S-BRAG Woos Nanango Residents

October 8, 2014

A Nanango branch of the South Burnett Residents Action Group (S-BRAG) looks set to be formed after a public meeting was held in Nanango on Wednesday night.

The group set up a Wondai branch in August and called the Nanango meeting to assess local interest in the concept.

The meeting, at the Nanango Darts Club, was attended by S-BRAG chairman Don Pinwill, who chaired the night, secretary Terry Gordon and about 30 members of the public.

Mr Pinwill outlined the group’s aims and objectives, structure and rules, and then took questions from the floor.

He said the purpose of S-BRAG was to offer a platform for South Burnett communities to voice ideas and concerns about broad issues that affected them.

Mr Pinwill said the forced council amalgamations in 2008 had changed the region from being one composed of small shires, each with their own major centre, to a much bigger Shire with a single regional centre surrounded by smaller towns.

He said this had “changed the dynamics” of the system and both residents and Council had yet to fully adjust to this.

The consequence was that there were now far fewer councillors covering much wider geographic areas than previously.

This carried the risk they could lose touch with grass-roots issues, he said.

Mr Pinwill saw S-BRAG’s role as improving communication as well as acting as a “scrutineer” of Council decisions.

“We tend to elect and forget,” he said.

One result was that no one scrutinised Council decisions or looked at the outcomes of Council programs.

Mr Pinwill said this would be a natural role for the group.

He said S-BRAG had been started by seven people who now made up the management committee; these would face election at the group’s Annual General Meeting and all branch members would be entitled to a vote.

Serving Councillors and Council Directors are ineligible to become members of the group and any S-BRAG member who wished to run for election would be required to resign from the group.

However, Mr Pinwill said, this didn’t mean S-BRAG held any animosity towards the Council.

He said two Councillors who had attended the Wondai meeting in August had been supportive of the concept.

Mr Pinwill said S-BRAG hoped to put up a website soon and also distribute a printed newsletter.

In the question and answer session that followed his presentation, Mr Pinwill said no one from his group had yet held any discussions with the Council or individual Councillors.

This was because S-BRAG was new and was still discovering what issues were most important to its members.

But, he added, the group had recently asked its Wondai members to nominate the five top local government issues they faced from 12 possible topics.

From this, he said, more than three-quarters of members who completed the survey had nominated rates “as one of their top three issues”.

Mr Pinwill then handed out a three-page report prepared by S-BRAG which, he said, proved South Burnett rates were 15-20 per cent higher than neighbouring shires.

He invited those present to take a copy of the report home and challenged southburnett.com.au to print it.