of the things that I remember with one of my mentees was that, you know, hadn’t this was an emerging one who was mature and like, hadn’t done an interview for a very long time.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.

Martin Amy: And, like, was a bit apprehensive about what that looked like and they were looking at local government roles or government institution roles. And it was a case of, you know, well, we’ll set up a mock interview if you want. So we set up a mock interview, and I leaned on a couple of my aspiring planners here to be on that interview panel. So they got a bit of an experience as well out of that.

Jane Partridge: Great idea.

Martin Amy: And we, it gave a flavour of like what it could be like and you know an interview sometimes there’s a bit of a false construct as to what you like, but it’s part of the process, so you need to have some skill in that. And I thought that was a really cool way of maybe helping them out, not about planning or anything like that really.

Jane Partridge: Hmm. Yep, a safe space, yeah.

Martin Amy: It’s just about how to conduct yourself, really. Which is part of. The difficulty that I find a lot of people do find is that, you know, they’ll get an interview or something like that and then it’s ‘why didn’t I get the job?’ And like, you know, maybe they’re just not aware of what they’re actually doing.
I think the great thing about the mentoring program, or just PIA in general, is your networks as well, like you create a whole host of networks that you can then talk to, rely upon and maybe, you know, not only about planning, technical planning stuff, but also about career progression paths. So I think that’s a good part of it. And like we bounce ideas off each other about like what is good and maybe what’s trending and things like that. And I wouldn’t say it’s the best thing, but it’s pretty cool, is to be asked to be a referee for someone. That’s a pretty cool. So you can promote them and as much as I dislike seeing great people leave our place here, it’s also really it’s quite a proud moment to hopefully see them grow into something else and that you’ve given, sorry, you’ve given them some of what you’ve offered, and they’ve taken that and then that’s, they’ve gone and achieved something else.

Jane Partridge: Yeah. A true leader; supporting them to fly the coop, yeah.

Martin Amy: Yeah, I’d love to say I it’s all on me, but I’m sure it’s my team. The team leaders as well that are doing that.

Jane Partridge: Yeah. So have you, have you seen a shift in how communities engage with planning issues over the years and what and what might you think is driving that change?

Martin Amy: I think, that’s a tricky one. Development assessments are probably a bit different to maybe the strategic planning aspects. I think time is probably the tricky one for everyone at the moment and I think they don’t have the time to maybe invest in where their comment is best placed. Like really the time for communities to engage is at the strategic planning level stage because once they come to the development assessment stage, the plans have already been outlined. So then it’s a lot harder to maybe comment in a way that ‘Oh my goodness I didn’t know this was coming’, which might be absolutely fair, but unfortunately it’s a situation that’s already been proposed, really. And I think it’s well, it’s a case of, from the strategic planning area, it’s such a volume of information that you get that it’s quite overwhelming sometimes, particularly on bigger things. Having said that though, that we’ve just done our Fairer Futures Plan and we’ve just gone out for a whole raft of consultation and we’ve had over 3000 submissions to that, so it’s not a small amount of people who are just coming in on this, like it’s a decent amount of people who are doing that.

Jane Partridge: The engaged community in your in your LGA, yeah.

Martin Amy: Yeah. Yeah, very, very engaged. Which is great. It’s absolutely great. Like if you if you know, you don’t know what is right or wrong, really if you don’t have people actually saying anything. So it’s really helpful to hear what is being said really all the time.
I think I’m quite optimistic as well, despite my heritage, which is seen as a bit of a pessimistic place. In terms of like, I genuinely sort of believe that any planning outcome, whatever it is, it benefits something or someone in some way. It isn’t always negative.

Jane Partridge: I like that, Martin. It’s a good way to look at it.

Martin Amy: Yeah. Like it may seem to have a lot of negative things there, but I genuinely believe that it’s benefiting someone or something in some way. And I think if you can retain that approach to things all the time, then I think you will always seek a good or reasonable outcome to something. I think in terms of like if you if we were to try and look at how communities can engage into the future, if you like, if we feel like it’s not, I think a really good thing would be to try and engage with the people who are going to be the future. So if you like, trying to get it like PIA is trying to do, trying to get it into the into schools or in there so people are more aware of like what does this mean, like you are going to have a letter or you are going to have a notification of this sometime. Do you know what it means?

Jane Partridge: Yes.

Martin Amy: So then they’re a little bit more informed about maybe their comment or their engagement in it in the future. So, and the more people involved the better, because you know it makes it, the more ideas and the more thoughts behind it would hopefully make us a better outcome in the end.

Jane Partridge: Think of the community.

Well, you sort of touched on this a little bit, just the role of planners continues to evolve and refocus in response to things like climate change and the housing pressures that just seem to be intensifying. And of course infrastructure demands and the like, and based on your experience, what would you say are some of, and you’ve got to limit your answer here because you know you could go on forever, but what would you say some of the biggest challenges and/or opportunities that face planners today?

Martin Amy: The housing one’s well known in terms of, and I don’t have a unicorn idea, unfortunately, to solve that one, I think, and I don’t think it’s now, I think it’s planning in general. I think it’s the competing objectives that is always the trickiest thing to manage. And whether it be housing, climate change, infrastructure, anything like that, I think the difficulty is that you’re trying to get the optimal outcome for every objective.

Jane Partridge: Yes.

Martin Amy: Which I think is extremely difficult to achieve, and someone unfortunately is not going to get the optimal objective here. And I think that is in part the great challenge and it’s the great opportunity for people who want to be planners, is that they want to be a part of something that hopefully gets that reasonable or balanced outcome and is trying across all those competing objectives.

Jane Partridge: Yep. Yeah.

Martin Amy: Because you’re, you know, a compromise is when everyone leaves a little bit unhappy, really. But ultimately we’re trying to get that balance, I think to say that this is going to benefit as many people as possible as opposed to maybe lesser of one of the objectives or something.

Jane Partridge: Yes, I like that. I like that answer. Having planning qualifications of course is just the start of a planning career and more often than not there are many specialist areas that planners either touch on or regularly engage with as part of our role.

And could you perhaps, for people listening, could discuss some of the interactions that you and your team have with other professionals and departments within council and as well as who, when you’re engaging with state agencies, government agencies outside of council. What are the skills that you feel are important? You’ve probably touched on it a little bit already.

Martin Amy: I think that’s, I think the interactions with other experts is like one of the best things about local government because you’re sort of like absorbing information like a sponge sometimes, and you don’t really know you’re doing it and then you’re using that later on, and the way I think most councils operate is you know you’ll have a very clear group of experts, whether it’s stormwater or heritage or trees, and you’re consistently talking about like a proposal, whether that’s strategically or whether it’s an assessment.
We have roundtables pretty much all the time. It’s at least one a week in terms of things and I think for people who are getting involved in that, you just need to be there really, like you don’t really need to know exactly what is being talked about, but you just need to gather that information to then hopefully make you aware of it in the future. And like for anyone coming in like you would just be curious. You would be asking questions about that. What does it mean? I don’t know what that is like, what’s that acronym like? Planning is like bombarded with acronyms like what, what is it that you’re talking about?
And like even now, like you know, you never stop learning like you, you walk out there and you speak to a stormwater engineer and you’ve learned something new there or you speak to a waste officer and you’ve learned something new about a new trend happening. And I think the difficulty sometimes with a state agency, like local government, you’re here, like you can talk to someone. You pick up the phone or you see them on Teams and talk to them. But state agencies are a bit trickier to navigate that it’s a lot more correspondence-lead and I don’t know, maybe there’s the opportunity to maybe have those roundtables a bit more on things where you have a dedicated time to speak to state agencies or something like that on items in your area.

Jane Partridge: Yeah, it’s more of a yeah, it’s more of a face, isn’t it? A face, an agency face, not an individual interactions. Yeah. With the introduction of AI, can you have you got any early sort of observations about how you’d see those sorts of emerging technologies would impact or shape the work of planners?

Martin Amy: I definitely think there’s a role to play. I think the, what AI can probably do is use it, you have the idea it will give you, you feed it a few ideas, it then gives you a map of it. You then go ‘oh, I’m not sure about that.’ Feed another idea, it maps them out. And whether that’s a strategic view or an assessment view, it does it quicker. Like, the speed of it is just seconds or minutes as opposed to, I need a few days to draft up that plan, but you don’t.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.

Martin Amy: You wouldn’t have to do that. So I and I think it won’t give you 100%, but it will do the base for you, so then you can then use and that I think that’s why everyone sometimes is in planning to do like resolve things is that you can dedicate your time more to critically thinking about stuff, as opposed to maybe you know, taking time to redraw a plan, well not redraw a plan, but do something very that could be done a lot quicker. So I think that should hopefully relieve a lot of the people in the industry, not only planning, but in the built environment industry to dedicate their minds to actually, as opposed to maybe the technical stuff.
And, like particularly in process, I reckon that would, that will really help hopefully knock that out pretty quickly. I did have, no AI didn’t give me the answers to these questions by the way. These are all my own thoughts but, yeah. So I definitely, I do think that it will enable planners to have more time to critically think and we will get ideas quicker.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.
A lot of learning and what with AI in any application I think, but yeah, this it’s sort of early days, isn’t it? And there’s a lot, a lot to learn and about how we can use it and not be afraid to use it. As planners we both know that the potential diversity of roles and the specialities that a planning career can take you, you know, is very broad and working in local government as a planner, and whether that’s being at a metropolitan council like Inner West or a regional or a rural council, and some of those are extremely small and some are significantly large, but there’s such a variety. But all those opportunities can nurture a great variety of ways to enrich your skills, as we both know. So what advice would you give to planners who are just starting out and to someone considering a career in planning in local government?
I think you’ve already given us a few good little gems already so.

Martin Amy: I do think local government is a place where you can really consolidate your understanding of the planning framework. I think you’re around it all the time and people are questioning, asking you questions all the time. Whether you’re straight into what we would call duty planning, just asking questions and questions can be far and wide in terms of what you’re being asked. You have to go and look something up and go and find and then you work out how the legislation sort of fits in to other parts and then you apply it and then you learn from that and then that can give you, that gives you a great base, I think to forge your career and learn more complex things and how they interrelate, or obviously then going to apply it somewhere else.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.

Martin Amy: I think any planning organisation that I’ve been in or I think most people, are willing to give you their experience and share and help in you to learn more about planning. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a person or a place that isn’t willing to offer that. And I think that is really great in terms of the industry

Jane Partridge: It is, yes.

Martin Amy: and like because, I think people and as much as they might not want to say it like, I think planners really they care. They’re in, they’re in a profession that is going to change the world like. And I think they care about doing that. So I think they care about, like, helping other people to do that too.
I think in terms of local government, again, I think back on probably what I said before like it opens yourself up, sorry, opens your eyes to a few different areas. So whether it is engineering, waste, parks, that type of stuff, and you engage with these people all the time, and then you might find that, you know, planning you may navigate a slightly different path in terms of your planning awareness. And that is like great, because you found an even more nuanced area that you have that you’d like to do.
I think the sponge thing is probably a really good one. Like I think you just it’s and it’s up to the person coming in, but you need to put yourself out there. You need to take the information in and you need to gain as much as you can for whatever period you’re going to be there.
The one thing that I would say is development is extremely emotional and stressful, like for everyone involved, even us, like we’re not immune to how it can materialise over that, and I think the more you’re involved in that process, the more you become aware of people’s, what they, what their objectives are, if you like, against what maybe the control objectives are, it’s like you, your awareness of that will help you gauge or be a better planner because you’ll be able to appreciate what objectives other people or other industries, other industries are trying to achieve. And I think that can only help the process as well.

Jane Partridge: Yeah, some good, good tips there. I might make a note for myself, for my own mentoring experience when I’m engaging with my mentees. Thank you, Martin. I think we’ve got about 5 minutes left, and I think there’s just a couple of questions there in the Q&A, so we might have a look at those. I’m not sure if you can see those two. One question here from Kajal. I have a planning, my planning degree and two years of experience from India. What are the ways to find a career in council? I see a lot of internship opportunities for students and graduates, which I doubt I’m eligible to apply for. Is there any pathway for immigrants or a beginner?
Might be a good starting place for Kajal is to explore the Careers at Council website, as I was saying earlier, yeah.

Martin Amy: There you go. Good plug. I think, yeah, Kajal’s right. It’s very competitive. I would say that, like there is and what’s really good about the industry at the moment, there’s a lot more jobs become available like and people need more planners, which is really great in terms of the opportunities. But it is very competitive at the emerging or the entry level. The internships are there. Some councils will offer them and, you know, contract work or work experiences. Some councils will offer them those as well. And I think the, you have to be somewhat resilient as well. And the worst some people can say is ‘no’. So it’s also like just putting yourself out there and making sure that when you’re maybe applying or putting yourself there, that you’re giving something that the person on the reading end is going to think ‘oh, well, they’re super interested in this area’. Like they really know and really have a desire to work at the Inner West Council or work for Local Government NSW because they know the values and they will align with that and they really want to promote or engage with what Inner West is trying to achieve, for example, any local government area. That goes for any company anywhere you would, you would be looking each time I think to go that is the company that I want to work for. And you would be pitching yourself to that.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.
I would second that and just to yeah, just to add to that that if you, whatever the job is, you don’t just put your application in the same every time. You make it your business to understand for that particular place that you’re targeting with, whether it’s a council or, you know, a private organisation. You make it your business to understand what do they do, why would you like to work there and actually sell it, that you demonstrate that you understand what they’re trying to achieve so that you’re selling yourself to that to them to meet their, help meet their needs or what they’re after.

Another question here is, What strategies would you recommend for applicants aiming to move into planning roles without prior planning experience, but with a strong interest in the field? This, Umakan says my background is in process and application engineering, possibly sounds like an IT area, and I’ve received feedback that my lack of direct planning experience has been a barrier in previous applications. So it’s probably a similar answer, is my guess.

Martin Amy: Yeah. I think most, most places would seek some level of awareness of planning, but like in some capacity. A lot of places do have a situation that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a planning degree like it can be a related discipline or something which may align with the question.

Jane Partridge: Yeah.

Martin Amy: I think again though, it does come down to like, yeah, it’s also not only your qualifications, it’s also about like, and planning has a lot of transferable skills that may be able, you may be able to work your way into answering selection criteria responses and what have you. But I think again, it’s like, you know, how do you align with the like what’s being asked of the position description if you like or the selection criteria? And what I found is sometimes people don’t really know that they’ve got the skills there because they just assume ‘I haven’t done planning, so I haven’t got the skills’, but they may have done something that has the skill set that you know you could be applied to planning, or just the mannerisms or just the personality or the character, or whatever it may be that you could then apply to that.

Jane Partridge: Yeah, I agree. You can. There are a lot of sort of transferable skills, but you do have to have that some sense of an understanding of what the framework is that you’re working in and that’s, that’s a challenge at the beginning. But you do learn a lot of that through your planning degrees.
Thank you. Look, I think we just, they were the only two questions that I think that we have there. Oh, just checking here, whether I missed any. Oh, there’s one more question. Any advice that you might give to young school-leavers looking at a career in planning?

Martin Amy: Do it! I would definitely look at it. I don’t think, yeah, I’ve been fortunate, I guess. And like I’ve been fortunate with the people that I’ve worked with that has meant that, you know, I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done and the people that I’ve worked with. I think if you’re as a school-leaver, planning is something that you know is a pretty cool thing to do. You might not think it, but you won’t know that planning is all around you.

Jane Partridge: Yes

Martin Amy: Everything that you do, you walk around, it’s been, it’s been planned in some way, shape or form, like how you don’t get wet walking down a commercial strip or something like that. That’s planned. All right. Where the roads go, is planned. Like all these types of things. And you as a school-leaver, and not to, not to say that you shouldn’t do another thing which is equally going to be fulfilling, but you will shape the world in planning and you will contribute in some way to how you know some things happen over the course of, like, our lives and futures to come.

Jane Partridge: I like that finish, I think we might, we might leave it there on that, on that note. I love that answer. Just wanted to thank you so much, Martin, for taking the time to share your observations, your experiences today and all those tips for those watching, which I’m sure will be really rich pickings for them when they go away to think about their careers. I also just want to acknowledge again the help of the Planning Institute of Australia with identifying some nominations, nominees from our planning community to help with these webinars. So yeah, thanks again to PIA. And thank you everyone for joining us today. I hope you found it very helpful and enlightening.
I certainly have learned a few new things and had picked up a few extra tips from Martin myself, so I’m sure you all have as well.