June 26, 2014
The costs of running a “nanny state” and defending against a “victim culture” where any misadventure is seen as someone else’s fault is steadily sucking the life out of sports and community events, says South Burnett councillor Barry Green.
Cr Green, who chairs Council’s sports portfolio, gave the State Government and insurance companies a blast at the Council’s monthly general meeting on Wednesday.
He was responding to a report by Mayor Wayne Kratzmann that the recent Tour de Kumbia and Tour de Kingaroy cycle races had been well-received by the community.
There was a possibility that a national cycling title could be secured for the area, Mayor Kratzmann said, and the event could expand from two to three days if costs could be contained.
Cr Green said while he was happy to hear the tours looked like having a long future in the region, he noted that last year Cycling Queensland had paid $11,000 to hire traffic controllers for the event and this year faced even higher charges.
“These costs are killing the sport,” he said.
The same issue also applied to the Nanango Mardi Gras’ annual parade and King and Queen Of The Mountain foot races.
“For years our local SES people supervised these events and we never had any problems,” he said.
“Now we have to pay two traffic controllers $3000 to $6000 to tell the SES people what to do.
“Our army cadets have already had to cancel a march due to traffic controller costs.”
Cr Kathy Duff agreed that the costs of running community and sporting events were becoming ridiculous.
Cr Ros Heit warned there could be cost impacts on Anzac Day marches if common sense didn’t prevail.
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Cr Green also reported a recent survey of the region’s sporting clubs had received an 80 per cent response rate – a result he said was “unbelievably good”.
But the surveys disclosed local sports clubs were “crying out for help”, and their biggest problems centred on governance issues rather than money.
However, the cost of public liability insurance was also a major problem area.
Cr Green said the situation had become ridiculous when six sporting clubs who all used the same sportsground had to take out separate public liability policies to cover their members.
“These costs are killing sports clubs in this area and across the State,” he said.
Cr Green said he was investigating whether a single policy taken out by Council over all the region’s public sports grounds might be a solution.
Mayor Wayne Kratzmann noted that a lot of Council’s funds already go to insurance companies.
Never a truer word was spoken! I agree with Cr Green wholeheartedly. Everything would be much brighter and happier without these insurance costs. Are we really becoming such a litigious society that we need multi-million dollar cover for our events?
Maybe there are some community-minded people out there with traffic controller tickets who could do the job and save our local events.
Who decided that two traffic controllers were needed? Was it the public? or again some bureaucrat who has to justify their wages Think we already have enough of those.