ASK THE STRUGGLING AUSSIES FUNDING YOUR PAYCHEQUE
Bundaberg Regional Councillors Steve Cooper and Carmen McEneany, accompanied by Council’s Economic Development Projects Officer, are jet-setting off to Nanning, China, to attend the China-ASEAN Economics Expo. They’ll learn all about agricultural robotics, AI, hotel investment, infrastructure, social credit scores, and authoritarian dictatorship.
But before packing their bags, perhaps we should ask a fairly basic economic question: what business does a regional council have attending an international economics and investment expo in the first place?
Council isn’t an agricultural producer, hotel developer, robotics company, exporter or investor. It doesn’t risk privately owned capital, and its survival doesn’t depend on earning a profit from willing customers. In fact, Bundaberg Council has a fundamentally faulty economic feedback mechanism. When a private business makes bad decisions, the consequences arrive swiftly. Customers stop buying, margins disappear, investors lose money and, if mistakes continue, the business fails. Council doesn’t face the same burdens. Rates are compulsory, forced on locals under the threat of legal action and the confiscation of property. Council also receives State and Federal Government funding. When a government project costs more than anticipated or operates at a loss, there is no equivalent market mechanism forcing it out of business. No one even loses their job.
Here’s a recent example…
The Bundaberg Aquatic Centre provides a rather expensive local lesson in government economics. In 2021, Council announced it as a project worth “more than $45 million”. By August 2022, the construction contract alone had reached $75.8 million. By 2024, Council revealed total forecast expenditure of $89.67 million, almost double that original $45 million figure. Council has previously argued that the early figures were preliminary estimates made before detailed designs and tenders were received, rather than accepting the increases as a conventional “cost blowout”. Either way, ratepayers watched a project initially presented at more than $45 million grow to almost $90 million. Contrast that with private surf-park operator URBNSURF, which owns and operates wave pool facilities in Melbourne and Sydney. Wave pools are extraordinarily expensive businesses: ABC reported the Sydney facility cost $80 million and that industry operating costs can run into millions annually. Private operators must convince investors to risk their capital, attract enough customers and charge enough to remain commercially viable. They cannot simply send rate notices when the numbers don’t add up. Personally, I would much rather have a world-class wave pool turning a profit in Bundaberg than another boring Olympic pool located only a few blocks away from a perfectly adequate one at Norville. But that’s beside the point.
Why are we sending these people overseas to learn about economics, and why, of all places, are we sending them to China? For those that don’t know, China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. This party came into existence thanks to Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. His “Great Leap” resulted in the deaths of around seventy-five million people, roughly three times Australia’s current population. China later imposed its notorious one-child policy, which included the deaths of a further three hundred and thirty-six million babies through forced government-sanctioned abortions. To put these stats into perspective, you would have to round up, and murder, every man, woman, and child in Australia 14 times over. (That’s quite a leap!) Today China combines one-party political control with private enterprise and politically connected capitalism.
So exactly which Chinese “approaches to economic development” does Bundaberg Regional Council believe we need to learn about?
Answer: The Belt and Road Initiative
BRC Now reported that ratepayers will be funding representatives as they attend the Nanning-Hanoi Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Friendship City Exchange Conference. Detractors argue that the Belt and Road Initiative burdens developing nations with unsustainable debt that can lead to the loss of strategic national assets like ports and railways. Critics also warn that these projects expand Beijing’s military and geopolitical footprint while offering minimal economic benefit to local workforces.
Since when is participating in Belt and Road-related international economic diplomacy the role of Bundaberg Regional Council?
Let’s hope our representatives restrict their souvenir hunting to agricultural technology and friendly, non-military robots. I hope they don’t return inspired by China’s experiments with surveillance technology and social-credit systems.
Twenty-eight years is enough time to prove it.
Bundaberg and Nanning have been Sister Cities since 1998, giving Council almost three decades of results to demonstrate whether the relationship has delivered what it promises. Show us the return. How much has Council spent on the Nanning relationship over those 28 years, including delegations, staff time, travel and associated programs? Against that cost, how much investment has been brought into Bundaberg? How many local businesses have secured contracts? How many jobs have been created? What additional exports, tourism or educational opportunities can Council directly attribute to the relationship?
I think it is time for representatives to stop measuring success with vague words. Council says Sister City relationships support “business, education, tourism and workforce development”, “raise the profile” of Bundaberg and help identify opportunities for local businesses. Those statements sound impressive, but they are not measurable economic results. Can Council name the individual businesses that have been helped? Can they identify the dollar amount of investment secured? Can they count the jobs created? Can they put a reliable dollar value on the trade generated? Now would be a great time to show ratepayers what previous delegations actually produced. I hope Council representatives will apply the same economic test a business faces every day. A private business cannot pay its bills with “connections”, “opportunities” or a higher profile. Eventually it must demonstrate that the value it creates exceeds the money it consumes. If Council wants to involve itself in economic development, ratepayers should expect the same basic accountability. Twenty-eight years is long enough to produce more than promises about what this relationship could achieve. Show us what it has achieved. Show us what it has cost. Then let ratepayers decide whether the numbers add up.
Council is travelling halfway around the world for an economics lesson. Perhaps the first lesson should be learned at home: when you spend other people’s hard-earned money, you should be able to show them the return in dollars, not fluff.
Written by John E Middleclass
Published Chitchat Newspaper October 2026