City must maintain certainty

A TOWNSVILLE business confidence index indicates the city is bouncing back. But it’s one hell of a rollercoaster ride. The PVW Partners’ survey is showing the second most positive result in the past 11 years, which is in stark contrast to the March 2018 results which showed the largest single quarterly decrease in confidence.

That volatility teaches us some valuable lessons.

It warns that for our economy to recover, praying for a silver bullet ( like an Adani) to take away all our woes can lead to some almighty ups and downs.

It also highlights the risk in relying on government projects or handouts given the speed at which election cycles come round and the propensity for politicians to change their minds depending on which way the wind is blowing.

One need only look at the current state of play at Port of Townsville where each tier of government has apparently backed away from funding projects they’ve previously described as priorities.

The economy needs to be diverse and sturdy in order to see that business confidence graph show some sort of trend. It indicates that smaller businesses will be the main Townsville employers in the coming quarter with all of those surveyed saying they would maintain or increase their number of employees.

It’s for that reason events like yesterday’s Local Heroes business startup competition are important.

Celebrating and supporting innovation in our city will provide a ripple effect that will help smooth out those peaks and troughs when the government money dries up or if the big projects falter.

Also important is the work some of the big players are doing in the sustainability space as evidenced in the Bulletin’s ongoing series Powering our Future, which highlights the local adoption of renewables and the impact it could have on our future economy.

It will be all eyes on the next quarter to see whether we can get some consistency in returning confidence to the city.