Noosa Council mayoral candidate Frank Wilkie answers the burning questions

Noosa mayoral candidate Frank Wilkie answers the burning questions including how to manage population growth and tells us where he stands on the biggest issues including short term accommodation. See the video.

Noosa mayoral candidate Frank Wilkie answers the burning questions including how to manage population growth and tells us where he stands on the biggest issues.

The Noosa River is part of what makes Noosa a popular destination. What measures do you plan to effectively manage the Noosa River, considering factors such as water quality, recreational activities and environmental conservation?

The Noosa River is a very important recreational and natural asset and whatever we need to do is do the things that everyone wants to have action on, which has been hanging around for a couple of decades and that is taking action on abandoned vessels on the river, sunken vessels on the river, anchoring and mooring and we do that in partnership with the state government, who control the main on-water agencies for the Noosa River. We’re also working in partnership with the world’s leading conservation foundation, The Nature Conservancy, to restore the once prolific oyster reefs in the Noosa River.

Noosa is widely known for its pristine coastline. How will you balance the competing interests of residents, tourists, business owners, surfers, swimmers in managing and protecting the coastline? 

We’ve just had a really great public consultation process called the Eastern Beaches Foreshore Reserves Management Plan. We’ve got everyone’s ideas about how we could better look after this fantastic, natural asset shared by millions of people every year from across the shire, across the Sunshine Coast and visitors from around Australia. It’s told us we need to do better work at suring up the beach accesses, better viewing points, better protecting the dunes with fencing and signage. Better looking after the dogs off lead on the beaches, so it’d be a lot of work being done this term to manage beach accesses and viewing platforms and managing human traffic erosion on the dunes on the beaches.

Noosa Council mayoral candidate Cr Frank Wilkie. Picture: Iwan Jones

Noosa is facing increasing pressure to manage its expected population growth, with council not wanting higher buildings in the town as proposed in the draft South East Queensland Regional Plan. If elected, what do you propose to solve issues regarding population growth?

We can accommodate population growth in the current town planning settings because of changes to state government legislation around secondary dwellings. There are thousands of low-density residential lots in Noosa, where secondary dwellings are being built, and can be built. We believe we can help solve the rental crisis and the housing crisis through more secondary dwellings. We’re also partnering with the state and community housing providers to provide social and community housing in both Tewantin and Cooroy for Noosa residents on low to moderate incomes.

Hinterland residents of Noosa always complain that it gets missed by the council. How do you propose to address the unique needs and challenges of both hinterland and coastal communities in Noosa?

It’s only natural that people in the hinterland will often feel isolated, so we’ll do all we can to make sure that their phone calls are always returned, and happy to be out there all the time. We have $150 million in disaster recovery funding, most of which is going to be spent in the hinterland and is being spent in the hinterland on 100 roads and 30 landslips. We have to give them their full attention to make sure they get full disaster recovery treatment out there. We also have recently completed the hinterland adventure playground.

Noosa Council Deputy Mayor Frank Wilkie is now going for the top job. Picture: Supplied

How do you plan to regulate and manage short-term accommodation letting including Airbnbs, in Noosa to balance the economic benefits of tourism, with the need to preserve residential neighbourhoods? What more can the council do to restrict short term accommodation letting in the area?

In 2020, we introduced the new 2020 plan, which restricted the proliferation and growth of short term accommodation and low density residential neighbourhoods. We have currently amendments before the state government to further restrict the growth and proliferation of short term accommodation and other residential neighbourhoods across the shire. We also were Queensland’s first council to introduce Queensland’s first local law to manage the impacts of short term accommodation. We need to resource properly the short term accommodation local law team so they can do the work better and we will review the local law to make sure it’s working as intended.