Meetings · Ordinary Meeting - 20 August 2026
Ordinary Meeting - 20 August 2026
Council reversed itself on Lions Park after the legal advice quietly changed, and adopted a motion doing roughly what it had voted down five times nine days earlier.
The short version
The Mayor moved to discontinue overflow parking at Noosa Heads Lions Park. He lost, 3–4. Cr Finzel crossed the floor, and what council adopted instead was Cr Phillips' replacement motion: get a further report, and in the meantime write to the Minister under s 52AA of the Land Act 1994 seeking interim approval for temporary parking over the 2026 Christmas period. Carried 5–2.
The General Committee had recommended approving the start of a land management plan. That part was dropped.
Why it turned
Between the 11 August committee meeting and this one, the advice changed. On 11 August council was told, on legal advice read into the record, that it could not rely on s 52AA and should proceed on the basis that a land management plan was required. On 20 August the Director of Development & Regulation told council s 52AA is available and that on his understanding no management plan is required.
Asked by the Mayor whether that was a change from the week before, he said "not necessarily."
It is a change, and it matters, because on 11 August council voted down five separate attempts to ask exactly that question. Full history in the Lions Park dossier.
The item nobody debated
Council also closed the chambers for half an hour and came back having committed to a waste supply agreement with Wildfire Energy Bulwer Island Pty Ltd — no tender, the contract value sealed in the closed session, and the CEO's ordinary financial limits expressly lifted for it. It passed 6–0 without public debate. The company's Brisbane plant does not begin operating until 2028. Full detail in The Wildfire waste agreement.
What else was on
This meeting also carried the General Committee's en bloc recommendations, which included the annual delegations review — the item that hands the CEO a standing set of powers for the year — and the review of the Community Purpose Land and Infrastructure Tenure Policy. Both are the kind of item that passes in a block without debate and shapes what council can do without coming back to a meeting.
Also on the agenda: two Planning & Environment Court appeals over short-stay letting, a third over MCU17/0559.05, an update to the infrastructure charges resolution, the Q4 operational plan report, and the June register of planning applications decided under delegated authority.
Watch it yourself
Every item below is cued to the moment it was debated in council's own recording. Item 11.1.3 is Lions Park.