There is a definite air of excitement and anticipation in the wind this week as the residents of the old Douglas Shire dare to contemplate the long hoped for but often doubted opportunity to seize back control of their own destiny from what most concede has been an amalgamation debacle with close neighbours Cairns City.

Now before you go getting the idea that this an unequivocal pro-de-amalgamation piece, I want to set out some editorial ground rules because I have some serious reservations on this matter.  
I have lived here, in Port Douglas, for over ten years, long enough to remember the final ridiculous days of the very last Douglas Shire Council and if that’s where we are returning then I’m voting to stay where we are for better or worse!  

I could not endure the juvenility and ludicrous ‘them and us’ syndrome that helped orchestrate our fall from grace with the State Government, whether it was the sole reason or not, and landed us into our current uncomfortable predicament.  

How we nominate, select or verify those who are worthy to be councillors, I don’t know but as adults we have to take all the emotion out of the process, and look for energetic, forward thinking, creative candidates.  Let’s put aside the old animosities of Mossman vs. Port Douglas and try to implement the definitive words of the Melbourne Business School several hundred days ago.  Let’s move forward with ‘one vision’. Remember you can’t see the whole picture if you’re wearing blinkers, no matter how hard you look.  

There is a submission from Friends of The Douglas Shire, who have been tireless in their activities towards de-amalgamation and should take the lions share of the glory for having got us this far.  This submission proposes a Council structure of a Mayor and four councillors with no divisional responsibilities. These councillors would work on a ‘one for all and all for one’ basis which I believe is a solid step in the right direction of a united shire representation.

Another of my reservations is about affordability.  Are we big enough?  In this merciless modern world that we live in, can we generate enough money to maintain autonomy?  Will part of our de-amalgamation plans include widening the options from commercial avenues to alleviate any proposed rate rises or will we continue to rely on the fickle beast that is tourism?  

Currently Port Douglas relies almost exclusively on tourism for its living and Mossman has an agricultural base recently boosted by the Mackay Sugar acquisition of the old Mossman Sugar Mill.  

This year has been an exceptional year for tourism.  The airlines finally increased their flights, the heavens sent us the Total Solar Eclipse and the early, shocking, southern weather drove the Mexicans to us.  Whether the elements and planets will align again next year, who knows?

One thing I do know though is that Port Douglas already has an industrial area out at Craiglie where considerable expansion should be encouraged and could be accommodated regardless of how well tourism does or doesn’t do.   

Increased residency doesn’t have to focus on Port Douglas. There’s plenty of residential housing being built around Cooya and Wonga Beaches, Mossman and Newell Beach.  So wherever the work force lives, one thing is for sure, the increased numbers will bridge the sustainability gap for a de-amalgamated Douglas Shire.  

The equation is simple, more businesses pay more rates and more residents pay more rates and the increased expenditure is minimal pro rata.  

Even the most diehard de-amalgamationist would concede that the budget to run a new re-constituted Council will need to have deeper pockets than before so some enlargement of the financial gene pool is going to be an early priority.  Let’s have the Council encouraging some of our southern and national (maybe even international) corporate friends to station their Admin headquarters in Port Douglas.
 
And before anyone starts panicking about skyscrapers out on Craiglie Industrial Park, remember there is a town plan that controls heights and designs but it would be nice to see the industrial parks full instead of looking like ‘ghost towns’ from the old Hollywood westerns.  

Who wouldn’t want to do a two year tour of duty at their corporate headquarters if it was sited in Port Douglas?  This workforce would bring their families, which means a revolving and continuous new audience for The Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest tours and activities.  Who knows, like many of us, they may arrive for their term of duty but never leave.  We all know Port Douglas can do that to you!

Anyway I want to be sure our Council is pro-active about helping to get the region more commercially diverse and less reliant on tourism and that doesn’t mean make tourism smaller, it means let’s bring some other sectors up alongside to bear the brunt of a modern forward thinking (but smaller) council.
 
Let’s offer some incentives to the right kind of companies, ones that are not industrial or dirty-manufacturing based, so we can still protect the environment.  Most banks, IT groups, Insurance companies and Mining companies and I’ve probably missed hundreds more, have administrative headquarters positioned strategically.  

Why wouldn’t they base them here in this incomparable, idyllic setting? After all a less stressed workforce is an efficient workforce.  All we need is NBN to be fast tracked and they’ve got everything they need.

And before you start pulling faces and arguing against this concept cast your mind back just 12 months to when many shops and businesses were struggling (many died) to make ends meet after the six previously dire years and it’ll remind you that tourism isn’t a reliable industry and never can be.
 
Don’t get me wrong, tourism would make some fabulous icing on the cake if the cake could grow big enough to feed us with or without icing. Just ask the sugar cane farmers in Mossman whether tourism makes any difference to them. No, they have other pressures but they aren’t dependent on hordes of tourists arriving.

I could go on but that’s probably enough clichés and metaphors for the time being.  But you get my point, our new Council has got to be more creative than it has ever been before and certainly more so than the Cairns Regional Council has demonstrated it is capable of ever being.

Maybe we are going to have to accept that some services will be trimmed or even cut. Maybe arts, community and sports grants are not going to be as available until we get on our feet more.  It maybe that cyclists will have to help pay for the upkeep of the cycle paths like the car owners have to with the roads or perhaps the water rates will have to be increased to heavy users to get our water back clean, healthy and chemical free.  Like these outside the box ideas there will have to be all sorts of new schemes to raise funds over and above the rates, whatever they end up being, but at least we’d know the money was being spent on us and our region instead of new Christmas lights for The Cairns Esplanade.

I’ve always been a believer in controlling my own destiny, I’ve never liked others having too much influence over the things I can and can’t do.  And I want my council to, at least, put up a pretence that they are looking out for my best interests rather than seemingly grabbing everything for themselves.

I honestly couldn’t tell you whether a de-amalgamated Council would be better or worse.  It might be better; after all we’ll have direct contact with whoever is voted onto the Council because we’d see them almost everyday in the pubs and restaurants and around the community and sports clubs.

It might be worse because the rates go up so much in an effort to offer the services needed that we won’t be able to afford them.  We may even get another gang of four disaster scenario but the one saving grace to all this is that whoever is in power will be directly representative of and responsible to the residents of the Shire of Douglas and not the current isolated ‘metropolis’ regional Divisions of what feels like someone else’s country!

So with my reservations in tow, I guess I’ve convinced myself that de-amalgamation isn't totally out of the question but I would like to issue a word of warning to anyone standing for election should this all come to fruition…..And I quote; “Woe betides any councillor who starts behaving like a school yard bully.  We will have a zero tolerance approach this time, ‘cos we’ve seen it all before and learned from it!  So when the time comes, let’s make some adult decisions about our future and make this precious second chance work for all of us”.