General Business - February 26 2025 Ordinary Meeting

Published on 28 February 2025

Cr James Coghlan

I just want to congratulate the Mayor and the CEO and anyone else involved in the Roadmap launch event the other day. I think it was fantastic.

It’s got great promotion for Mount Isa and it showed people that we’re here and we’re serious, and I think the work you have done, you should be congratulated on.

For me, my focus now is on our social infrastructure here. I think we really have to, as a Council, help community groups to survive until the benefits of what’s been done start to arrive, because once things drop off the radar, it’s very hard to start.

The mines built this town. They built the houses, the schools, the hospitals. They built everything.

That now falls on the State Government, so your housing, your schools, and also your medical and so forth.

But the social infrastructure that the mines used to look after? It’s up to Council now, and we need to do more for sports and for organisations, to try and help them survive.

Because our big push now, if we’ve got all these industries coming – we want young families to come, and young families will only come if there are things to do and opportunities for their kids.

So we need to work really hard on supporting our social infrastructure and those organisations, so that they’re here, and when people come, they’ve got something to do and they’re utilised – because that’s the only way we’re going to get people to stay.

Cr John Tully

I would just like to thank everyone who went out for the Lake Moondarra cleanup that they organised recently.

It was done fairly quickly and got a good result, so I think it’s something this Council probably may have to look at, where that stuff’s coming from, going forward, to see if it can stop before it gets to there. So we might have to look at that in the future.

Governments have been putting a lot of money into Mount Isa in the last couple of years, and I think, as a Council, we’ve got to jump on that bandwagon as well and start going with them.

So I think, we may be not in the financial situation to be able to do it today, but it’s something we’ve got to think about in the next five years, because they’ve spent a lot of money in all the schools, they’ve upgraded all the schools, and we need all this stuff here for young people to come, because young people today have gone into a more wanting world – they want that to happen, and to have it.

So Mount Isa may not have had it before, but going forward, we have to have it.

I think, going into the next three years that we have left, we all start putting our thinking caps on and see where we definitely need to go in the next 100 years.

Cr Travis Crowther

The Roadmap launch event on February 21 was a great success.

Obviously, it’s now up to the State and Federal governments to now have a look at that and really see that we mean business, and that the advantages of investing into Mount Isa are going to come back to them in royalties down the track.

So they really need to look at supporting us, so then we can support them in their ventures going forward.

The current initiatives like Powerlink [CopperString 2032], we’ve got to make sure that comes through, because that backs up a lot of those projects that we’ve got in the pipeline.

We’ve got to then make sure that we’re advocating for that, as well as the continuation of Powerlink and getting that powerline connected to the National Energy Market.

Congratulations to Allan Hazle for successfully defending his [boxing world] title. He went to Townville and put Mount Isa again on the map. He’s doing well and I congratulate him on that.

Cr John Doyle

I wanted to talk to our community about taking some accountability and pride within our schools, our sporting groups, our social outings, our venues and everything.

Because I’ve been doing a lot of work deep in the community for probably 10 years, and I’m seeing more and more – and it’s a global thing, too – where we’re getting a lot of unsafe behaviours – bullying, a lot of toxicity in certain environments – which are leading to, unfortunately, suicides and stuff.

I really just want to reiterate to our community to make sure you’re safe, you’re responsible, if you are working with anybody that’s disadvantaged or disengaged, that you do so with the means of thinking how you would treat your own family members.

Because I just want to make sure, if we’re going to put all this stuff in this community, that we can enjoy it and we can thrive on it, and everybody can be as happy as they can be within this area.

We’ve got a beautiful town, a beautiful community, the landscape out here is amazing. I just want to make sure we cherish it and take those opportunities, to make sure we don’t make places uncomfortable for some people that don’t have a comfortable home.

Some of our kids and our youths don’t have a nice home, they don’t have comfortable residences, so they go to school to look for something comfortable. They go to a sporting organisation to look for something comfortable and safe, and to get some confidence and positivity.

If we have people that are engaging in toxic behaviours and so forth, then we really need to make sure we keep each other honest and accountable for said behaviours.

I just want to see our community thrive and our young people be our next leaders, around this table, and further on, having a beautiful place with beautiful people to be able to lead.

I just want to make sure, our community, we look out for each other.

If you need anything, there’s so many services, so many groups, there’s so much here for you to access. Make sure you access it, and be honest if you need help. You need help, we all do. Ask for it, take it.

Allan Hazle, yes, he kept his world title, but Sunny Raitava just actually got inducted into the World Hall of Fame for Masters boxing, so that’s a massive thing for our community.

He’s been quietly achieving things and really making a good push and a good advocacy for Mount Isa, our community, and our sporting environments.

We’ve got Isa Warriors, who have been going away on carnivals, bringing together all the clubs in town, rugby league clubs – Townies, Wanderers, Brothers – and some external people giving young people some opportunities.

We’ve got RISE, the basketball here is starting to pick up – thanks to all the people at basketball – so we’ve got a lot of good things in our community.

And we’ve got a lot of talent – not just sports, academically we’ve got a young fella from here, Jose, he just got honours over at [James Cook] University [in Townsville], so he’s coming back here to work and do things and give back to our community.

I’m just really proud of our community and the things that we’re achieving and I just want to make sure the rest of us have the same mindset and we can all move forward together in our positive futures.

Cr Dan Ballard

I wanted to follow up with Councillor Tully’s remarks earlier about the Lake Moondarra cleanup, and congratulate Darryl Avery and Jay Morris on their efforts in organising the event.

Thanks to the local small businesses for sponsoring and getting on board, including Cr Tully for the provision of his flatbed truck to help remove some of that rubbish.

I thought it was a great show of community spirit – a couple of people just getting on with the job at hand.

And there’s a lot of work to be done out there, but it’s a credit to them that they were able to do it on short notice.

I thought the Welcome to Mount Isa event was very well attended. It’s a double-edged sword when you get rain – we’re not in a position to ever wish we weren’t getting it, but it would probably be ideal if it would hold off for one of those events one year.

It’s great to see a lot of young professionals coming to Mount Isa outside of university.

I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about, the people that are looking to Mount Isa as an opportunity to get into the housing market, and with all of the employment opportunities that we present.

I left that event with a real sense of optimism and I thought it was well executed by the staff at the Civic Centre.

Council’s budget process is well underway. It’s not ideal where the Local Government elections fall every four years and how quickly after we’re sworn in that we have to try and pass a budget.

We’ve got the opportunity to get well ahead of the curve now that we’ve been in for a little while.

There’s a lot of work being done behind the scenes, but we can’t ignore the fact that we have the challenges of delivering a standard of service using an infrastructure that was built to support a population significantly larger than what Mount Isa presently has.

That doesn’t change the cost of maintaining that infrastructure to an acceptable standard, even though there’s less people to help share the load of that.

While we’re doing everything we can to try and pass a budget that is fair and equitable and keeps any rate increases as low as possible, I think it would be ignorant of us to pretend like there aren’t some real challenges in the short term for us, while we try and get everything online and maintain that standard that our community has every right to expect from us.

Deputy Mayor Kim Coghlan

A big shout out to Splashez Aquatic Centre. Shae there has done a course and what she’s starting to do is run Bub and Me Aqua Active classes on Sunday mornings for babies aged 3 months to 5 years with the mum.

It’s $12 a class, it goes for 30 minutes, and we’re going to hold it on Sundays from 9.15am ‘til 11am.

I’m pretty sure Shae is one of the first ones in Queensland to do this. She had to go away and get properly trained for it, so it’s a great initiative that she’s taken on board.

There was also a swimming carnival for the region at Splashez a couple of weekends ago, and by all accounts it was very successful.

I do apologise to members of the public that did go down to have a swim and it was actually closed, but I think the benefits to the Mount Isa community and what our swimmers get from these competitions overwhelms that.

I know there have been a lack of shows in Mount Isa at the moment.

There’s an ABBA show going around Queensland and Australia at the moment, so I’m hoping that our Council are looking at bringing that here.

On the weekend there was an ‘80s music event that got 300 tickets sold just like that, so I’m sure that, if you bring the ABBA show to Mount Isa, it would be well presented.

After Friday’s [Roadmap launch] event, I think Council cannot take the foot off the pedal. We are the ones that have to keep going to the government and keep pushing.

We can’t leave it to the governments to do what we need to do to keep our city alive, because with what’s happening with Powerlink now.

I don’t believe that line should be going from Townsville to Hughenden – it should be coming from Hughenden to Mount Isa.

I think they’re doing everything in their power to try and stop this, so I think, as a Council, we need to not take the foot off the pedal. We are the ones that have to keep us in the forefront of the government.