By Noosa Chamber of Commerce
The Noosa Chamber of Commerce and Industry was first incorporated in 1981 to be a voice for business and more broadly our local community. Next year we will celebrate our 40th successful year in operation.
In September this year Chamber changed the way it was operating and developed a portfolio based committee.
The committee is now structured around the four pillars of Noosa’s Economy being Accommodation, Retail, Aged Care and Construction. As we moved through this realignment it was agreed that we also needed to have committee members that represented other aspects of a thriving local community in areas such as the Arts and fostering Youth and Start-Ups which we added.
The Chamber Committee now has embedded in its philosophy that the community, the mums and dads, the school children and their grandparents, our local sporting teams, and community groups are an essential and integral part of the broader church of the Chamber of commerce.
The business community and residential community are inextricably linked through the business owners and each businesses employees of which each rely on the other. There is no community without business and there are no businesses without the community.
This year has presented many challenges around the world, and of course Noosa hasn’t been immune to the challenges of Covid, in fact its arguable that we have been hit harder than most other areas in Australia due to our reliance on Tourism.
Noosa is used to platitudes due to our iconic beaches and pristine hinterland however we now have some accolades that we never anticipated including being the number two town in Australia for Mortgage Stress and deferrals along with rocketing unemployment reaching 20 per cent in the 18-25yo age group.
Businesses are also now have great difficulty finding employees which may seem odd given the unemployment, and employees are now finding it almost impossible obtaining accommodation that is affordable.
Historically in our town we have had division over development/business working with other community groups and that has caused friction.
Now more than ever we must all work as one, as the tough times are actually still in front of us, and not behind us as many think.
