General News
16 May, 2026
‘We need answers’
OUR Babinda pool was being failed. Now we have a legal right to see why.
More than 400 people came to the RSL Hall in Babinda earlier this year to say they wanted to keep their pool.
In a town of roughly 1200 people, that is one-in-three residents. It was not an angry meeting full of noise. It was a community that had come out because something essential to daily life here was being taken away and people deserved to understand why.
I have spent the past several months looking at the evidence behind that decision, starting with utilisation.
The Otium Report recorded 3922 visits to the Babinda pool during the measurement period. What the report does not include is the visits-per-head figure for Babinda’s catchment.
Using council’s own preferred metric, Babinda records 2.60 visits per head. The network average is 1.6. The national benchmark is 1.2. The pool recommended for closure outperforms both. That number does not appear in the published report.
To understand why that matters, you need to know how the pool was actually operating during that period. Closed every weekend. Closed every public holiday. Closed for approximately four months over winter. Running with a single lifeguard. Documented recurring closures during the measurement period itself.
Community failed
Those 3922 visits happened despite those conditions. The pool was not failing our community. Our community was being failed by how the pool was being operated.
The spatial analysis section of the Otium Report includes a map showing all the pools in the network. Babinda is not on it. Every other pool is shown. Babinda is missing. In a report that used spatial analysis to inform which facilities should continue operating, our community was simply absent from the picture.
The report suggests residents could use the Babinda Boulders as a recreational water alternative.
I will be direct about this. Council’s own risk assessment records 21 drowning deaths at the Boulders since 1916, three of them since April 2020. The same document describes conditions where “the potential for death once in the Chute is extremely high.”
Our region’s drowning rate is 3.2 times the national average. Babinda’s First Nations community is nearly 14% of the population, three times the Queensland average and Aboriginal children are 2.9 times more likely to drown.
At the ABS 2021 suburb-level SEIFA assessment, Babinda sits in national decile.
Drowning site
The Boulders is not a swimming facility. It is a documented drowning site.
The reported annual operating cost for the Babinda pool is $279,000. No itemised breakdown of that figure has ever been publicly released. The figures come from MCSF, the company that operates the entire network and has a commercial interest in the new Edmonton aquatic hub being built down the road.
Contract 3018 was awarded to MCSF at a council meeting on 11 February 2026 while the public consultation was open, it was not accompanied by a declared a conflict of interest.
When the Babinda Taskforce formally asked MCSF for maintenance records, risk assessments and equipment commissioning documentation, MCSF refused. In writing. Twice. In March and April 2026.
The organisation whose data underpins the recommendation to close our pool has declined to allow that data to be independently verified. That is not how a transparent public consultation is supposed to work.
Right to Information
That is why I lodged a personal application under the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) on 23 April 2026.
This is a statutory mechanism, not a complaint. Under Queensland law, council is now legally required to produce documents or formally refuse them in writing. A refusal is itself a decision subject to review. Either outcome is actionable.
What I have asked for includes:
The full contract 3018 and service level agreement with MCSF
The methodology behind the $279,000 figure
Performance monitoring records for Babinda from 2016 to the present
The engineering condition assessment that supports the “end of life” finding
Records of any grant applications made to Works for Queensland or other applicable programs (noting council has received more than $64 million from that program since 2016)
Caretaker cottage tenancy documents
Internal officer reports recommending decommissioning
The stakeholder engagement records showing whether Babinda State School was actually consulted.
Babinda State School Principal Rob O’Brien has said publicly that closure of the pool would have severe effects on his students.
The Otium Report lists school interviews as an engagement technique.
Whether that happened for Babinda is something the RTI will resolve.
A separate RTI lodged by the Babinda Taskforce in March 2026 is also outstanding. Two independent statutory processes are running simultaneously.
The RTI response is due 25 business days after lodgement, well after the consultation closed on 30 April.
But the RTI process does not end when the consultation does. The documents will arrive regardless.
If the evidence supports closing our pool, it should have been publicly available from the start. The consultation closed 30 April. The right to information does not.
Jim Speelmon is a Babinda resident and managing director of Ideas Amalgamated Pte Ltd. His submissions to the Cairns aquatic facilities strategy public consultation are publicly available at tinyurl.com/2jry8ryk