2025. The year of make or break for our Noosa Council

As our not-so-new Noosa Council approaches its first full year in March, the settling in period is over. The time for excuses is past.  2025 will be the year that makes, or breaks, this Council.

It will be the year that allows voters to decide whether they’ve elected Councillors prepared to provide leadership and forward planning, or more of the same comfortable complacency that – for many – has come to define our local government.

Our Council has a well-known tendency to get lost in the weeds of planning – or TALKING about plans…too many strategies, too many spinning plates to balance, too many acronyms.  All, while avoiding the difficult tasks.

The forward-thinkers on Council staff – and there are some very good ones – struggle to be heard over the big business interests of Noosa and the screaming cesspit of social media.

One of the biggest challenges facing our local government can be seen this way: does it possess the leadership to restore the balance in Noosa back towards residents, instead of the runaway trains of over-tourism and Short Term Accommodation?

Test 1. How much ratepayers’ cash should would give away to special industry interests?

The first test will come when Council decides soon whether to continue pouring ratepayers’ cash – $2.52 million of it – onto the bonfire of over-tourism, with its indefensible annual handout to pay the staff of Tourism Noosa to concoct ways to bring ever more visitors here.  The special pleading by TN comes in constant lobbying via local media and directly to Councillors.  Their current argument seems to be that the level of ratepayer funding hasn’t increased in several years, so it’s going backward against inflation.  Rather than attempt to mount a cohesive argument for the free cash handout for one industry, it’s replaced by an argument that the funding (which ratepayers should not be paying) isn’t as much as it could be. Right. So, they’re doing us a favour by not demanding even more?

Underneath all of this, those close to the local political game understand that there is always the implied threat from Tourism operators that if Councillors turn off the free money hose, the industry will come for them in the next election campaign.  This is a genuinely held fear in Council, and at decision time – this threat lurks in the shadows.  It’s at the heart of the timidity of Noosa Council.  As Noosa Matters has reported, Tourism Noosa is not shy about flexing its lobbying muscle when it comes to its own self-interest in that big bag of money.

Test 2. A destination for tourist dollars, or a place to live?

The long-delayed Destination Management Plan is also close to finally being hatched, but there’ve been few signs that this will be a genuine exercise in rebalancing the ledger in favour of residents.  As Tony Wellington suggests elsewhere in Noosa Matters, the name of this exercise alone gives a hint about who’s driving it. It should have been called The Resident Liveability Plan, with all that implies about what should be the priority here.

Test 3. Will we make a real dent in the STA juggernaut?

Finally, residents are demanding real action to reduce the scourge of STA mini hotels in our previously liveable residential streets?  The anger rising from many locals is palpable as they tire of waiting.  As we have previously painted the picture, an insufficiently unpolicedLocal Law is like parking an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.  Residents are only interested in policies that actually reduce the number of STA’s in a meaningful way.

Moving the dial on these issues will take some genuine leadership and a smoothly functioning Council.  Is either possible? 

Does our Council have the leadership required?

With this mounting to-do list, there’s been a significant brain-drain amongst Council staff with an increasing percentage who don’t (can’t afford to) live in Noosa Shire and have no idea of the history of activism that’s resulted in nearly half of Noosa being protected National Park or conservation land.  In other words, we’re in danger of having a Council that doesn’t really understand what it’s managing.

The first big decision of this leadership last year was to settle for the status quo by confirming the acting CEO in the top job rather than bringing in an agent of reform and change.  And politically, while this Council is – on paper at least – less fractured than the previous one…Councillor Amelia Lorentsen has stepped into the self-appointed role of ‘opposition leader’ with new Councillor Jess Phillips firmly in her corner.  In December both voted against changes to the Noosa Plan designed to tackle our affordable housing crisis, siding with a small number of vocal residents who did not want their future right to build a much bigger house on their large block in the medium density zone taken away.   As always, public policy attempting to fit more affordable apartments into Noosa can be a bitter pill to swallow for some residents. With the exception of Tom Wegener, the Council still hasn’t tried to explain what the changes really mean, and why they’re important.

Every perceived misstep, every missed opportunity, every gap in the Council’s ability to tell a cohesive story – will be leapt on by the ‘opposition bloc’ in Council, as will this Council’s inability to explain and communicate what it wants to do – and why.

This Council’s second year will be one that either defines it as a force for residents and the environment, or simply a seat-warmer for the next administration in three years time.

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Dear Ric and Noosa Matters, thank you for the article…Lets also ask if the Mayor and Councillors have the courage to exempt purpose-built resorts, as most agree resorts were accidently caught up in the short stay let local law. …With budget pressure and constraints, as articulated in this article, let’s see if resorts get exempted so resources can be shifted so the focus is back on Residents’ concerns, after all wasn’t that the purpose of the local law in the first place … to protect residents from poorly managed properties in residential areas? It is the 4th year we have been lobbying but seems there are $500,000 plus reasons why resorts (other than those in Hastings St and other precincts granted special exemptions) are not exempted from the local law that we all know does nothing for self-regulating resorts. Cheers and thanks Cathy

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