Everyone should be proud and excited to realise how the reputation of the Scenic Rim is growing as a place of great merit for visitors, locals and businesses alike.
Our credentials around great food and produce are equally being recognised alongside our amazing environmental precincts in east, west, centre, north and south of our region. Whichever way you look, we have something special.
This is a great platform for our future. In the middle of a severe drought affecting our region, the diversity of what we can offer as a region helps maintain a level of confidence in our economy.
This doesn’t mean we stop supporting asnd caring for our rural heart, but it does mean that our wider community is more resilient. We’ve got great products emerging through adventure tourism, glamping, food tourism, eco-tourism and the list goes on. We have the whole balanced package to bring a diversity of visitors into our region.
As showcased through Eat Local Week, we have this wonderful connection with people who want to enjoy the provenance of their food. We’re still crunching the numbers but we believe we hosted close to 40,000 people across the course of this year’s Eat Local Week.
We also have a growing set of opportunities such as the proposed 40-hectare agricultural industry precinct at Kalbar that the Coordinator General is now evaluating with Kalfresh, which offers new high-value opportunities.
We have the new $10.72m Beaudesert Business Park project to get on with for the good of new and existing businesses across the Scenic Rim, as well as ever-present opportunities at Bromelton.
The recent youth cultural mapping project also reminded us, through the voice of our young people, that a strong focus on future skill development is an essential focus to be a viable region.
Strategic focus essential for positive outcomes
Through the Regional Skills Investment Strategy (RSIS), funded by the State, we now have our local RSIS Project Coordinator Mitch Ryan in place.
His job is to connect the skill needs of our business community with the skill development opportunities available. This is exciting because helping connect local employees with local jobs is essential for our best future.
This is also why we are investing thoughtfully in a number of timely strategy reviews around the brand of the region, some aspects of our tourism strategy and overall how we best shape the future regional prosperity of the Scenic Rim.
My time spent at the recent Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Brisbane served to reinforce the absolute importance of having clear focus.
The summit’s key themes of innovation, liveability, mobility and sustainability were totally consistent with the priorities we’ve been focusing on across this term of Council. We should all have confidence that we are on the right track to keep achieving great things as a region.
