Five Issues Forum
The Five Issues Forum was a one day event, with forums being held in two locations.
Jim Cavaye, Chair of the RDA DDSW writes, “The purpose of the forum is to have local governments and other stakeholders nominate five or so major issues and priorities that they would like to make further progress on. The forum would allow them to come together and decide how to overcome barriers to on-ground action, to plan collaborative ways to progress issues, or indeed to possibly decide that a particular issue is not able to be progressed at this time for any particular reasons.” (2019)
This event was open to all people and provided a chance to have your voice heard. The Five Issues Forum was held in Warwick and Cunnamulla during the month of March. This event was put on by Regional Development Australia Darling Downs and South West Inc., to help build a better region.
The Five Issues Forums were held for the Eastern DDSW Council’s in Warwick on 5 March with over 50 attendees and for the Western DDSW Council’s in Cunnamulla on 7 March with over 30 attendees.
Issues were collected prior to the event and included –
- Warwick event – Western Downs, Toowoomba, Southern Downs and Goondiwindi
- Population attraction including decentralisation of government services and the settlement of migrants and refugees in regional areas.
- Improving logistics including the intermodal connectivity of transport, reducing freight costs and improving public transport.
- Improving business access to potential employees particularly skilled staff.
- Developing schemes that convert waste to energy, expanding access to recycling and co-ordinated waste management.
- Improving digital connectivity.
- Cunnamulla event – Bulloo, Quilpie, Paroo, Balonne, Murweh and Maranoa.
- Population attraction including decentralisation of government services and the settlement of migrants and refugees in regional areas.
- Improving digital connectivity.
- Zonal Tax Arrangements.
- Access to energy including meshing the grid, i.e. connection to the South Australian power grid.
- Transport and Logistics including maintaining road infrastructure, reducing freight costs and improving access to markets.
The objective of the events was to brainstorm potential solutions to address the region’s selected five issues with a list of potential actions. For each issue an initial first action was identified with interested attendees nominating to be on the preliminary working group.
