The 'Divided Council' That Was Unanimous on Over $341 Million in Budgets and Contracts

Ask around Noosa and you will hear that this council is divided. Noosa Truth calls it "a solid, unbreakable voting bloc". The paper gives it a 4–3 headline most months: Lions Park, the Destination Management Plan, the Noosaville foreshore, Peregian's Active Street.

The minutes say otherwise. Since June 2025 Council has recorded nearly every vote by name, so this can be counted rather than felt.

Council decided 325 agenda items in that period. On 279 of them, 86%, not one councillor voted against.

Follow the money and the division all but vanishes.

Follow the money

The largest resolutions that state a dollar amount, at the final vote of the full Council:

Passed without a vote against

Decision	Amount	Final vote
2025–26 Budget (operating expenses)	$151.6 million	7–0, all 29 resolutions
2026–27 Budget (operating expenses)	$163.5 million	7–0, all 26 resolutions
Compost facility, Council's co-contribution (conditional on a grant and a later contract approval)	up to $9 million	7–0, en bloc
Doonella Bridge renewal	$7.4 million	6–0, en bloc
Cooroy gymnasium upgrade	$3.7 million	6–0
Sunshine Creek landslide stabilisation	$2.5 million	7–0
Western batter capping, Doonan landfill	$1.3 million	7–0, en bloc
Aquatic Centre filtration upgrade	$1.2 million	7–0, en bloc
Changing Places facility, Gympie Terrace	$1.2 million	6–0, en bloc
Tourism Noosa funding deed, 2026–2029	$2 million a year, from the operating budget	7–0, en bloc
Lanyana Way land exchange	not disclosed	7–0, en bloc

Against that, the contested side is two decisions: the Lake Macdonald Drive remediation and subdivision contract, $5.78 million, carried 4–3, and $48,869 in climate grants, carried 3–3 on the Mayor's casting vote. That is the whole list; the other 44 contested items were plans with no price in the resolution, or, as with Zero Emissions Noosa, money that had already passed in the budget.

That is $58 passed without objection for every dollar passed over one. Most of it is the two budgets; even without them, the contracts and the compost money are $26 million against $5.8 million.

The fights that ended in agreement

Most reports are decided in a committee and adopted by the full Council a few days later. Fifteen items drew a vote against in committee between June 2025 and this month. Of the twelve decided so far:

• five went through the full Council in a single 7–0 vote, as one line in a block of committee recommendations. Nobody asked for a separate vote.
• two came back and passed unanimously.
• five stayed contested: the Noosaville foreshore masterplan, Noosa Plan Amendment No. 2, the Destination Management Plan, Peregian Active Street and Lions Park.

The Tourism Noosa deed is the clearest case. On 9 June the General Committee split 3–3 on $2 million a year for three years, decided on the chair's casting vote. Nine days later the full Council adopted it 7–0, inside the block vote, with the three dissenters voting for it.

It runs the other way too.

On 23 June Council passed its budget 7–0. Inside it was $148,000 for Zero Emissions Noosa Inc, the fourth year of a partnership that started at $65,000.

On 6 October the agreement governing that money reached the General Committee, and Cr Jessica Phillips and Cr Nicola Wilson spoke against it: no target for weaning ZEN off ratepayers, said Phillips; results oversold, said Wilson.

Both had voted for the money in June. The budget was the only vote that could stop it, and that day nobody moved an amendment or mentioned ZEN. By October the money was committed and the argument was about paperwork. The vote that mattered was in June, and both of them voted yes.

Doonella Bridge ran the same way. Both voted for the $7.4 million renewal in the budget, twice, and for the contract itself in closed session on 12 May, 7–0. When the one-way traffic arrangement was announced in June, Phillips passed it on with "it's traffic, not life and death".

Tewantin's traders met on the night the works began, and by the end of that week both councillors opposed the arrangement they had relayed without complaint. Then came the ideas: reverse the direction, a Bailey bridge, night works, shuttle buses, a liaison officer, pause the works until a support plan was in place.

By late July Lorentson was writing that traders were "carrying the cost of decisions they had no real part in making", and proposing an impact plan to be agreed "before a contractor is even appointed". She had voted to appoint the contractor ten weeks earlier.

Who sides with whom

On the contested votes the line-up repeats: Lorentson and Phillips on one side, Wilkie, Stockwell and Wegener on the other, Finzel and Wilson deciding it. Every pairing is on the who votes with whom page.

A pattern on one item in seven is not a divided council.
On the other six, and on almost all of the money, they vote as one.

What made the paper

Noosa Today articles since 1 June 2025 that use the exact phrase and mention Council:

Topic	Final vote	Noosa Today articles
Destination Management Plan	contested	45
Tourism Noosa	7–0 en bloc (after a 3–3 committee vote)	39
Lions Park	contested	21
Noosaville foreshore	contested	14
Lanyana Way land exchange / bowls club site	7–0 en bloc	0
Compost facility	7–0 en bloc	1, with no dollar figure
Decisions made in confidential session	20 of 21 without dissent	1, an opinion piece

On 22 June three developers announced a $300 million, 208-apartment plan for the former bowls club site, the land on the other side of Council's exchange. Sunshine Coast News and the trade press reported it as a private development. We found no report in Noosa Today, and none anywhere that mentioned Council had voted, thirteen days earlier, to swap part of its public car park with the site. The Sunshine Coast Daily's Noosa coverage over the same period ran to the Lions Park fight, the wedding fees, the rates rise and the fraud. We found no story on the land exchange or the compost money.

The press has said, more than once, that this Council decides too much behind closed doors. What it has not reported are the decisions.

Why it matters

The arguments residents read about are real, but they are about a narrow band of decisions. The budgets passed in public, with speeches, and nobody voted against them. That is agreement, not concealment.

Then there is the closed door. Council took 21 decisions in confidential session over these sixteen months, and 20 of them passed without a vote against. The one exception is the Lake Macdonald Drive contract: $5.78 million, carried 4–3 in July 2025, the only closed-door decision any councillor has voted against.

The compost contribution, the land exchange and the confidential contracts are different. Each was decided first in a closed session, then adopted by the full Council as one line in a block vote, with no separate vote and no public debate. Those are this council's largest commitments of land and money outside the budget, and the public never saw them argued, because they never were.