Council spends money each year to improve the liveability of the region through its events and conference attraction programs. Bringing sporting events and conferences to our region provides bed nights for our hotels and increased spending in our eateries and retail shops. But as important, it exposes visitors to our region in the hope that it will encourage them to come back for a holiday or even better, decide to move here for the lifestyle. The Mackay region can support thousands more residents without the need to drastically upgrade its infrastructure.
The more people that live here, the more the rates burden is shared across the region, leading to lower rates rises. Over the last six years council has worked hard to make the rates burden fairer. In 2016 we had the highest rates in Queensland in our category. Now we are down at eighth spot and moving further down. Rates rises over the same period have been below 1.5 per cent on average.
To help with that we need to take advantage of the other ways to improve and diversify our economy and liveability. I sit on the board of Mackay Isaac Tourism as Mackay Regional Council’s representative to ensure that the money council invests into tourism gets the best return it can for the residents. The national visitor survey results are now in, showing that 679,000 business travellers came through the region over the last 12 months – that’s a 3.6 per cent increase on the previous year and a 65 per cent increase since 2019, making it a new record for the Mackay Isaac Region.
We are on the precipice of tourism making a full comeback to our region just by taking better advantage of what we already have. Council has been helping businesses in the Valley understand the wants and needs of the up to 30,000 mountain bikers visiting to the region at the completion of the world class mountain bike park linking Finch Hatton and Eungella.
As part of the Mackay Waterfront Priority Development Area Riverside Revitalisation Project, council is building a pontoon in the Pioneer River to create new opportunities for commercial tourism right from the CBD. We have operators already heading out there regularly, go and have a look! We can build tourism back up and past what it used to be if we all believe that we’re all in the business of selling tourism.
Cr Justin Englert
Mackay Regional Council
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