Kate Peddle, Flinders Mayor – Shire update (15 September)

0:00Rural Queensland today, Ben Doblin with you this morning. Kate Petel joins us, the Flindershire Council Mayor. She joins us off the back of some really great stuff that's been happening. Lots of good stuff happening in the Flinders. Couple of questions to be asked. Kate, good morning and thanks so much for being with us. Good morning, Doblin. Thanks for having me. Wonderful to talk to you. We'll start with the negatives and then we'll get to the positives. Can you tell me why, and I know this, you'll be so frustrated on this, why we haven't got construction with the Copper String project underway. Please tell me, I am at a loss. You guys want it, it's ready. Everybody's waiting, yet we have. We're not seeing anything happen at the moment. I mean, even Joseph O'Brien just shakes his head and disbelief back here in Brisbane. Where are we at with it? Yes, number one frustration and some, a continual conversation, but we do have earthworks happening. So there's some progress, probably compared to the last time that I spoke to you,

1:00but yes, these projects just seem to take far too long, but I could see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel and that's in the way of the substation earthworks. Yeah, so once that happens, it's going to take some time. You can see the potential for it. It will open up your town and surrounding areas, but have we got any sort of time frame on it? I reckon it was three or four years ago that this all started and we should be operational. I mean, Robbie goes on about it. I know you're frustrated about it. Is there any real answers coming out about timelines? I think the short answer is no, but I don't necessarily get bogged down and not so much now because I just, I have a level of common sense about it and practicality. And to me, you're not going to dump as much money as they are into doing the earthworks and getting the substation prepared. We're working through traffic management plans for all of the electrical components

2:01that are coming out for the substation. So that's why I say I see light at the end of the tunnel because as much as I would like to think the government operates as practical and as much common sense as what we do, those two things together make me believe that it's certainly moving forward. But in terms of tight timeline, no, I certainly don't have anything like that. But like you said, three or four years, I thought by the end of my first term is now out here that we would have seen a far more construction than what we are. And we really can't believe that it's taken this long. I don't think anybody can. One of the good stories, though, for the flenders and one, something that you haven't mucked around, the beautiful part of you being merecate is that you don't take bullshit and you haven't come through bureaucracy your whole life. So when you want to get something done, you just go and rip the band-aid off and try and get it done. And that's very much like what you've done with the $20 million investment you got for upgrading your full-ball project

3:02through the flenders' shark. And you just talked to us about that because that was a great new story I read last week about now. You hadn't mucked around. There was more storage needed. There was more upgrades to your water network done. Yet now I wanted to put their hand up. Everybody would say, hi, it'll be all right. And you just said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We actually need this and you got the result. Thank you, but I'm not sure I'm entirely the silver bullet because our first conversation about co-posturing enabled a fair bit of leverage that we were able to use ultimately with the treasurer. And I mean, there's not another person we think cabinet there that supports the co-posturing project as much as the treasurer. And that enabled me early, early on to have the conversations about what the pressure and with going to be on our community and ultimately it was us doing a lot of investigating into our water and sewage and what our capacity was and what our failings were. And not trying to sugarcoat it all, but just take it head on, what's in all and figure out what the issue was and then leverage and work with the treasurer

4:02to be able to secure that funding to fix it. Well, so what happens now? You've secured the funding. What happens now? Yeah, so it's a pretty big project. It's not one fix. And I think that was the issue that was seen historically. Councils don't have a lot of a coin in reserve to be able to just continue throwing money investigating what the problem is or doing quick fixes and hoping that it will work. So like I said, we did spend a lot of money and time actually trying to figure out what the issue was within the network. And the combination is, chlorine was mandated quite some time ago now and we have very old infrastructure. So it was somewhat stripping the parts that we had, but equally we don't have a water treatment plant. So the actual dispersion of the chlorine itself wasn't being done well. So the water treatment plant is a large component of that project of works. But we also have really old boards. Some of our boards are 160 years old and they've had a good innings but they certainly need an upgrade. So I think the first things that we'll start to see

5:04now that we've sort of shifted out of planning or went to execution is the replacement of a few of those boards and we have a tender out at the moment for the design and constructs for our first water treatment plant which shows the dispersion of the chlorine. And it needs to happen. So you ride on that off the back of that and off the back of it and we're talking with Mayor Kay Petal from the Flindershire, you've done a 10 to 15 year plan, master plan on making sure that you and an upgrade and the projected growth that's going to come because you talk about the water upgrade, you talk about copper string, we understand that he's going to open up the North and you've done a 10 to 15 year plan where you've looked at everything and expecting the significant growth and projected growth and you've looked at everything and one of it includes a new 25 meter heated pool, carabin park upgrades, improved shades, landscaping, footpaths, youth facilities, the water, the infrastructure. This is a lot of forward thinking

6:05that hasn't happened out of here for a long time and you can actually see it, you're going to make sure that there is, I mean, $38 million vision is a lot to see Hewitt and Leisure Centre overhauled over the next 10 to 15 years. That's important. Yeah, very important, but that's my confidence. I think perhaps what the community has seen over the last two years is, you know, it's going in multiple different directions but we've really landed at a point now where all those directions that we were heading are all interconnected. So as you say, planning and, you know, the development that we've need to do behind the scenes in terms of what we're actually going to progress with has taken a really long time. So the way I look at my term is the first two years, we've really hooked in, we identified the problems that start with, we figured out, all right, how are we going to fix the problems and then what does the future look like? And again, we've just been really lucky having, you know, fair few big projects and, you know, other developments happening in our community or potential ones that we needed to get on the front foot and figure out well, how do we capitalise on the growth that's on our doorstep and make sure that we're positioned to give confidence

7:05only to people that want to move out here but also continue to create a great environment for people that choose to live here now. So the leisure precinct is a part of that. We do a huge community needs assessment and ultimately that's given us the toolkit. So when I'm sitting down and I'm talking to wind developers, I'm not, I'm not guessing, I'm not picking up the phone last minute trying to figure out what the community needs. We've got it all and we know in priority order exactly what our community needs and want for at least 10, 15 years. So when this and this will all happen, it will happen but we're the wind project you just touched on. You get the copper string up, you got the infrastructure, you got the water, you got the growth, the town's going in the right direction. Will there be the renewable push? Like you guys want it? You're one of the councils that want that. So it is there and has that been identified that potentially you will get the turbines there and that is going to happen in your community. Yeah, we certainly hope so. I don't know about your list,

8:06it's not rerolling their eyes at the moment but again, I know it's all relative on land space. I think everybody here and a lot of listeners roll their eyes because of the setbacks on like highly sought up and smaller properties like in gender, our entire, but when you get to the flinders and there's people that want that and that can offset some of their income, we've got no problem with it. It's just in that smaller areas that, and prime agricultural land on the downs where everybody just shagged their head in disbelief. But I think if your district wants it, they should be embracing it. We really believe that. So will it happen? Yeah. It's certainly a numbers game up here for us and we've had many conversations about what it will do for our economy ultimately, but you're dead, right? It's our landholders that are embracing it. No one is really pushing against it and again, it's a numbers game. And we don't really find it to the argument, you know, in the same in like, quite black and white when there's a whole lot of area

9:06in the middle which creates opportunities for our communities. So in terms of tolerance and whether I think it's going to go ahead, I think that's more of a political question for our leaders, but then the message that I could get to today is you need to look at communities like flinders, see what resources they have to capture. Again, we don't have any critical minerals here. We've got a very strong agricultural industry. We raise beef cattle out here and we have an opportunity to diversify that. And I think again, they're all interconnected in terms of co-pasturing. We have to be very careful about how much pushback report on developers out here, particularly in regards to wind, because we might be generating electricity from wind, but what co-pasturing needs is that generation to be able to supply the demands that we see on the coast. But if we start threatening the generators and we start threatening the mines to the west, the consumers, then we're going to have a real problem with trying to get co-pasturing validated again and ensure that it's a confident investment from the government. And I don't want any risk associated to that, by people pushing against it, perceiving wrong reasons. No, and so everybody's on board.

10:10The F-triple, you've got a lot of positives. They've given a lot of money within to you guys, some funding rounds. And we're going to talk with the F-triple out of tomorrow. But money is going in there. The freight is going into you. You're getting your freight lines right. But it was a great story about, out of your neck of the woods, about the funding community funding projects. And the F-triple have strengthening rural communities, Croydon, Hildon, Richmond, Boulier, DumaG, all of them are receiving money. And the latest ones, like unbelievable, $10,000 to establish the Hildon bullsaw. Like, that's the kind of stuff that's making a difference. Yeah, and I think that represents the feeling in the community. I certainly hope it does. People are seeing a bit of confidence in the future and our opportunity for growth is there. So you'll be start to see locals doing incredible things like that in the bullsaw. I mean, how exciting.

11:11Our private business is already sponsored for it. So we're keen to jump on. It's very exciting. Yeah, wonderful. Hildon and the Flanders is doing a great job. And there's no surprises. You as mayor, things are starting to progress. You took a commercial mindset and brought it into the political landscape. And your town is going great, guns, you should be congratulated. There's still a lot of challenges. And one thing you don't want to do is take Cape Petal on in a fight because you are like a dog with a bone. And things are happening in your neck of the woods. So I congratulate you. I do want to see the copper screen get underway. It's an important integral part. I'd appreciate your time this morning on rural Queensland today. Thanks very much to the appreciated. Good on you Cape Petal. This is rural Queensland today with Ben Dolvin.