Mayoral Minute - March 2025

Published on 27 March 2025

This month sees us reach a significant milestone of 12 months since the Local Government elections.

Time has flown by, and I’d like to recognise some specific achievements and thank some people.

I started the first Mayoral Minute with the following paragraph and I’d like to repeat it here, because it remains as true today as it did then.

Firstly, I’d like to express my deep appreciation to the community for electing me to be your Mayor.

Let it be known that I am extremely happy with the Councillors that have been elected. Although we face challenges over this term due to the macroeconomic environment, it has been demonstrated already that they are dedicated to their new positions, and their core priority is creating the best outcomes for the community.

So, after a year in, I think it’s pretty good that we can still remain true to that and say that we’ve had a great run this year.

Some of the things we’ve been able to achieve as a team this year include: we’ve been able to open the slide at the pool; we’ve commissioned the MRF (Material Recovery Facility); there’s new playground equipment at the Camooweal park; we’ve completed our Parks Replacement Program; we celebrated the Civic Centre’s 50th birthday; we launched our Future Economy Roadmap; and we held the North Queensland Sportstar Awards here in Mount Isa for the first time in 35 years.

We were there for the last iteration of the previous rodeo and dealt with the fallout of that. We were able to negotiate some money to pay out rodeo creditors and were able to see in a new rodeo committee, and we wish them the best of luck for next year going forward.

We attended the 100-year events of Glencore – the Not Casa Ball, the Family Fun Event, the community concert, the Miners’ Memorial, and the outdoor movie night.

We saw the opening of the Mount Isa Country Universities Centre.

Councillor Ballard and I did Sober October for the RFDS, and did our 100km walk a week for the month.

Welcoming Week was celebrated with the citizenship ceremony taking place in Centennial Park, and that was a really popular and successful event.

Councillors all went as a united team to the Local Government Association of Queensland Annual Conference.

We congratulated our Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter on his 50 years in Parliament – the CEO and I travelled to Charters Towers to celebrate that in September 2024.

We held the Western Queensland Alliance of Councils meeting right here in Mount Isa. We had Senator Anthony Chisholm in attendance, the now Queensland Local Government Minister Ann Leahy, and also Gladstone Mayor Matt Burnett, who is the current president of both the Local Government Association of Queensland and the Australian Local Government Association, so it was great to be building on those relationships and having them understand properly the issues we’re facing here in Mount Isa.

In January, we had a visit from both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Queensland Premier David Crisafulli.

We’ve signed three Memoranda of Understanding – with Green Gravity, the Flying Whales, and Cobalt Blue.

For the future, looking forward, we’re looking at re-establishing the cross-border alliance, advocating for a Special Economic Zone, and we look forward to seeing what the new rodeo committee can deliver.

We’re going to continue to advocate for North West Water, to be able to achieve better water pricing for our community.

We also look forward to welcoming new Directors of Corporate Services and Infrastructure Services.

Last week I had the opportunity to present at the Meet the Buyer Forum and the MITEZ Forum and advocate for a Special Economic Zone, on behalf of the North West Minerals Province.

I’ll be continuing to be doing this with the North West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils next week in Parliament.