Liam Allan

1:58 Councillor Lorentson: Presentations and deputations, we have a deputation, so I would like to welcome to the floor, Liam and Danica Allen. I welcome you to present your deputation and the matter in front of us, the Noosa issues in Noosa Junctions. I remind you that there is, deputations are generally no longer than 15 minutes. Thank you, Danica.

2:25 Danica Allen: Thank you, Amelia. Good morning everybody, councillors, thank you for having us here to speak with you today. I'm Danica Allen, I'm a resident in the Noosa Junction area and I'm here to speak to you today on behalf of my family and many hundreds of fellow residents of Noosa Junctions. So as I stand here solo talking to you today, I'd like you to just imagine the few hundred people behind me that I'm representing. We are vehemently against the proposed amendments to the Noosa Plan 2020, particularly those outlining Fact Sheet 12 regarding business and entertainment activities in Noosa Junction. As we understand it, the proposed amendment includes following changes and concepts. One, extending the operating hours of all food and drink outlets in Noosa Junction until midnight. Two, applying these extended hours to all seven days of the week, not just weekends. And three, that the conceptual future of Noosa Junction will be extended to all seven days of the week, not just weekends. The second is that it will become a nightlife entertainment precinct, including the provision of live music. Why are we so strongly against these proposed amendments? Because there is already a noise issue in Noosa Junction due to live music, patron noise and also car noise, resulting in residents' inability to sleep, even with their doors and windows closed. I'll say that again, us residents are unable to sleep in our own homes due to the noise currently emanating from the junction.

3:48 We live in Banksea Avenue, which is 340 metres from Noos from Sunshine Beach Road to Crow Class. The residents we're presenting today live north, south, east and west of Sunshine Beach Road, all within about a 400 metre radius. We are all adversely impacted by music noise, patron noise and late night reckless driving noise emanating from the junction. Our right to peace and quiet within our amenity is being very quickly erased. We are seeking to have a better future. We have a current issue addressed, and to ensure that the proposed amendments are not passed so that our right to peace and quiet is restored, and we can actually sleep in our homes as we are entitled to do. So please understand, this is simply about our right to sleep in our homes. I'd first like to address a number of community groups, including the Noosa Junction Traders Association, who are currently very verbal in promotion of our views in the Noosa Junction, and speaking out by way of petitions against us. I'd like to address a number of community groups, including the Noosa Junction Traders Association, who are currently very verbal in promotion of our views in the Noosa Junction, media articles and also an upcoming rally against our neighbourhood petition to stop live music in the junction. You're all probably aware of these movements, and those petitions have a lot of signatures from people who do not live in the junction and don't understand the issues at hand. Their focus is solely on saving live music.

5:03 I want to make a couple of things very clear in relation to those movements. We are not a small number of serial complainers. We are hundreds of sleep-affected residents in Noosa Junction. We have made complaints against a number of venues who have been breaking the regulations of their licences. Those licences were given formal warnings by the Office of Live and Gaining Regulation. Then they were fined for ignoring those warnings, and eventually they had more serious penalties imposed because they were again caught in the act of operating outside of their licences. No one has been unfairly targeted, only venues that have repeatedly ignored complaints and OLGR have been analysed. We are not trying to kill live music in Noosa. We are supportive of live music in Noosa, and we are supportive of bringing life into Noosa, but in a well-thought-through and sustainable way. We are empathetic to the plight of musicians and licensees. In fact, we have attempted to engage both licensees and musicians, and those generating the aforementioned petitions, in an attempt to work together. No one has replied back to engage with us. The issue isn't the music, it's the location.

6:21 Noosa Junction is simply not the suitable location for live music after hours. Sunshine Beach Road is one strip in the middle of a residential area. It's surrounded by homes. There also seems to be a complete lack of consideration or understanding about the topography of the area, being that Sunshine Beach Road is essentially a valley. So sound travels up out of the valley to homes on the small hillsides that surround it. No one seems to be considering it as an extremely important geographical factor. The Junction has long been home to restaurants and cafes without issue, but bars and restaurants trading as bars, with a focus on alcohol and live music almost every night of the week, is a different thing. If the proposed amendments to the Noosa Plan are approved, the disturbance to the peace and quiet of the Noosa Junction residents will be irreversible. Once those changes are implemented and licensees capitalise on the opportunity, that change to Noosa Junction will be permanent. The changes are essentially creating a late-night entertainment hub in the middle of a residential suburb.

7:29 Currently, late-night music and patron noise often continue to pass 2am. Residents can't have their windows open at night due to the noise. Running fans, air conditioners, using white noise and hearing protection have all proven useless against the level of noise. Residents no longer feel safe walking through or near the Junction after dark, fearful of drunken patrons. Residents have teenage children who work part-time in the Junction. They're no longer safe walking home. So parents are now having to drive into the Junction to collect them at the end of their shifts. In addition, Noosa Drive has increasingly become a racetrack, with parents showing off to their friends drinking in the bars located near Sunshine Beach Road and Noosa Drive roundabout. So we are regularly woken with the sound of revving engines, screeching tyres and speeding cars. The proposed changes do state that live music is to be unamplified. However, performers always use amplification and acoustic guitars by nature of their construction are naturally amplified. So that restriction as to unamplified essentially is meaningless. Venues and artists play their music at excessive volumes over and above the regulations and they don't control their patrons who yell and scream and screech along with the music essentially creating open-air karaoke bars in competition with one another at times.

8:51 Licensees have told us the more merrier and the more noise patrons make, the more crowds are drawn in by that noise, so they encourage it into free advertising. One venue has free TV's on their outside brander without volume. However, when sporting games are being played, the lack of sound doesn't make any difference to the degree of noise patrons watching the game make. That outdoor karaoke bar becomes an outdoor sports bar. And all the whooping, cheering and chanting you'd expect of a sports bar is clearly audible from our bedrooms. After closing time, the patrons from Noosa Drive, all those venues are on the street. They're inebriated and they're waiting for Ubers and taxis. After the music stops, the music sound is replaced with yelling, fighting, screaming and all kinds of unsavoury behaviour taking place out on the streets. Ensuring that licensees operate within the rules and regulations in place around the provision of live music is difficult and does not come back to council. It's not your responsibility. It also does not fall to local police. It's not within their jurisdiction. To deal with noise complaints and licensed venues. That falls to the office of the current gaming regulation, OLGR. And they will only step in after a number of complaints are made.

10:07 OLGR are a state department. They're relatively small in terms of staffing numbers and they cover the entire Sunshine Coast and right up to Harley Bay. The legislation in place for noise complaints is extremely arduous. And it's not in favour of the complainants. Many of us residents have been in communication with them. We've been in communication with OLGR for eight months this year before any change was made. That's eight months of seriously, seriously interrupted sleep. To reiterate, council controls zoning and issues of permits. But a completely separate body, being the OLGR, handles the complaints. This detachment effectively shifts accountability away from the council, who we believe were for some time not even aware of the issues of noise in this adjunction because of this separation of roles. Let me explain a little bit about the process of making a complaint with OLGR. When residents experience excessive noise, they're required to submit a written log of the date, time and type of noise encountered. Our log needs to match at least two or three other complaints. Before OLGR staff will even be given permission from management to open the case. OLGR cannot attend to complaints at the time they are made. They don't operate in a home or service.

11:22 It's not a live process, but it's a reactionary process and it's a very protracted one that places a burden on the public to document and report disturbances multiple times to prove that there is an issue. This includes having to get out of bed late at night, get dressed, travel down to the junction and take video evidence of the court refining venue or venues night after night after night. And even then, that evidence is only of value. Other residents provide the same evidence from the same night, from the same venue at the same time and log that evidence with OLGR at the same time we do. All the while, we, and more importantly our children, are not getting normal sleep on a normal school night. We understand the need to breathe life into Noosa and the concept of providing some night life for local young people and older people alike, but to be clear, we the residents of Noosa Junction, excuse the pun. We will not sleep until Noosa Junction is no longer a location for live night time music. In closing, we collectively implore you to review and address two major issues. That is the existing noise pollution caused by bars and clubs trading under the guise of restaurants in Noosa Junction and secondly the future strategic plans for Junction.

12:45 Put simply and in summary, plans to turn Noosa Junction into an entertainment precinct are not workable and must be moved elsewhere.