Kuttsy's Pitch: #Bris3xit

The current municipal debt, shouldered by the Brisbane City Council (just a tidy sum of $1,803,877,465) which would average out to $1495 (courtesy of the BCC budget speech in 2018) for every man, woman and child in the current BCC area in the 2018/19 financial year.

Reason: the investment in the last ten years in toll road projects (whose tolls didn’t recoup the fanciful figures that were predicted early on) to try to unchain the centre of Brisbane’s traffic issues, along with laying the groundwork for another inner city transport project: Brisbane Metro bus tunnels when outer suburbs needed the investment more.

Meanwhile, in the outer suburbs: councils who have become landed gentry due to rapid urban sprawl and council area changes in the last twenty years, are now struggling, to maintain their position, as their local council interactions and the like makes the front page: just ask anyone in Ipswich or Logan, and for that matter: Moreton Bay, as these growth areas are now beginning to forge their own identities, away from the commuter city identity that has risen since the late 1990s.

Thus, it is now time for Kuttsy’s Pitch to look at the possibility of a “BrisExit”: the transformation of the current bloated BCC authority to a much leaner model (along with delivering devolved authority): beginning with the development of five new 21st century strategies which can become acts of parliament, that can be utilized together to deliver a “BrisExit” model, that appeals to all. After all, it’s a natural move to aim for politics: based on the success of Kuttsy’s Pitch’s looks into public transport fares in December 2014, and into the state of 4BC/4BH in October 2017.

Kuttsy's Pitch X

Welcome, to a landmark edition, as part of the second Pitch Weekend (after the surprising success of an unplanned Pitch Weekend #1 in 2017), that marks the tenth mainline edition, of Kuttsy’s Pitch. I’ve had many people say to me, this concept is dead, over the last few years: as the memories of Extra’s demise fade further into the horizon. Kuttsy’s Pitch has as such become the master of reinvention, and this year’s edition, and for that matter the third spinoff, due this weekend, are the shining lights of all this reinvention since 2014’s gamble on counting content and creating a pre-election spinoff: and are hoping to return to the halcyon days of 2012/13, when the mainline series was hitting it’s peak. And it all begins, with a reference to the format this year: imagine if this was a play, and each act was followed by a short intermission… and it begins with the changes Seven made in Brisbane, just weeks before the Commonwealth Games.