Interview with Leon Fleming

I’ve been working with a local council for the last 17 years and while it’s been very interesting and stimulating and challenging I’m getting to the stage where there’s a sense of “I’ve done that before”. So, before I stop working full time I’d like one more serious challenge and I’m going north in part for that reason

I first visited Cairns over 40 years ago. My parents in law lived in the hinterland of Cairns and I’ve been there many times since, In another employment position I frequently visited Cairns and I think it is one of the great cities in Queensland, if not Australia.

I’ll be working with a private sector consulting group, a group of about 50 people, mainly engineers, some environmentalists and there’ll be 8 planners. They have offices in Cairns and Townsville and generally operate in the far north region.

I’ll be the eldest. I’m not going to be the line manager, I’m more a specialist.

I hope so… it’s one of the challenges of consulting, you’ve got to bid for them and win the work. There’s a lot of interesting work in Townsville to do with James Cook University with the army barracks and the mining industry. In Cairns there’s significant population growth and a lot of tourism activities along with a small industrial development which goes hand in hand with that.

They know naught.

Well, the manual labour age is no bar for essentially cerebral activities – thinking, reasoning, writing, desk based jobs, air conditioned office. Age is no barrier. I take my bench mark to be a supreme court judge… to retire at 70 and then to work on beyond that.

Well especially for strategic planning or long term planning, you have the benefit of seeing a lot of plans you prepare coming to fruition, seeing the many twists and turns things can take, and to not be cocky, not think you know all the outcomes, but to plan in a deliberate way and allow scope for the unexpected to happen.