The Doonan compost facility

On 4 August council issued a media release headed "Council progresses investigation into proposed compost facility." Mayor Wilkie called the work a logical next step in council's resource recovery journey. The facility, at the Noosa Resource Recovery Facility in Doonan, would use enclosed composting technology and process up to 25,000 tonnes of organic waste a year.

The release ran to about 400 words. It named the contractor, OREZ. It named the technology. It named the tonnage. It did not contain a dollar figure.

Nor did anything that followed it. Noosa Today ran the story on 9 August, Mirage News republished the release in full, and the waste trade press picked it up. Across the whole of that coverage there are exactly two numbers — 25,000 tonnes, and 2017, the year the green bins started. There is not a dollar sign anywhere, because there was none in the release to reproduce.

Four months earlier, on 7 April, in a meeting closed to the public, four councillors recommended that council approve a contribution of up to $9 million towards it. Nine days later the full council adopted that recommendation in open session, en bloc — 7–0, no separate vote, no debate.

Three numbers, three hiding places

Every figure in this project is on the public record. None of them appeared in the announcement, or in any of the coverage that followed it.

Figure	What it is	Where it lives
$1,100,000	The OREZ design contract	Minutes of a committee meeting, 10 February 2026
$9,000,000	Council's own contribution	Minutes of a committee meeting, 7 April 2026
$14,632,000	The total project	Row six of the waste management table, page 208 of the 209-page 2026/27 Budget Statements
Nothing	The media release of 4 August, and every news report of it	The only documents on this list addressed to residents

The adopted budget carries the project as Doonan – Resource Recovery Centre – Compost Facility: nothing in 2026/27, $3.333 million in 2027/28, $11.299 million in 2028/29. It sits as a single row in a ten-year capital table, with no narrative, no business case and no explanation attached anywhere in the budget documents.

The facility has been through six formal decisions since October 2024 — the expression of interest, the tender award to Orez Solutions Pty Ltd, and the $9 million envelope. Each was deliberated by committee behind closed doors, under s 254J(3)(g) of the Local Government Regulation 2012: commercial negotiations. Each was then adopted at an ordinary meeting in open session, en bloc, without debate, with the resolution text and its dollar figures printed in the published minutes. That is the entire public airing these decisions have had.

What is not in dispute

The procurement was competitive: an expression of interest, a shortlist, then a request for tender, with a probity advisor's report and a weighted evaluation workbook attached. Unlike the Wildfire agreement council signed on 20 August, nothing here was handed out without a market process.

The safeguards are on the record. The April resolution states the $9 million "will only be expended if external grant funding is secured and a future Design & Construct contract is separately approved by Council."

And the project has a documented rationale. Council's Waste Plan 2023–2028 records that the shire diverts 46% of its waste against a state target of 61%, receives about 20,000 tonnes of green waste a year, and sends roughly 4,000 tonnes of food waste to landfill — together, just under the facility's 25,000-tonne capacity. The waste levy is $135 a tonne, rising to $145 next July.

Two things worth noticing

The closure is never explained

Section 254J(3)(g) allows a meeting to be closed for negotiations relating to a commercial matter where public discussion would be likely to prejudice council's interests. For February — choosing between tenderers with prices on the table — that is easy to see.

April is harder to see, though not impossible. The item endorsed an application to a published grant program and set a budget envelope, which is a budget decision rather than a negotiation. But part D of the same resolution contemplates negotiating a funding agreement if the bid succeeded, and the confidential report may well have carried OREZ cost estimates ahead of a construct contract. A commercial basis was available.

What the record does not contain is any statement of it. The closure resolution names the item and cites the paragraph. It does not say what would have been prejudiced, or how. The same paragraph, in the same words, closed item 9.1 that afternoon — a turf mowing and maintenance contract. And six weeks later council published the project's full $14.632 million cost in its own budget.

A million dollars of general cash, before the grant is decided

The adopted budget had nothing for the facility in 2026/27. Budget Review 1, adopted on 20 August, added $1,008,000 — almost exactly the value of the OREZ contract.

Schedule 8 of that review breaks every capital project down by funding source: grants, loans, levy reserves, other reserves, general cash reserves. The compost facility's $1.008 million sits in the general cash reserves column. It is the only project in the shire's entire $18.55 million waste capital program for 2026/27 funded that way. Everything else — the leachate treatment, the batter capping, the $8.963 million resource recovery area expansion — comes from loans, levy reserves or grants.

Design work has to be paid for, and the early contractor involvement model exists so costs are known before construction is committed. But roughly a million dollars of council's own cash is going into design for a facility whose construction depends on a grant that has not been awarded. Residents were never told.

What is not known

The amount actually applied for	Not stated publicly
How much of the $9m is council's share of eligible costs, and how much is ineligible costs and contingency	Not stated publicly
How much of the 25,000 tonnes is new diversion, given green waste is already collected	Not stated publicly
What happens to the $1.008m allocated for design if the grant fails	Not stated publicly

Where this goes next

Council has applied to the SEQ City Deal Organics Processing Program, funded jointly by the Australian Government, the Queensland Government and the Council of Mayors (SEQ). The guidelines run it on a 1:1:1 basis: the two governments and the applicant council each meet a third of eligible project costs, and the applicant must additionally carry "all Ineligible Project Costs" and "any project cost increases that occur over the life of the project". Applications closed on 1 July. Outcomes are announced in September. Funded projects must be complete by March 2028.

That explains the shape of the $9 million. A third of a $14.632 million project is about $4.9 million; the rest of the envelope is the ineligible costs and overrun exposure the guidelines oblige an applicant to have secured before it applies. Nothing about the figure is irregular. It does mean council's own contribution is the largest single share of a project it has described publicly as depending on grant funding.

If the grant lands next month, council then has roughly eighteen months to finish design, award a construction contract, build and commission. It delivered 67% of its capital program last financial year.

Watch for: the grant result in September; the OREZ contract appearing on council's published contract register, which s 237 requires for any arrangement worth $200,000 or more excluding GST; and the design and construct report, which both the February and April resolutions promise will come back to council for a separate decision. That is the point at which the full number stops being optional.

Three questions worth putting at the ordinary meeting on 17 September. What total project cost and grant amount did council apply for? How much of the $9 million envelope is council's third of eligible costs, and how much is ineligible costs and contingency? And if the application fails, what happens to the $1.008 million allocated for design?

---

Noosa's organic waste policy did not begin in a closed committee room. It began in 2015, when council convened the shire's first community jury — randomly selected residents, run with the newDemocracy Foundation — and asked them to work through the trade-offs of reducing organic waste to landfill. They recommended mandated garden waste bins and a future full organics service. Council adopted the lot. The green waste service Mayor Wilkie credited in August, "in place since 2017", is the direct result.

The largest decision in that program's history was taken eleven years later by four councillors, behind a closed door, and ratified by seven without a word of debate.

---

Sources. The resolutions, the reasons for closure and the votes are from council's adopted minutes for the Services & Organisation Committee meetings of 8 October 2024, 10 February 2026 and 7 April 2026, and the ordinary meetings of 17 October 2024, 19 February 2026 and 16 April 2026. Capital figures are from the 2026/27 Budget Statements adopted 23 June 2026 and from Budget Review 1, item 12.2 of the ordinary meeting of 20 August 2026. Diversion and tonnage figures are from council's Waste Plan 2023–2028. The announcement is council's own media release of 4 August 2026. Grant terms, including the 1:1:1 ratio and the applicant's liability for ineligible costs and overruns, are quoted from the Queensland Government's published SEQ City Deal Organics Processing Program guidelines. Nothing in this piece comes from a closed session, and nothing in it alleges wrongdoing by Orez Solutions Pty Ltd, which won this work through a competitive tender.