By Mayor Peter Flannery
About City of Moreton Bay
The sheer size and diversity of Moreton Bay is what sets Australia’s newest city apart from most in the country.
City of Moreton Bay has long been the third largest Local Government Area in Australia by population but the significant growth we’ve experienced over the past decade has prompted a change from Regional to City classification, which was successful this year.
What’s unique about our city is you won’t find this much natural beauty anywhere else. Moreton Bay has beautiful green hinterland valleys and mountain tops in our west, pristine shorelines overlooking the stunning Moreton Bay and Pumicestone Passage in our east, and many inland waterways in the middle joining them together including, Caboolture River, the mighty Pine River and Lake Kurwongbah.
It’s not uncommon to spot koalas, kangaroos, dugongs, whales, birds and many other incredible flora and fauna within our beautiful habitat.
The diversity in our natural environment is also reflected in our many varied communities that spread across the 2,041 square kilometres of City of Moreton Bay. This is something we want to embrace and celebrate through a polycentric city model with many smaller centres rather than the outdated centralised model. Our aim is to avoid the standard city model that leads to a centralised city centre for work, with high property prices at the centre and long daily commutes. Our residents can continue to have the option of living in quiet rural settings or bustling coastal neighbourhoods and everything in between.
A long serving councillor
As a former Australian Army soldier and long-serving councillor I’ve always had a passion for serving my country and community. In the Army you learn the importance of working together to achieve a common goal, and I’ve carried those principles into my collaborative leadership style.
I chose Local Government because this is where the real nitty gritty work gets done and it’s where you can see firsthand the positive impact that your decisions have on the community. I started out as a Local Laws Officer with the Brisbane City Council and then Caboolture Shire Council before I was elected as a councillor in the Caboolture Shire Council in 2004.
I saw Moreton Bay as a humble and hardworking region that had huge potential to become a leader in this country. After 12 years as councillor, I was fortunate enough to be elected Mayor of this great region, with an eye toward putting Moreton Bay on the map and I believe we’ve made huge inroads. During my four years as Mayor we’ve delivered the region’s first university campus, we became a city, started work on our first greenfield satellite city development in Waraba, and we’ve even got our very own National Rugby League team to name a few big-ticket items.
I live on a semi-rural property in Morayfield with my family. When I get a spare moment, I’m spending time with my kids and working on our property and riding my motorbike. They give me the motivation to make a difference in the community so they can enjoy the future I’ve built with their kids one day.
Challenges and opportunities
One of the biggest challenges facing City of Moreton Bay is managing growth. We may be the third largest Council in Australia, but we’ve also been the fifth fastest growing at times over the past few years which is significant when you’re the size that we are.
We have 12 growth fronts across Moreton Bay, which is more than double any other Council in Queensland, and one of those growth fronts is the new satellite city of Waraba. Works are now underway on Neighbourhood Development Plan No.1 and once complete the greater Waraba area will be home to 70,000 new residents.
Previously the State Government has underestimated our growth in their regional plans, which has led to an undersupply of infrastructure for parts of our region. We need much more investment as we continue to grow.
Becoming a city council was the first step to putting us on the map in Canberra to get more funding from the Federal politicians, but our Planning and Development Services departments are working harder than ever to prepare for the influx of residents too.
We have kickstarted the long and thorough process of creating a new Planning Scheme that will better reflect the standards and expectations of our changing population – but the earliest we can see it completed would be 2028. In the meantime, we’ve created five Planning Scheme amendments as part of our Better Housing Amendment package that is going through its final stages of community consultation and will hopefully be adopted soon to address issues raised by our residents, like off street car parking supply.
We’ve begun implementing other planning instruments like Neighbourhood Plans and Building Design Reviews to assist with character and feel of future development and we have a number of Temporary Local Planning Instrument’s in place to respond to emerging areas.
Part of our approach to manage growth is ensuring that Moreton Bay has adequate supply of social affordable housing to combat the growing housing and homelessness crisis that’s gripping Australia. Recently we introduced a number of new policies with the aim to incentivise the private sector to build more supply for those in need.
Our Attraction of Affordable Social Housing Development Policy waives up to 100 per cent of development fees and charges for Community Housing Providers (CHP). We’ve also amended our Community Leasing Policy to allow CHPs to lease Council-owned land for a nominal $1 per annum rate to build affordable social housing. Other Councils in South East Queensland are starting to follow our lead and offer similar policies, which is great to see, but we need more support from the State and Federal Governments to solve this issue.
We are also working with developers to ensure they are giving back to the community by investing into local infrastructure like the construction and upgrade of roads, while giving back key environmental land to be preserved as green space for residents and wildlife to enjoy for years to come.
With size and growth comes huge opportunities as well. We’re well on our way to achieving our goal to create a $40 billion economy by 2041 having grown by roughly $2 billion from $17.75 billion in 2020 to $19.82 billion in 2022.
We have established industries in Moreton Bay, like our food and agriculture sector, which is famous for being the largest producer of strawberries in Australia, and one of the largest producers of pineapples, as well as large quantities of macadamias and avocados, and emerging crops like finger limes.
Other industries are also developing at a rapid pace in Moreton Bay, like our advanced manufacturing sector which is home to global technology leaders like Elexon Mining who develop incredible technology used for monitoring flow in underground cave mines. Meanwhile work is beginning on Australia’s largest green data storage facility, known as a ‘Supernode’, here in Brendale, which will connect Queensland directly to the Cloud for the first time.
Couple all of this with our close proximity to Brisbane Airport and Port of Brisbane and we’re a very attractive proposition for big business, investors and exporters seeking a new home. We’ve already seen interest in bringing new technologies like air taxis to Petrie, so we’ll hopefully see even more interest in the near future. This is just a window into the economic activity sprouting up all over City of Moreton Bay.
