Once upon a time…. environmental awareness was increasing in the old Pakenham Shire and it was decided to commission an Environmental Management Strategy. Sue Harris from Guys Hill was appointed to run the extensive consultation process and collate the Strategy.

Over the next two years ten groups, representing different communities of interest in the Shire of Pakenham, met to discuss what ‘managing the environment’ meant to them and what Council should be doing.

After two years, Shire of Pakenham adopted the Strategy and an Environmental Management Committee was set up to keep an eye on its implementation and any new and emerging issues.

When Shire of Pakenham was enlarged to become the Shire of Cardinia in _____ , the Environmental Management Committee expanded its brief to cover the additional areas and the Strategy was reviewed.

But a persistent question remained: was the environment in the area covered by Cardinia Council becoming healthier, or not?
And even more broadly: were we, the Cardinia community, becoming healthier or less healthy?

In 2001, Sue Harris, now Cardinia Environmental Planner, and Sally Everitt, Cardinia Social Planner, commissioned five Masters students from Monash University’s highly regarded School of Environmental Science, to do a literature review of ‘sustainability indicators’ and to develop a draft set for the Shire.

After six months work, and two community workshops of 60? people each, the students presented their report: Developing a Draft Set of Sustainability Indicators for the Shire of Cardinia.
In early 2002, council set up a Working Group of community, councillors and staff to review the draft indicators and develop a final set for recommendation to Council. This group met for almost a year and finalised a set of ‘Sustainability Indicators’ in December 2002. One of the councillors said that the best discussions he’d ever had as a councillor were on that Working Group.

Cardinia Councillors were briefed in June 2003, and supplied with background information, the indicators, and the method and resources necessary to provide the data for each indicator.

While one would have thought this would lead to implementation little happened for a year and various community members who had been involved in the Working Group became concerned that the hard work had all been for nothing. Realising that this project needed to be a community partnership with Council, Karen Alexander applied for some funds from the Reichstein Foundation to launch Cardinia Compass.

“Virtually nobody knew of the indicators” said Karen.

Cardinia Council didn’t seem to be able to put them on their website, staff had changed, and so had councillors, so we felt as if we had to begin all over again.

“Yet when I showed the indicators– and there were about 40 of them - to people, there was strong interest and a recognition that these might help us get a feel for whether our society was sustainable, not just for us, but for our grandchildren.”

The Reichstein Foundation grant has enabled Cardinia Compass to develop this website, and to support our engagement with both Council and with the community in the indicators. The aim, eventually, is to set up a Round Table that would represent the broad interests of the community in a council-community partnership.

So where are we at?