President’s Welcome – March 2025

Welcome to the end of the first quarter of 2025. If you are wondering why I can’t keep the smile off my face, then I will tell you it is from the glow of our incredible event with finance guru Mark Bouris at the Maroochydore RSL in February. This keynote event continues our tradition of hosting one large breakfast event in February each year and continues to be a ‘must do’ activity for our members and guests each year. We’ve had incredible feedback from our sponsors, members and guests since the event and a number of new members have joined on the back of Mark’s visit, which is fantastic.

Federal election

With the announcement that May 3 is set for the 2025 Federal election, we know it’s an important time for our country and our region. Our Chamber always has, and always will be politically neutral and we will continue to advocate all political leaders on the key issues which affect our community including housing affordability, cost of living and major infrastructure. Our advice to all our members and partners is to question all political aspirants of their policies to serve this community if elected to Government.

Shine a Light on Racism campaign

Our Chamber is a strong supporter of diversity and inclusion and we continue to support the region’s Shine a Light on Racism campaign which was relaunched in February this year. Many thanks to our executive committee member Peppi Bueti for his continuing role as patron on this committee along with a number of other well known identities including Caroline Hutchinson, Ashley Robinson, Steph Fretwell, Brad Beetson, Christine Thomas and Carlos Vaquero.

This year’s campaign focusses on our local business and sporting community to stand together to Shine a Light on Racism and #DOTHEWORK to become anti-recist.

To view this year’s video, visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqe5pQyRMjk

Ex Tropical Cyclone Alfred

As parts of the region continue their recovery efforts following Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, it is now critical for the Queensland Government to continue to collect business impact data. You may have seen that Business Queensland has released the Disaster Impact Survey, and we encourage you to share this with your networks.

Collecting this information helps build a clear picture of the challenges our businesses are facing across the region, which supports advocacy for the recovery funding required to support our impacted Sunshine Coast businesses. Businesses access the survey for small business here.

For those affected, please reach out to the team at businessdevelopment@sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au if you have any questions or concerns.

Chambercast with the President and Pep

We continue to roll out some incredible guests on our podcast this year including leadership guru Dave Clare, Sam Parker founder of Grad Life by the Balls and more recently Morgan Parker who is a long term board member of SunCentral Maroochydore. We thank all of our guests and encourage our members and friends to listen in to these informative discussions. To listen to all the latest Chambercast’s with the President and Pep, please click here: https://maroochy.org/chambercast

Thanks Hirsty

Steve Hirst has been a pivotal member and sponsor of our Chamber and without his support our Chambercast with the President and Pep would not be possible. Steve’s time at Southern Cross Austereo has come to an end and we thank him for his support over the years and we wish him well for the future. Steve will now set up his own consulting business and can be contacted via his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hirst-9720b739

Vale Doug Broad

We were saddened to hear of the passing of a great Sunshine Coaster, former Telstra executive Doug Broad.

Doug has been a great friend of Maroochydore Chambers for decades and in his time at Telstra he was a strong advocate of supporting the business community and in particular Chamber of Commerce.

Doug was always welcoming and ready to brighten your day with a smile and he will surely be missed by us all.  You would be hard pressed to find anyone who did not like Doug. 

Doug lived for his family and our thoughts go to them.

Rest in peace our friend.

Thanks for your support

Our chamber recently surpassed 350 members which is an incredible achievement. We recently acknowledged all of the current 5+ year members at our Mark Bouris event and we thank all of our members for keeping our Chamber strong so we can continue to do what we do.

This would not be possible without our dedicated executive committee members, as well as  our incredible membership officer Sharon Dryden and last but not least, Min Swan and her team at White House International. I’m proud to lead them again this year and I’m really excited for what we have planned over the next few months.

Finally thanks to our sponsors and members for all you do to make our Chamber so successful. As always, if you have any ideas for news, events or activities we could promote or undertake please let us know.

I look forward to seeing you at our next Chamber event.

Brendan Bathersby

President