“We’re a tourist town, anyway”. I hear this from our local politicians all the time and I wonder, does anyone really think that’s all we are? Cr Lorentson used this term last week in an article extolling the virtues of short-term letting in our residential suburbs (Noosa Today 29 July). This got me thinking about how those representing us at the local level have the power to form our hard-won Noosa values on town planning regulations into a commodity that can be bought and sold on a housing market.
How about we’re a Shire that welcomes visitors which has a dynamic as a desirable place to live, work, and relax based on a long history of resident action to protect our environment? And how about ensuring that running a high-impact small business in residential zones is not okay and never has been! It’s not good enough for our councillors to throw their hands up in the air and let digital disruption creep into the very fabric of our society, our residential suburbs.
According to Cr Lorentson, we need to “stop blaming and punishing mum and dad investors with mortgages, families and life plans who are providing short term visitor accommodation.” The mention of mums and dads evokes the renting out of a room or two and this has long been the case. In fact, who doesn’t prefer staying in a B&B compared to a more impersonal hotel, where you get the lie of the land and the resident’s knowledge of the best things to see and do around town. But mum and dad investors aren’t behind the growth of whole-house, short-term lets. These are purchased by investors, taking advantage of planning code gaps and they are proliferating in coastal precincts, blurring the division between tourist accommodation zones and residential ones.
If there were proper planning guidelines to protect our residential areas, these investors could do their thing in properly zoned tourist areas, not smack in the middle of suburbs where working families and retirees are trying to live a quiet life, especially on evenings and weekends. Why should this be stolen from them because someone sees lax council planning as an opportunity? Why should they drive home past overflowing garbage bins, through roads blocked with vehicles each side of narrow streets, outside noisy party-houses. It’s clear our infrastructure was not planned with mini-hotel zones in mind, and the remedies are another burden on ratepayers already funding mega Noosa-style tourism infrastructure projects that are sucking money from resident amenity improvements.
A Planning Issue
This is not just a management and control issue, this is a planning issue and planning staff recently decided that turning over nearly half a suburb to STAs is a step too far. Instead of following staff recommendations at the last council meeting, the mayor called for a suspension of standing orders to put a motion that would see study statistics used to determine STA applications. Passed unanimously, the return to council business saw recent STA applications, recommended for refusal by council planning staff, subsequently approved. This change on the run, without community consultation, is not optimal. Where residents nearby to these potential STA properties were hoping, if not expecting, their suburb would be protected, they found the retrospective policy applied to their detriment.
Cr Wegener wrote recently (Noosa Today 22 ;sJuly), “…as we continue to approve STAs in medium density, the amenity will be lost, precedents set, and the expectation of a predominantly residential neighbourhood will be turned into a tourist precinct”. He notes that the town plan hasn’t changed, the residential environment changed, and hence council planners were reacting to the changes in the interests of local residents.
As far as Shire employment goes, let’s get the statistics straight. There’s been a lot of misinformed discussion recently about the tourism industry being the top employer. It turns out that the employment statistics referred to includes part-time employment. The correct way to compare employment by industry is to compare Full-time Equivalent (FTE) employment. The Council website has the latest data and it shows construction employs 15.1% of the those working, followed (equally) by Healthcare and Tourism with 12.7%. It’s clear that tourism is getting a disproportional amount of attention from Council at a time when we need more diversification of the economy. Right now, we have our roads clogged with day trippers, the most unsustainable form of visitation imaginable, and the least value to the local economy of all industries.
Noosa residents are largely unaware of this issue until their quiet street becomes a tourist zone. Then they find themselves up against the ever larger and more powerful tourism industry lobby, and a council with few laws to protect them, and insufficient resources to control the industry. While Council is now looking to create bylaws to solve some issues like noise level compliance, it can only, at best, ameliorate the situation. Towns and cities in other states have had more support from state governments on short-term lets, but Queensland has stepped back from its responsibility here. The announcement by Council of further studies into affordable house and STA encroachment on residential zones is a good step forward, but kicking the can down the road on this issue with a study is not enough. Planning staff provided a way forward and Council rejected it. It’s time they took a tougher stance.
Mr Ritchie, as far as Shire employment goes, let’s get the statistics straight. It’s so easy to misinform people by quoting only a portion of available information.
The Council’s website’s latest economic data includes a section titled ‘Tourism and hospitality’ which explains the following:
“Tourism and hospitality are key industries and major contributors to Australia’s economy. However it has not been well represented in economic profiles in the past, because it actually includes parts of many different traditional industries. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publish the “Tourism Satellite Account” which is a separate set of national accounts which look at the value and contribution of tourism in the national economy.”
The council’s website goes on to show that in 2020 employment in the tourism and hospitality sector had 4209 FTEs (full time equivalent), being 24.1% of the shire’s industry.
This compares with 2806 FTEs in construction (15.1%) and 2345 in Healthcare and Social Assistance (12.7%).
The statistic of only 12.7% quoted by you in your article is actually not for ‘tourism’ according to council’s website, but for a subset called ‘accommodation and food services’. Tourism is a much larger segment of Noosa’s economy.
That is why tourism is often referred to as an important economic driver in Noosa Shire.
But then lets unpack that a little more and think 2020 – the time of Covid, and even more so 2021 – any statistics may be flawed. Yesterday I lunched at a local restaurant, which was pretty much at full capacity…….with locals. So while hospitality might be an economic driver we can’t lump all hospitality in with tourism. The locals, including Ingrid and Rod, do go out for coffee, lunch and dinner. What proportion of hospitality activity can be attributed to tourism and what proportion to locals will vary for each business, but I’d suggest that for many, and particularly in 2020/21, locals make up a large proportion of their clientele.
Ms Jackson questions my tourism employment figures (NT 27 August) using outdated data to extrapolate inflated estimates of the flow-on affect from tourism to other industries. For the past year or more, there has been been way less benefit for our ancillary industries, as lockdowns and border closures have drastic effects on the hospitality industry. In fact, the flow-on effects to other industries from our booming construction and health sectors will likely push them well ahead of tourism.
It’s important that, at the time when council is considering a new there-year funding agreement with Tourism Noosa, there is open community discussion on how much one industry should be subsidised at the expense of others. Especially since council has only observer status on the Tourism Noosa board. Currently their prime marketing campaign consists of promoting the drive market and asking residents to consider staycations. Considering these markets know the place already, what sort of value is this that warrants a $2.5m hand-out each year?
Ms Jackson questions my tourism employment figures using outdated data to extrapolate inflated estimates of the flow-on affect from tourism to other industries. For the past year or more, there has been been much less benefit for our ancillary industries, as lockdowns and border closures have had drastic effects on the hospitality industry. In fact, the flow-on effects to other industries from our booming construction and health sectors will likely push them well ahead of tourism.
It’s important that, at the time when council is considering a new there-year funding agreement with Tourism Noosa, there is open community discussion on how much one industry should be subsidised at the expense of others. Especially since council has only observer status on the Tourism Noosa board. Currently their prime marketing campaign consists of promoting the drive market and asking residents to consider staycations. Considering these markets know the place, what sort of value is this that warrants a $2.5m hand-out each year?