Queensland President’s Update

The Queensland Branch program for 2023 has started well, and we are looking forward to another great year of engaging with members. 

The QLD Branch program of events for 2023 started with a sold-out Industry Breakfast on 22 February 2023. There were 300 people that attended the Brisbane event and several regional delegates attending hub events in Cairns and Townsville and several online attendees. 

This was followed up with the annual Queensland President’s Dinner, which is an invitation only event for water leaders and major sponsors for AWA. We were pleased to welcome the Honourable Glenn Butcher MP, Queensland Minister for Regional Development and Manufacturing and Minister for Water. Glenn provided us with a snapshot of the government’s focus for the water industry. The focus is on capacity building through developing programs and avenues to develop and attract the right skills and to focus on resilience of the water industry.

We recently launched a new round of the Queensland Mentoring Program with 35 pairs of mentors and mentees.

This is just the start of the QLD Branch program for 2023. The Branch Committee and YWP Subcommittee undertook a planning session for the year ahead after the recent Industry Breakfast. This helped us develop the program to guide our events and actions throughout the year. Our committee will be busy planning and preparing for each of the scheduled events and will keep you updated as they are progressed.

Going forward we have a full year of events with several technical events planned with the first regional technical event scheduled for Thursday, 16 March in Bundaberg. This will be a great morning event with presentations from a number of water leaders from the region presenting on the key issues for implementing a whole-of-water-cycle management approach. These presentations will be available via livestream from 7am-9am. Members attending in person will have the opportunity to hear more from the presenters with a panel discussion after morning tea, and then a site visit to the Belle Eden Waterway Naturalisation project, which has provided an effective habitat restoration of a drain to create an attractive naturalised creek. For those travelling to Bundaberg there is a casual get together organised for the previous night where you can catch up with your colleagues.

Our Women of Water will be catching up on Thursday, 30 March for a networking session to discuss the theme of International Women’s Day #EmbraceEquity. We’d love you to join us and bring along a colleague!

This year we will have the North Queensland Conference and QWater as separate events. The NQ Conference will be held in Townsville from 15 to 16 August 2023. We have received several high-quality paper submissions and this event is expected to be another fantastic opportunity to share your experience and learn from your colleagues. Registrations will open soon, so keep an eye out for more information to come.

This will be followed by our premier event, the QLD Water Awards and Gala Dinner to be held on Friday 8 September. Entries for awards will open in June, this is a great opportunity to promote your personal and organisation’s successes.

We also have the Young Water Professionals’ Amazing Race planned for National Water Week in October and QWater will be held in Brisbane on 9-10 November.