Mr Dunshea has his hands firmly on the city’s purse strings as the newly appointed director of finance, corporate and community services for Shoalhaven Council.

“I spent nine years commuting from home which was from Camden to Double Bay everyday on the M5,” Mr Dunshea said.

“It was a lot of time I spent in transit getting to and from work.

“I had had nine great years at Woollahra working with a great council, and a great executive tea, but it was time to do something different.”

Mr Dunshea started his career with Campbelltown City Council, before making the move to ​Blacktown City Council, where he spent 14 years, followed by a five year stint at Wagga Wagga Council.

He said the breadth of the role with Shoalhaven Council was one of the draw cards.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in local government and I had been thinking about what was next in my career,” he said.

“I saw the ad in the Sydney Morning Herald and I had experience in corporate and finance services – my background is accounting – so it was the attraction of the community services and tourism. It was a far broader role than I had at Woollahra.

“There was also the attraction of the South Coast and getting out of Sydney traffic.”

Mr Dunshea said the size of the municipality was the main aspect differentiating the two councils.

“Woollahra is a very small local government area, a grand total of 12.3 square kilometres with 60,000 people, so very densely populated,” he said.

“To come down here with 100,000 people spread over 4,500 square kilometres it’s just vastly different.

“We’ve got staff in locations right across the LGA and there’s the community members we visit. To get out on the road and meet these people in the 49 towns and villages is just a different experience than going into work at Double Bay everyday, I’m really enjoying that.”

Mr Dunshea and his wife have chosen one of the most picturesque parts of the Shoalhaven to call home. 

“I’m living at Callala Beach with my wife Kathy, and it’s beautiful,” he said.

“We’ve got two adult children living at our home in Camden and they’re surviving well without us, the joke is they wouldn’t move out so we did.

“We’re getting lots of family visiting us.”

“I’ve said on a number of occasions, there are things we need to get right in council,” Mr Dunshea said.

“There’s a few things on my agenda and I’m sticking to those things. I think we’re already kicking a few goals with some of them, but there’s still a lot more work to do.”

“The first one is clearly delivering on council’s promise to the community in seeking the Special Rate Variation,” Mr Dunshea said.

“We asked for their trust and confidence to put their hand in their pocket and give us a bit more, because we need to deliver more services and better infrastructure.

“The primary focus is to deliver on those commitments.”

“The great project that is under way is the $17 million worth we are spending on the construction of the indoor sports stadium,” he said. 

“Building construction on that will be finished to lock up stage hopefully by Christmas or early January. Then there’s a lot of internal fit-outs to be done, and then preparing for operations commissioning hopefully by June.

“That’s something I’ve dived into very quickly.”

“That’s another one the council has set as a priority for me to determine where that ends up, so we are currently working away on that,” Mr Dunshea said.

“We are in the process of replacing council’s core IT systems, which have been implemented over many years,” Mr Dunshea said.

“It will potentially take three years to replace all those systems of finance, payroll, assets, human resources, development application processing – everything right across the organisation.

“It’s a big investment, but what we’re implementing is a fully integrated system. All these systems will talk to each other, so there’s greater efficiency to come out of that.”

“Another one I have spoken at length about is maximising on state and federal government grant opportunities, and having projects shovel-ready,” Mr Dunshea said.

“We know there’s money out there and we’re working very hard to get as many grant applications in as we possibly can and being ready to deliver those projects as soon as possible if we’re successful with the grant funding.”

“Tourism is something I haven’t been involved with in the past, we’re working on a new tourism strategy which we’re hoping to finalise that in the coming weeks and months,” Mr Dunshea said.

“It’s called our Destination 360 Tourism Strategy. That’s a very exciting project our tourism managers have been working very hard on in consultation with our tourism advisory group.”

Mr Dunshea said while tourism offered many opportunities for the regions, it also presented some challenges. 

“We know the issues of the inundation of visitors in areas such as Hyams Beach,” he said.

“We’ve got a dedicated project officer who has been working hard preparing for the October long weekend to have some strategies in place for managing traffic and visitors to high visitation areas, so the experience is improved, not just for the visitors, but for the locals.

“I’m sure the locals love sharing the area, but they’re entitled to enjoy their own amenity as well.”

“The other one IT related is investigating opportunities for use of smart technology – the term is smart cities technology,” Mr Dunshea said.

“There are some opportunities, which cities overseas are using, to use mobile devices to control things and improve communication in relation to hot-spot areas that need to be addressed.”