Skip to main content

Key Issues

As we approach this crucial election, it’s essential we focus on the key issues that need to be addressed at QPRC. At the core of these issues is the dire financial condition that Council claimed to be in to convince IPART to permit a 64% rate increase over three years while simultaneously reducing services to ratepayers.

In our lifetimes, have economic challenges ever been more pressing for individuals and families? Despite government and media assurances that inflation is under control, we feel the strain every time we shop. Their words are hollow. Today’s $150 grocery bag was just $75 a few years ago, and this inflationary pressure extends to accommodation, electricity, clothing, childcare, transport, entertainment, and beyond.

‘They’ are not going to take care of us and help us make ends meet. Only we, with eyes wide open, through our vote, will help ourselves. It’s now or never, time to reclaim and apply our authority by voting to reform one form of excessive taxation – Rates and Charges.

The challenges we face are not just about managing current problems but also about setting a course for respectful, effective, and subordinate governance. Money won’t buy happiness, but its absence will cause a lot of grief.  It’s either sharp financial adjustment at Council or sharper financial adjustment at our homes.

As I see it, these are the key points to tackle as soon as the new council is seated.

Excessive Rates and Charges
Over the past eight years, QPRC Councillors and the Administrator have plunged the Council into unprecedented debt through expenditures on projects that are neither economically positive nor broadly beneficial to our community.

Their lack of understanding of the implications for renters and ratepayers shows they are out of their depth. Vanity projects and developer-welfare initiatives have been prioritised over the real needs of our community. To alleviate the burden of excessive rates, we need Councillors who are economically competent, detail-oriented, and willing to stand up to bureaucratic, party, and state pressures.

Lackadaisical Financial Assessment of Spending Proposals
QPRC is in a dire financial situation, as evidenced by their request for a 97% rate rise last year due to piling up debt and cost overruns on multimillion-dollar vanity projects. This wasn’t the case in 2016 before the amalgamation. Over the past eight years, the Administrator and Councillors repeatedly approved expenditures that accumulated debt onto renters and ratepayers. How thorough was their analysis if they let that happen?

Before contracting us into high debt, did they seriously listen to the ratepayers who shoulder the financial responsibility for their decisions, or did they just rely on management recommendations and state directives – ‘the bosses’ as I’ve heard them called.  Is that how they’ve led Council to a pending financial calamity?  Are we not the bosses?

When we opened our rates and charges notice last month or heard from the landlord our rent was going up, the pain of their deeds hit home – our home. It’s time to replace Councillors who lack the economic insight necessary to safeguard residents’ household budgets and wellbeing.

Long and Obstructive Development Application Processes
The promised benefits of the 2016 forced amalgamation, such as faster development application processing, have not materialised. Residents report that the process has become slower, more tedious, and more obstructive, hindering efforts to open new businesses, create housing, or improve properties.

Charges on top of charges in these inflationary times is tone deaf to peoples’ struggles.  Unreasonable Councillors, influenced by their own biases, demand unnecessary and expensive reports, causing delays and discouraging initiative. For our community to benefit from development, we need a Council that delivers on the 40-day approval metric set down by the State for residents’ DA processing.

Talking Down to Residents

Council has a problem with residents – deep down they disrespect them.  That isn’t to say they don’t offer beads and trinkets to look like they care.  But spending hundreds of thousands of ratepayers’ dollars on concerts in parks and on useless “Place” opinion surveys are not signs of respect.

Clues of their disrespect can be seen when they send you a notice with 28 days to respond, but it only arrives 2 days before the deadline.  Or when they ignore Read Receipts so you can’t tell if they read your email or not. Or when they put a weeds removal demand on a property, when just outside its gate are the same weeds on Council’s property.  Or when it takes 3 months for them to acknowledge the receipt of a new DA, even though they can access it minutes after it’s lodged. Such examples of disrespect could fill a page.

Residents are the reason Council exists. This election you can remind them of that by voting for Councillors who are genuinely respectful of you, and are leaders of management, not followers.

Many candidates cannot provide clear undertakings to you of how you can count on them to think, to perform, and to do.  Some can’t because they won’t know what they will do until their party bosses tell them.  Some because they are shallow and see Council as a personal popularity contest and photoshoot.  And some, because they are just not too bright.  I’m independent, not in it for popularity, and can think well.  Click here to read what you can count on me to do for you and be held accountable for.

When QPRC sought a 97% rate increase, they admitted council was broken.
They claimed, you paying more rates and charges would repair it.
It will not.