Craig Bennett, who took over as Glen Innes Severn council General Manager earlier in October, said his number one priority is simple.
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Sorting out the drought.
"In my opinion there's not much use doing too much else until we start to put plans in place for that," he said.
"Hopefully with Adam and Barnaby and others we can look at things we can be doing so that when the drought goes we're ready to activate."
The new GM took over from interim council boss Mark Riley at the start of October. Long-term general manager Hein Basson resigned earlier this year.
The Tasmanian-born accountant said he will spend weeks being a "sponge", meeting staff and the community to understand the dynamics of the town. In an earlier interview with the Examiner he revealed ideas about getting regular flights back to the Glen Innes airport.
But he said the first priority is to "drought proof" the town.
"We've got to start looking at how we can actually drought proof ourselves," he said.
"What can we learn from this drought or previous droughts to try to lessen the damage; climate change is happening - what can we do to try and manage that in the future."
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