July 14, 2014
Almost 60 guests attended the Kingaroy Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s latest Meet’n’Greet on Monday night, which was hosted by Southern Cross Austereo at their Hot-FM studios in Glendon Street.
Southern Cross Austereo’s General Manager Ali Davenport travelled from Toowoomba to speak at the event, along with popular Hot FM radio breakfast hosts Hamish and Tanya.
The Austereo network includes Hot FM 89.1, 4GR 86.4 AM, and TV channels 10, 11 and 1. It services an area that stretches from Toowoomba as far west as Roma.
Ms Davenport said the network was very proud to operate a South Burnett office in Kingaroy, and employed two local representatives who were born and bred in the area.
The network’s representatives could arrange both radio and TV advertising, and could do so on local channels or those in other parts of the network – something which could be particularly helpful for tourism businesses.
She said the network was also keen to promote local events – especially on Hamish and Tanya’s breakast show – and encouraged everyone to pass on information to the station’s website or Facebook page.
Hamish said local content was indispensible to producing a lively, entertaining and informative program.
“So tell us what you’re up to and we’ll tell our listeners,” Tanya said.
Afterwards, Ms Davenport drew the winner of the night’s $2-per-ticket raffle for a $2000 advertising package on the Austereo network.
The winner was Patricia Costigan, from Virtual PA 4U, which provides on-call secretarial services for South Burnett businesses.
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Ms Davenport said the size and spread of regional commercial radio audiences hasn’t been measured accurately for the past few years because survey costs had become unsustainable.
She said accurate audience measurement could cost between $60,000 and $100,000 a survey and this was beyond the budget of most regional radio networks.
As a result, the stations tended to rely on a mix of audience feedback and advertiser results to gauge their penetration levels.
But a new measurement standard recently agreed to by the Australian radio industry could allow regional audience studies to be produced for about $10,000.
This was much more affordable and she was hopeful the first new regional radio station surveys would begin as early as October.
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The South Burnett Regional Council’s upcoming 2014-15 Budget would be “very kind” to South Burnett residents, SBRC CEO Ken McLoughlin told the Meet’n’Greet guests.
Mr McLoughlin said he wasn’t at liberty to provide any details about the Budget until it was formally handed down by Mayor Wayne Kratzmann on July 25, but said any increases contained within it were “very modest”.
Mr McLoughlin said Council’s operational budget of $40 million was the same as it was six years ago, and with construction costs increasing by around 8 per cent a year, the Council was “stretched”.
However, he said most flood restoration works on the region’s roads would be completed shortly and he was confident the Council would pass post-work inspection by Federal Government auditors.
Mr McLoughlin also told KCCI members that the Council’s economic advisory board, South Burnett Directions, was working well, and had recently succeeded in attracting a specialist to provide chemotherapy services at the South Burnett Private Hospital.
He hoped this might be the start of more specialist medical services being provided in the region, saving local patients long journeys to other centres to receive specialist attention.
Mr McLoughlin also said work on the Council’s Nanango streetscape project had recently hit a snag with local water table issues but he hoped work in Henry Street would begin in the next 10 days, and after that attention would turn to Drayton Street.
And with the likelihood that Federal funding would be scarce in the immediate future while the State and Federal Governments worked out a direct Commonwealth funding method that would meet constitutional requirements, Council intended to apply for funding from the Federal Government’s new “Bridges To Recovery” program, and would also apply for more funding from the State Government’s “Royalties For The Regions” program.
Mr McLoughlin said Council wanted to replace the Gayndah-Hivesville Road bridge and the Stuart River bridge, but with “hundreds and hundreds” of timber bridges all around Australia in need of urgent attention and extremely limited funds in the new bridge program, it remained to be seen whether the applications would succeed.
Council would also like to extend the Kingaroy water supply system to Nanango via Barkers Creek, which would cost $9 million, but again, this program would rely on a successful Royalties For The Regions grant application to allow work to begin.
In response to a question from the floor about the new Country Way town signs that have begun appearing at some of the region’s towns along the Bunya Highway, Mr McLoughlin said the signs were a State Government initiative.
However, he believed some allowances for improved town signage had been made in Council’s upcoming budget, and an announcement would be made in due course.
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South Burnett Directions board member Graham Archdall spoke about the new South Burnett Business Excellence Awards, and encouraged as many KCCI members as possible to enter their businesses in this year’s program.
The Awards are an initiative of South Burnett Directions.
He said they were designed to foster better business standards across the region, and to encourage local businesses to prosper and succeed.
The process of nominating a business was likely to take around two hours, Mr Archdall said, because the questions were designed to make entrants think deeply about their business goals and objectives.
But he believed this would be a very fruitful exercise for any business that took part, regardless of whether they won an award or not.
The 2014 award winners will be announced at a gala dinner in Kingaroy on October 15.
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Since July 1st this year, TAFE has been separated from the Queensland’s Department of Education, Training and Employment and is now a stand-alone statutory authority, TAFE South West Business Development manager Santina Schmocker told KCCI members.
The number of TAFE districts has been reduced from 13 to 6, and the South Burnett’s former SQIT TAFE campuses in Kingaroy and Cherbourg had been merged with the Bremer campus near Ipswich.
TAFE now also now has no ownership of its campuses.
Instead, from July 1 they’re now controlled by a new Queensland Training Assets Management Authority, and TAFE has to pay full commercial rents for their use.
But apart from this, Mrs Schmocker assured guests, “nothing has changed”.
TAFE’s goal was to become the State’s leading training provider, and it was looking at expanding its service delivery from classroom instruction to embrace workplace and online course delivery, and possibly mobile course delivery in the future.
Mrs Schmocker said that there had recently been significant upgrades to the Kingaroy campus, and encouraged KCCI members to look them over when they had the opportunity.
She also reminded members that the region’s annual Careers Market for high school leavers would be held on August 5.
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The KCCI bid a fond farewell to outgoing Kingaroy Kitchen manager Hazel Patterson who will be retiring on August 27 after six years transforming the former Endeavour Biscuit Kitchen.
Hazel, who originally came to the region from Bundaberg and will return there for her retirement, said that when Endeavour first sent her to the area the biscuit kitchen was at risk of being closed.
“But I looked at the people who worked there and I simply couldn’t let that happen,” she said.
What followed was a complete business turnaround, which saw the factory launch its Kingaroy Kitchen lines of homestyle biscuits, chutneys and jams; and secure supply contracts with large businesses like Stanwell to supply meals to workers.
Hazel said that her role was being taken over by Paul Lowe, who has been operating the Woolshed Restaurant in Nanango.
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- The KCCI’s next Meet & Greet will be held at the Taste South Burnett, GJ Gardner Homes and Member For Nanango Deb Frecklington’s office in Alford Street, Kingaroy on Monday, September 1.
- The next End Of Months Drinks social will be held at the Kingaroy Golf Club between 5:00pm and 6:30pm on Friday, July 25.
- The KCCI hopes to organise a social golf day on Friday, August 8, as part of the Intrust Super Cup rugby league activities which will occur on August 8-10. Businesses who are interested in taking part should email KCCI secretary Paula Greenwood.
