Moreton Bay’s business community has come out in support of Moreton Bay Regional Council’s bid for reclassification to a ‘City’ council after a presentation delivered to more than 100 prominent local businesspeople on Friday.
Moreton Bay Mayor, Peter Flannery said the audience was overwhelmingly positive to the keynote delivered by Archipelago Architect and Director, Peter Edwards, with 71% of the respondents saying they ‘strongly support’ a reclassification.
“Moreton Bay will always be a ‘region’ but we’ve certainly outgrown our ‘Regional Council’ title with a population that’s already much larger than other cities like Canberra, Newcastle and Hobart,” he said.
“I’m sure there were plenty of sceptics in the crowd on Friday prior to the presentation, but the overwhelming response afterward was that people were strongly in favour of the change.
“In fact, 71% of the audience who responded said they support the proposal to reclassify Moreton Bay from regional council to a city council.
“The fear is that a ‘City’ will turn Moreton Bay into a carpark or concrete jungle, but actually the complete opposite is true.”
Mayor Flannery said he wanted to embrace the region’s many existing communities and towns to spread opportunity and reduce traffic to one central location, to create Queensland’s first subtropical “polycentric city” with many centres.
“This will create more job opportunities locally, better traffic flow, more greenspaces, and a better connection to our beautiful existing environment,” he said.
“And when I meet with federal politicians in Canberra to secure funding for our region, they won’t think of Moreton Bay is a backwater shire in rural Queensland.”
He said 42% of the presentation audience considered a reclassification was ‘very important’ to their day-to-day life and work in the region, followed by 32% who said it was ‘somewhat important’.
“We asked the businesspeople in the room what issues came to mind, and the most prominent words were ‘environment’ and ‘cost’ which is hugely encouraging to me.”
“Council is focused on ‘Greening as we grow’ through multiple initiatives like our new Land Buyback for Environmental Purposes Program and the rollout of our new Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) service.
“And I can categorically say Council won’t be rushing out to change signage or any paraphernalia, and it won’t come at a major cost to ratepayers.
“But most pleasing was the number of respondents who said, ‘Just do it!’, so please get online and make your voice heard before the survey timeframe ends on May 30,” the Mayor said.
SchoolAid found and CEO, Sean Gordon, who attended the recent presentation, said he welcomed the possibility of Moreton Bay being seen as “a city in stature”.
“I like the opportunity that it provides for equity, for access, for connectivity and for jobs and so forth. It ticks a lot of boxes for me,” he said.
While The Sebel Margate beach General Manager, Kathryn Dearing said the prospect of a reclassification was very exciting for the region.
“I love the idea of the polycentric centre. I think we need to understand the area needs more accommodation, more hotels, so not just come to the beach, but come to the hinterland.”
