[This post has been edited for clarity.]
It’s been a traumatic and sobering beginning of the year 2020. Australia is burning and many of us realise that we all will have to make some drastic choices over the next few years in our public as well as private lives. And at the same time our Council elections are looming large and campaigns are firing up.
On social media locals and some ‘wildlings’ from across the border talk passionately about politics and what matters to them. Many watch on. On facebook Noosa Community Notice Board, NET (Noosa Election Talk), Future of Noosa Discussions (FOND) and Noosa Community Ideas discussions heat up about candidates, their policies, affiliations, histories and so on. Besides some bickering and mild aggression everybody seems to be trying to keep things civil.
We thought it’s important to engage and perhaps offer another way of looking at things. We wanted to ask questions that go beyond the old ‘are you connected to the NPA’ or ‘are you connected to a real estate agent or developer’?
So we looked back through Open Noosa 2019 for issues that were important to us and resonated with the community. We also picked issues that have not been asked too often before.
So we are asking you, dear candidates, if you find the questions relevant please put your thinking caps on and send your answers to editor@opennoosa.org by 20 February 2020. Short is good. Please try staying under 150 words per answer. Thank you.
These are our 5 questions:
1Fixing crumbling infrastructure or keeping a budget surplus – what’s more important to you?
Like most of Queensland’s regional Councils, Noosa Shire’s storm and sewage water infrastructure is crumbling – especially so in our older suburbs and along low lying areas. The situation is made worse by increasingly frequent emergency situations like floods, fires and violent storms.
At Little Cove people have reported eye infections and septicaemia caused by sewage leaks. On Sunrise Beach where Burgess Creek enters the ocean signs warn of contaminated waste water and urge people not to swim. And yet Sunrise Beach is such a well surfed break.
Managing stormwater is a Noosa Council responsibility, plus Noosa Council as a shareholder of Unitywater is at least indirectly responsible for sewage infrastructure. Noosa Council seems to be kicking the can down the road whilst priding itself on a budget surplus. Would you commit to prioritising funding for infrastructure that is so important for the well being of residents and visitors alike?
2Active Transport – Would you commit to getting things moving?
Our Cycle Noosa initiative on facebook aimed to raise awareness of the importance of active transport infrastructure around the region. Check out Open Noosa on the topic of cycling. While Noosa has some excellent bikeways, there are many missing links that make it unsafe for residents, and especially school students, to use bicycles in their daily commutes.
Despite committing to Zero Emissions by 2026 and declaring a Climate Emergency, Noosa Council has only just started to update their sustainable transport strategy from 2004 to 2016. Very little has been implemented to connect existing infrastructure and to make cycling safer.
To make in-ways Noosa Council would need to actively collaborate with Sunshine Coast Council. If elected, would you commit to taking meaningful action and work with our neighbours to improve our active transport network?
3Would you support increasing Noosa Shire’s carrying capacity?
Drought, massive fires and floods will make many people homeless and more areas will become unliveable and/or uninsurable. We’ll sooner or later have to deal with climate change refugees – our own as well as from overseas – as the displaced start looking for somewhere ‘liveable’ to go. Whether we like it or not, we will need to share our place; it’s a moral imperative.
So we need to work out how can we grow food and resources sustainably and we need to get people onto the land and make living more affordable and equitable? Tiny houses and eco villages in combination with off the grid solutions whilst also reducing the need for car journeys should be at least part of the answer. Unfortunately we couldn’t find enough in the new Noosa Plan to support and encourage and enable people to do so. ‘Limited carrying capacity’ is often cited to make the ‘boomgates’ more palatable. So we would like to know where you stand on this and if you would be open for revisiting the population cap and look at increasing Noosa’s carrying capacity?
4Would you commit to trying harder to protect our Sunrise Glossies?
Recent mega fires have devastated huge amounts of wildlife habitat all across Australia. Reportedly twenty threatened species, including the Glossy Black Cockatoo, are closer to extinction.
It is now more important than ever to actively protect our Sunrise Beach Glossies. Even the Government calls it an ecological tragedy that is unfolding around us.
If you’re not across the whole saga as reported by Open Noosa we recommend starting with this one. If elected would you commit to protecting the Glossies and investigate a Blue Care land swap option to a different site, a site both less prone to fire-danger and ecologically less precious?
5Which long term climate change action(s) would you champion?
In 2019 Noosa Council rang climate emergency bells but without then telling people what council is going to do about it.
We trust the science and we do believe we are in a climate emergency, but without action calling an emergency is meaningless. Noosa Council has great staff with expert knowledge but they need more resources – both human and financial – to tackle all the challenges coming our way. We would like to know which longer term climate change action(s) you would champion.
Looking for ideas? Find some inspiration in our 2040 series. And should you get carried away and feel like writing your own 2040 vision, please do and send it to us for publication under your own name.
That’s it. Please send your answers to editor@opennoosa.org by 20 February 2020. Thank you.
Upwards and ONwards, there’s work to be done!
Desi & Betty
