2015-03-12 Ordinary Meeting Agenda

ORDINARY MEETING AGENDA                                                          12 MARCH 2015


The consultant was given 12 weeks to undertake the review. Meetings were held onsite with both
Noosa Council and SCRC representatives on a number of occasions. There was also a
substantial amount of material provided in hard copy and by email together with phone
conferences explaining the issues from the Noosa Council perspective. Noosa Council’s Director
Corporate Services undertook an enormous amount of work, often in his own time, to present the
issues to the independent consultant.

On 10 December 2014, the Noosa Council CEO received a letter from the Minister outlining his
determination on the five issues in dispute. This followed verbal advice from the Minister to the
Mayor and CEO earlier that same day.

The Minister also provided a copy of the independent consultant’s report. The disclaimer in the
independent consultant’s report makes it clear that the Department did not allow the independent
consultant to seek further expert advice as recommended by the independent consultant and
indeed, the Department provided an early termination of his engagement, thus not allowing him
to finalise his report to the Minister.

The independent consultant outlined their recommendations in the report to the Minister as set
out below:

“As indicated in part 4 of this report the Consultants had planned, with DLGCRR’s approval, to
obtain expert advice on a number of matters related to some of the issues in dispute. The early
conclusion to the project before that expert advice could be obtained has severely impacted the
ability of the Consultants to make fully definitive recommendations for the Minister’s decisions on
Issues 1, 3 and 5.

Issue 1 – Water and Sewerage Restricted Cash
The Consultants recommend that the Minister make a decision on this matter according to either:
 the ‘FY10 reserves’ approach, based on NSC share of total SCRC Water and Sewerage
   reserves at 30 June 2010; or
 the ‘modified funds provided’ approach – that is, the approach used by QTC for the Boundary
   Commissioner Report, with adjustments made to reflect the correct opening balances
   between regions.

Issue 2 – Carbon Tax
The Consultants recommend that the residual funds after acquitting the carbon tax liability be
distributed 80% to NSC and 20% to SCRC.

Issue 3 – Region Specific Developer Contributions
Without expert advice the Consultants are unable to make recommendations on the
appropriateness of the ‘normalising’ adjustments undertaken by SCRC at 30 June 2013 or their
retrospective application. The Consultants are also unable to make a recommendation regarding
the NSC claim that SCRC has ‘double dipped’ through the adjustments in addition to the
allocation of debt.

Issue 4 – Unearned Revenue
The Consultants recommend that the Minister determine that the SCRC treatment of unearned
revenue as a region specific item is correct.

Issue 5 – Unitywater Dividend and Tax Equivalent
The Consultants are unable to make a recommendation in relation to the Unitywater Dividend
without expert accounting advice on the correct treatment of the Dividend in SCRC’s books at 31
December 2013.

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