Foley's Earthmoving

Foley’s Earthmoving was invited to attend the Logan City Sustainability Roundtable on the 9th November 2009. Representing Foley’s Earthmoving, Damien Foley attended the workshop in the area of small business. The representation of the community was very diverse, with roundtables consisting of Social/Community, Business/Economic, Governance/Political, Rural and Natural Landscapes.  Tim Winton of ‘Permaforest Trust’ opened the moring with an informative presentation on global sustainability and its relationship to the local community.

The workshop then proceeded into the first of the 2 sections of the workshop. Seated at the Business and Economic table, the first of the workshop questions presented to each table was focused on Logans current key issues, challenges, threats and opportunities and how Logan might look like in 10-20 years time if it addressed these threats and opportunities. Some of the key issues identifed by all the tables was Logans transport infrastructure and its current lack of ability to service the areas decentralised communities. Logans current image was also a concern as an attraction for industry with its location being unwelcoming to prospective employees of such industry. The lack of building of relationships between the Logan City Council and small local business was also an area found to be lacking. This relationship not only being needed to encourage micro business in the area, but to encourage them to grow and become major corporate citizens and pillars of the area.

The second workshop area was how the respective sectors were already contributing to positive and sustainable activity, what there current focus was to acheive their aspiring contributions, past changes and motivational success factors, what was blocking innovation, and what is needed to move forward. This section being so vast did become distorted but included aspects such as fuel effeciency; the use of environmentally friendly practices; the recognition of the community; environmental sustainability as both a business motivator and innovation success factor; youth and business educational programs around business and the community. A disappointing fact that arose from this discussion is the Logan City Council has a local business register. However, the ultimate decision of who is contracted for local government projects is left with the manager of the department who is under no obligation to consider those local businesses who have registered through the protocoled channels. Instead, that person has the authority to contract any business they wish without council scrutiny. It leaves to question the Logan City Councils commitment to support local business, when they themselves heavily desire local business to support the Councils community actions.

Foley’s Earthmoving looks forward to the releasing of the white paper on this roundtable and believes that it is a valuable step forward in understanding the Logan Citys approach to sustainable development to the future.

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