The Wildfire waste agreement

At about 2:45pm on Thursday 20 August, council closed its chambers to the public. Half an hour later the doors reopened and the Deputy Mayor read a resolution committing the shire to a Waste Supply Agreement with Wildfire Energy Bulwer Island Pty Ltd.

It passed without a word of public debate and without a vote against.

The resolution is public. Almost everything that would let a ratepayer judge it is not.

What council resolved

Item 13.1 came with a single attachment, listed in the agenda as "CONFIDENTIAL Attachment 1 – WWE – WSA NOOSA Aug 2026 DRAFT". The document councillors considered was, on its own label, a draft.

The operative parts:

B. In accordance with Section 235(b) of the Local Government Regulation 2012, approve entering into a Waste Supply Agreement with Wildfire Energy Bulwer Island Pty Ltd for the trial delivery and processing of residual municipal solid waste and post-resource recovery construction and demolition residuals at the Bulwer Island Energy Recovery Facility, without first inviting written quotes or tenders, on the basis that:

1. The services proposed to be provided by the Service Supplier under the Agreement are specialised in the waste industry;
2. The services proposed to be provided by the Service Supplier under the Agreement are confidential to the Service Supplier; and
3. Council is satisfied that, because of the specialised and/or confidential nature of the services, it would be impractical and/or disadvantageous for Council to invite quotes or tenders;

C. Authorise the CEO to negotiate and finalise the Waste Supply Agreement and any associated documents to give effect to that Agreement, for the contract value discussed in the closed session of this meeting. For clarity, any general financial delegations do not limit the exercise of the CEO's power under this paragraph.

Part D asks for a future report on operational outcomes, waste diversion, financial outcomes, and "opportunities associated with any future Energy Recovery Facility initiatives." No date is attached to it.

Six councillors voted for it and none against. Cr Wilson had left the meeting at 1:13pm and was absent. Cr Phillips moved the closure and Cr Lorentson seconded it; Cr Stockwell moved the resolution and Cr Phillips seconded. There is no factional story here — this one was unanimous among those present.

Who Wildfire Energy is

Wildfire Energy is a Brisbane company commercialising a gasification process it developed in Queensland, which turns non-recyclable residual waste into syngas and from there into electricity or liquid fuels.

It is not a fly-by-night operation, and nothing here suggests any impropriety on its part. It is a grant-backed company doing what its funding announcements said it would do. In 2026 the Queensland Government gave it $18.56 million from the Sovereign Industry Development Fund, alongside $3.15 million from ARENA and $2 million from Climate Tech Partners, to build the Bulwer Island Biofuels Hub on the old BP refinery site in Brisbane — a "first of a kind" plant processing up to 30,000 tonnes of residual waste a year and creating up to 65 jobs.

The relevant fact is the timetable. On the government's own announcement, construction begins in late 2026 and operations begin in early 2028.

Three things worth noticing

The plant council contracted with is not built

The resolution commits council to trial delivery and processing "at the Bulwer Island Energy Recovery Facility" — a facility that, on the public timetable, cannot process anything until early 2028. Wildfire runs a separate pilot plant, so the trial tonnage may well go there instead. But the resolution does not say so, and nothing on the public record explains the gap.

So a ratepayer cannot tell from the minutes whether council has bought a service that can be delivered now, or signed on as an early feedstock customer for a first-of-a-kind plant that does not yet exist. Those are different commitments, and only one of them is a "trial" in the ordinary sense of the word.

The reason given for skipping tenders is circular

Section 235(b) lets a council skip quotes and tenders where it is satisfied only one supplier is reasonably available. That may well be true here — you cannot run a competitive tender for a proprietary process only one company operates.

But that is not the reason council recorded. Its second ground is that the services are "confidential to the Service Supplier." Read plainly, council has cited the supplier's own commercial secrecy as the reason nobody else may be asked to quote. That reasoning would excuse a tender for almost any contract, and it does no work the "specialised" ground does not already do. The stronger and more obvious argument — that Wildfire is the only operator of this technology — appears nowhere in the public resolution.

The price is sealed and the CEO's limits were lifted

Part C authorises the CEO to finalise the agreement at a value the public does not have, and then removes the usual ceiling: "any general financial delegations do not limit the exercise of the CEO's power under this paragraph."

Councils routinely keep commercial terms confidential while negotiating, and s 254J(3)(g) plainly permits a closed session for it. Less routine is combining a sealed value with an express disapplication of the CEO's standing financial limits. The effect is that the only people who know the size of the commitment are the six councillors who were in the room, and the officers.

It is worth noting this happened at the same meeting that adopted the annual review of delegations from council to the CEO — passed en bloc, without debate.

The case for the council

There is a straightforward defence of all of this, and it deserves stating.

Waste-to-energy is where the economics are heading. The state waste levy rises every year, council has just committed $6.53 million to expanding landfill cells at Eumundi-Noosa Road, and Budget Review 1 — adopted at the same meeting — carries $11.2 million in new waste borrowings and a $3.4 million increase in waste capital works. Testing an alternative to burying residual waste is prudent.

A trial is the right way to test it. You cannot competitively tender a proprietary technology. Terms genuinely are confidential mid-negotiation, and publishing a price would weaken council's hand. Part D does promise a public report.

None of that is unreasonable. The difficulty is that every fact needed to judge whether it is reasonable in this case sits inside the sealed attachment.

What is not known

Contract value	Withheld — closed session
Term of the agreement	Not stated publicly
Tonnage committed	Not stated publicly
Price per tonne	Not stated publicly
When delivery begins	Not stated publicly
Whether council can exit	Not stated publicly
Whether the trial creates any preference for a future long-term supply contract	Not stated publicly
Date the Part D report returns	No date set

That last row matters most. On the same morning a resident petition on Black Mountain road safety was likewise "referred to the Chief Executive Officer to determine appropriate action", with no report-back date. Undated commitments are how items leave the public record.

Where this goes next

Two things will surface without anyone's cooperation.

The contract register. Section 237 of the Local Government Regulation 2012 requires a council to publish details of any contractual arrangement worth $200,000 or more excluding GST, as soon as practicable after entering into it, and to keep them available for at least twelve months. The threshold aggregates across contracts with the same supplier for services of a similar type, so a trial structured below the line still catches if more follows. If this crosses it, the value appears on council's published register in the coming months.

The Part D report. Undated, and therefore worth asking about. A public question at an ordinary meeting gets a minuted answer from a director.

Watch for: whether delivery begins before the Brisbane plant is operational and where the waste goes if it does; the term and whether council can exit; whether the trial confers any option or exclusivity over a future long-term supply agreement; and what it costs — in dollars and in emissions — to truck residual waste from Doonan to Brisbane rather than bury it at Doonan. Council has declared a climate emergency. That arithmetic belongs in the Part D report, and it is exactly the kind of number that never appears unless somebody asks for it in advance.

---

Sources. The resolution, the reasons for closure, the attachment title and the votes are from council's adopted minutes for the Ordinary Meeting of 20 August 2026 (item 13.1) and the published meeting packet. Budget and landfill figures are from item 12.2 of the same minutes and council's own media release. Funding, capacity and timetable for the Bulwer Island plant are from the Queensland Government's announcement and the company's published material. Nothing in this piece comes from the closed session, and nothing in it alleges wrongdoing by the supplier.