Permanent police beat, live CCTV to bolster CBD safety

By Cameron Outridge

A permanent Police Beat is coming to Nambour’s town centre as part of a long-awaited safety boost, with Member for Nicklin Marty Hunt confirming progress was underway to deliver on an election promise that locals have been asking about for years.

Speaking at this week’s Nambour Chamber of Commerce meeting at Cultivate the Chaos in Howard Street, Mr Hunt said community safety remained the number one concern for residents and business owners in the region — even above cost-of-living pressures.

“We’ve had around 400 responses to [my] community survey and the top issue in this area is still community safety. Cost of living is second,” Mr Hunt said. “Whilst we don’t want to talk the town down, we have to acknowledge that safety remains an issue.”

Mr Hunt, a former police officer of 33 years, said the permanent Police Beat in the heart of the CBD would not be a mobile or part-time presence, but a full-time, visible and local shopfront.

“We’ve made a commitment to a police beat and that is a permanent police beat shopfront in the CBD,” he said. “The police are looking now for premises and I think they’ve found one… I want it in Lowe Street because that’s where the hotspots are.”

Mr Hunt said he was pushing for early staffing of the beat even before the premises is fully fitted out, to get officers walking the beat and engaging with the community as soon as possible.

“I’m trying to get the position filled before the building’s done so that the officer can start work as an extra resource in Nambour and start walking the streets before the fit-outs and the leases and all the stuff that’s required,” he said.

In addition to the Police Beat, Mr Hunt said the government had committed to upgrading Nambour’s CCTV infrastructure. The new technology, already in use in places such as Moreton Bay, is a “smart city, safe city” system designed for streaming into police coordination centres.

“It is live-feed into various places — so into the police station or into our District Tasking and Coordination Centre (DTACC) — so police can see, live, what’s going on,” he said. 

“They can rewind it, perhaps send it out onto the police computer so that if there’s an offence in town and there’s a description of CCTV, we can get it quickly to the police so they’re on patrol and looking for that particular individual.”

He said live access was a significant improvement on the current setup with Council’s CBD cameras, which required a formal report, reference number, and specific timeframes to access footage — often with a delay of several days.

He said the system would help police respond more rapidly and could deter poor behaviour before it escalated.

“It also acts hopefully as a deterrent to some of the behaviour in town,” he said. “Some of the behaviours in the streets are not going to show up on crime stats. We just want to improve the behaviour in the streets and improve the way your customers feel about coming into Nambour… how your staff feel working for you, walking to their car, walking home.”

While he praised the positive investment and momentum in Nambour’s business community, Mr Hunt said restoring safety and confidence in the CBD was essential.

Mr Hunt said that with strong leadership from local businesses and support from the State Government, meaningful change was possible.