{"id":80,"date":"2019-02-15T12:16:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T01:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/?p=80"},"modified":"2025-12-04T11:53:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T01:23:05","slug":"stephen-hains-a-leader-in-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/2019\/02\/15\/stephen-hains-a-leader-in-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"A leader in planning"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nOnce the CEO of the \u2018best council in Australia\u2019, Stephen Hains\u2019 leadership in town planning and management has had a great impact on Adelaide\u2019s Councils.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1970 Stephen not only achieved a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at Flinders, he also found his lifelong partner, Jill at the University. He says, \u201cFlinders was a new university which made it so attractive to attend. It also had the best economics faculty in the State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following his graduation, Stephen entered the graduate program in the former Department of Trade and Industry in Canberra.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Honours year in Economics was combined with Geography,\u201d says Stephen, \u201cI had chosen to do my thesis on a Land Economics theme about the causes of the then residential decline of the southern half of the Adelaide square mile.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lord Mayor of Adelaide read the thesis and Stephen was offered a position as an economist and project manager\u00a0with the consultant\u00a0planning team preparing the\u00a0first city plan for Adelaide. In 1973, he and Jill moved back to Adelaide to work on the project.<\/p>\n

Working with a CEO who saw that all things were possible Stephen says, \u201cWe broke new ground at the time, with an active public engagement program and a strong emphasis on design outcomes.\u201d The experience gave Stephen a taste for town planning and he embarked on a Masters in Urban Design and Regional Planning at Edinburgh University in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Returning to Adelaide in 1976, Stephen became the very first City Planner with the City of Unley where he prepared the Council\u2019s first planning strategy. He was later appointed Town Clerk and with further studies in management, he took an active role in updating and reforming the Council\u2019s management processes.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, a time of planning reform in South Australia, Stephen became involved in planning and advisory roles within State Government including the role as the first Chairman of the South Australian Planning Commission. Later as the Director of Planning for the Department of Environment and Planning he was responsible for all planning, development and environmental assessment and heritage for the State.<\/p>\n

Missing the hands-on experience of local government, Stephen became CEO of the City of Salisbury in 1991. \u201cSalisbury was without doubt the most stimulating and satisfying roles of my career,\u201d says Stephen. \u201cIt was, and is, a challenging community, but I went out of my way to ensure that the local council met many of its complex needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNotably our path-finding work in stormwater recycling that was an international first and at one stage,\u00a0The Advertiser<\/i>\u00a0even proclaimed us \u2018the best council in Australia!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since retiring from full time work in 2011, Stephen has been active on a number of Boards, including Flinders University Council as Deputy Chancellor, a role he has held since 2014. \u201cWhile I am now retired, I drew on my learnings from my Flinders degree throughout my career, often in ways that I could not have predicted. I feel fortunate to have spent time as a student at this great institution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once the CEO of the \u2018best council in Australia\u2019, Stephen Hains\u2019 leadership in town planning and management has had a great impact on Adelaide\u2019s Councils. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1333,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[825,2076,1228],"tags":[922,892,894],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-business-government-and-law","category-study-humanities-social-sciences","category-stories","tag-deputy-chancellor","tag-economics","tag-government"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}