Councillor ready to fight for our region

Lockyer Valley Regional Council's Janice Holstein has been appointed to an exciting new position representing the region.

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY: Cr Janice Holstein is excited to take on the role of chair of the RDA Ipswich and West Moreton committee. Picture: Dominic Elsome

LOCKYER Valley councillor Janice Holstein has been appointed the new chair of the Regional Development Australia Ipswich and West-Moreton committee by Minister for Regional Development John McVeigh.

Cr Holstein is the first chair of the committee from the Lockyer Valley and said she's excited by the new position and its challenges.

"I'm looking forward to getting some new committee members on-board, changing things up a bit,” she said.

"Kathy Bensted (previous chair), finished in December and she'd been there for quite a long time and done a terrific job, so I'm hoping to live up to Kathy's expectations in the role.”

Any resident can apply to become a committee member, and Cr Holstein encouraged members of the Lockyer Valley to consider joining the organisation. She said the RDA committees were voices for the regions they represented, and that she would be fighting for Ipswich and West Moreton as chair.

"My view is there isn't enough done for regional Australia,” she said.

"Not everybody can live in a city - not everybody wants to live in a city. I think there's a lot that needs to be done, you can't do everything from cities, and neither should you. It's not the cities that are going to grow all the food for everybody to eat are they?”

Cr Holstein has been a member of the committee since 2015, and says the Ipswich and West-Moreton Jobs project was her proudest achievement.

"It's one place where all jobseekers can go and businesses can put their jobs up, so that people can just go to one point to see the jobs that are available and it's used really well,” she said.

"I think that's been a great initiative.”

Cr Holstein said she hoped to see larger projects completed in the region during her tenure.

"I would really like to see some big projects come to our region through some of the funding that's available....it's about creation of jobs, and it's something that may transform a community, and make it so much better.”