ONLINE COMMENTS
My brother is a consultant in town. He says the running joke in the industry is you need to have a Brisbane office address to win any work off Toowoomba Council. The arrogance is with the staff who think there is no way you could know what you are talking about if you have a business in Toowoomba. They should know all about that because there is no greater concentration of people who don’t know what they are doing than that which exists in TRC.
— Guppy, Mount Lofty
FKG would have no troubles in building the library project. And they obviously aren’t too expensive as they win jobs all over Australia. They are a construction company. How can they not meet the criteria? Gary Gardner is correct. My company was going to tender for an Ipswich job earlier on this year and figured there was no point because they gave their local suppliers such a huge advantage!
— John11, East Toowoomba
This is not the only area where local businesses are being excluded. Council is employing consultants for the new disability or inclusive community master plan and our regional disability sector has been excluded from the tendering process. I am waiting on a response from the CEO to find out why.
— InFaith, Toowoomba Village Fair
I think the council did the right thing and not hand-out to local business just because they are locals. I commend the council officers and council for showing that they avoided being tainted by the “jobs for the mates” tag. It does no business good to not be chosen on merit. I have not noticed either Wagners or FKG lacking in work according to their website. We need to make sure we have a constant flow of new ideas and ways of doing business from outside so we improve our processes and business successes.
— Business101, Mount Lofty
FKG aren’t asking for a handout, they are asking for opportunity to tender against the others. “Jobs for mates” you say, what about jobs for the people that pay the rates-money used to build the building? 430 families in Toowoomba, all spending money here and paying rates here. It is their council, it represents them. It is money sourced from them paying for the building! This decision sends TRC-collected rates money out of TRC, instead of keeping it circulating within.
— Tmbares, Toowoomba City