February 6, 2019
A new website that gathers all the South Burnett’s vital statistics together in one place was unveiled at the South Burnett Regional Council’s Business XL networking event held in Kingaroy on Tuesday evening.
The website – profile.id.com.au/south-burnett – was put together by Victorian demography company .id for the South Burnett Regional Council, but the data is available to everyone online.
It crunches data from the past four censuses as well as other statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to build economic and community profiles of the South Burnett Local Government Area.
Information can also be drilled down even further, with the South Burnett sliced into eight sub-regions.
Demographer Glenn Capuano shared some of the region’s data with the audience of about 70 gathered in the Kingaroy RSL’s White Room:
- The official South Burnett population (current at June 2017) is 32,575
- ABS data shows a small decline in population over the past year, however overall the population level is fairly stable
- South Burnett has a significantly ageing population, ie. nearly one-in-four people are aged 64 or older, which is well above the Queensland average
- People are coming to the South Burnett to retire, from Brisbane, Logan and the Sunshine Coast
- 18 to 24-year-olds are leaving the region to go to Brisbane, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba; older people are leaving for the Fraser and Sunshine Coasts
- Blackbutt is full of “empty nesters”; while there are more young people in Kingaroy than other parts of the region
- There is a growth in single-person households
- On the SEIFA index which measures disadvantage (1 is the least and 78 is the worst), the South Burnett ranks 57
- SEIFA rates the South-West Rural slice of the region as best off, while the Rural North and Blackbutt & Surrounds slices are rated the most disadvantaged
- Unemployment is about the Queensland average, but part-time work is particularly high
- Tagalog / Filipino and Mandarin are the main non-English languages spoken in the South Burnett
- Catholics slightly outnumber Anglicans but “no religion” is the largest category
Glenn also shared economic data which can be found on economy.id.com.au/south-burnett:
- There has been a small decline in Gross Regional Product over the past couple of years
- The number of local businesses has declined over the past three years
- Mining, Agriculture and Electricity are the main three industries in the region
- Tourism makes up about 4 per cent of total employment but about 2 per cent of value-adding
- Tourism contributes about $30 million annually to the economy, fairly low when compared with Queensland or Australia as a whole
There were three other guest speakers at the Business XL event, which was compered by Council’s Senior Economic Development Officer Craig Tunley and supported by the Kingaroy Chamber of Commerce and Industry:
- Monique de Martin, from the vegan Nourish Cafe and Smoothie Bar in Kingaroy, spoke about sustainability and the three “Ps” – planet, people and profitability
- Carl Price began Kingaroy Freight Express on August 1, 1984, with a staff of one at his home address. It now has about 40 employees, most of whom are full-time, and has outgrown its business premises several times in both Kingaroy and Brisbane
- Josh Gadischke, from Proteco, said that about seven or eight years ago he made the difficult decision to delete about one-third of the products from his range and concentrate on those that were unique and had a high barrier to entry for competitors. Proteco is now the only producer of almond oil and macadamia oil in Australia, and the largest producer of macadamia oil in the world. About 30 per cent of the business is export, split between Asia and Europe. The business has grown from six or seven employees to 30 and is enjoying 16 per cent year-on-year growth
Local businesses were invited to hold mini-stalls at the event and several took up the opportunity: Push Pull Marketing, Torkit Business Solutions, Nourish Cafe, Yoga Chi Gung and Fitness, Happy To Clean, JobMatch and TAFE Queensland.
Craig also took the opportunity to officially launch Council’s new Localised website, which provides an opportunity for South Burnett businesses to share ideas and information, create a business profile, list events and find out about tenders. Business XL events for the rest of the year are listed on the platform.
Footnote: Tina Torrens, from Torkit Business Solutions, generously offered a lucky door prize to attendees – a 30-second video ad and two weeks advertising at the Kingaroy Cinema, valued at $600. southburnett.com.au must declare that we won it … thank you, Tina!
