The recent decision by the Queensland Country Press Association (QCPA) to select the Redland Bayside News and its article When Four Decide for Thousands (17 December 2025) as “Best Single Story by an Individual Journalist” warrants serious scrutiny when measured against the core obligations of journalism: truth, fairness, public interest, balance, and accountability.
The Queensland regional press performs an important civic function. Local newspapers help shape public understanding of development, governance, environmental protection, and community identity. Awards bestowed by respected regional journalism bodies therefore carry authority and confer legitimacy. That makes the reasoning behind this award particularly concerning.
The judging citation praised the article as “an expose of a small group of anti-development activists who wield disproportionate power in the community.” That characterisation reveals a troubling premise. Citizens participating in public debate, challenging development proposals, defending environmental protections, or lobbying elected representatives are not improper actors requiring exposure. They are participants in democracy. The assertion that the organisations identified decided for thousands misrepresents the reality whereby the Federal Minister for Environment rightfully made the decision on the merits as she ascertained.
Investigative journalism traditionally scrutinises hidden power, corruption, maladministration, conflicts of interest, or conduct concealed from public view. This article instead appears to direct its scrutiny toward residents engaged in lawful civic participation while offering little evidence that they exercised illegitimate influence or acted contrary to the public interest. Advocacy is not misconduct.
The scale of community opposition
The article appears fundamentally disconnected from the scale of community opposition surrounding the Toondah Harbour proposal and other development controversies in the Redlands. Approximately 27,000 submissions were lodged in response to the Toondah project. More than 75,000 people signed a petition calling for the proposal to be stopped. Thousands attended rallies, community meetings, foreshore events, marches, and public demonstrations over many years. Many hundreds directly lobbied governments seeking protection of Ramsar wetlands, the nearby marine park, koala habitat, migratory birds and public parkland.
These are not the hallmarks of a fringe movement directed by a handful of individuals. They are evidence of broad, sustained, and genuine community concern.
The article’s central framing — When Four Decide for Thousands — is therefore not merely provocative; it is misleading. It reduces a large and diverse civic movement into a caricature while diverting attention from the influence routinely exercised by developers, lobbyists, institutional interests, political donors, and sections of the media aligned with continual development outcomes. Those interests possess far greater financial resources, political access, and institutional influence than ordinary residents.
Questions of balance and representation
The claim that the journalist “interviewed every appropriate stakeholder” requires closer examination. Balance is not established simply by collecting quotes. Fair journalism requires context, proportionality, and equal scrutiny of competing interests.
Notably absent from the Toondah debate was meaningful engagement with major national environmental organisations such as BirdLife Australia and Australian Conservation Foundation, organisations representing well over one million Australians and possessing recognised expertise in environmental protection and planning matters.
Equally absent was acknowledgment of the broader public mandate against the development. Even surveys conducted by the local newspaper itself indicated overwhelming opposition to the proposal. Omitting such context while portraying resistance as the work of a small activist clique distorts the public record and undermines confidence in the article’s conclusions.
What this award Says about regional journalism
The most troubling aspect of this award is the precedent it establishes. Journalism should strengthen democratic participation, challenge entrenched power, and improve public understanding. It should not stigmatise citizens for engaging in public affairs or suggest that community advocacy is somehow suspect.
Awards matter because they signal what journalism values. In this instance, the recognition appears to reward a narrative that marginalises grassroots participation while giving insufficient scrutiny to the far more powerful interests shaping development outcomes.
Far from strengthening trust in regional media, such reporting risks discouraging ordinary citizens from participating in public debate for fear of ridicule, targeting, or vilification.
In a healthy democracy, active community voices are not a problem to be exposed. They are evidence that democracy is functioning as intended.
The Queensland Country Press Association should consider the basis upon which this award was granted and consider whether reporting that dismisses the voices of tens of thousands of citizens, while failing to adequately examine the influence of powerful development interests, truly represents the highest standards of regional journalism. The public deserves journalism that holds power to account, reflects the breadth of community sentiment, and strengthens—not diminishes—democratic participation.
As a person who has dedicated his life to seeking good governance; recognises that decision-makers often know less about the local circumstances than informed members in the community; believes in ecologically sustainable development (i.e. gives due regard to positive as well as negative impacts of development on economic, social and environmental matters) and has written papers on that topic; who believes democracy is based on informed decision-making; and believes in the freedom of the press with a caveat on the latter that journalism to be accountable especially when it takes a “political” position rather than performing an “informing” role.
Doesn’t freedom come with a shared responsibility?
The points raised the article: on the criteria used to base the award; and, its questioning of the motives of public engagement, I share.
For democracy to flourish we need to have rigorous, informed decision-making by the three levels of Government on development and in its absence, what options, other than through protest, currently exist?
Maybe it is time for a better process for seeking informed community input into development decisions before the decisions are made rather than input be left mainly to those with inside running and possibly a vested interest, without unduly delaying decision-making.
While I would not like to see freedom of the press restricted wouldn’t it be more appropriate for Governments to require journalists to have a code of practice that: journalists contributed to its development; journalists “self-regulate”; and its “licence ” to continue to a media outlet to operate be based on its compliance with that code?
Maybe it is time that we had greater acceptance of the need for accountability by commerce; the community, government and journalism.
Maybe a journalist article on this might be timely?
The recent decision by the Queensland Country Press Association (QCPA) to select the Redland Bayside News and its article When Four Decide for Thousands (17 December 2025) as “Best Single Story by an Individual Journalist” it warrants serious scrutiny. The person who wrote it did not take into account the many thousands of people who wrote letters to the Federal Environment Minister. The four people mentioned in the article titled “When Four Decide for Thousands” indicates that the writer of this story did not take into account the thousands of responses that were sent to the Federal Environment Minister by large Australian organisations such as Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Birdlife Australia, Birdlife Queensland and University of Queensland. I am not a member of any of these groups and I don’t attend meetings of the four named people in the article, yet I wrote 5 letters to the Federal Environment Minister. This article and the associated imaginative picture does not take into account the facts of the matter. The multimillion-dollar development that paid big dollars to push their $1.4 Billion Toondah Proposal did not take into account the negative environmental consequences of building a 3,600 unit development below the high tide mark at Cleveland. The proposal was in direct contravention of the Ramsar Convention, which aims to protect our marine and terrestrial wildlife. When the development company finally produced an Environmental Impact Statement of the Proposal it was littered with flaws. They mixed up Humpback Whales with Humpback Dolphins without knowing that Humpback Dolphins are not found in Moreton Bay. Had this Toondah Proposal by Walker Corporation gone ahead the Bay would have had an estimated 40 blocks of units up to 10 storeys high and the Cleveland Police stated, off the record, that the construction would have involved a minimum of 10 years of heavy traffic down through Cleveland. The editor of this article was certainly not aware of the facts.
The tragedy with the article and subsequent award is that both are loaded with pro-“development” ideology. I put “development” in quotation marks because I could just have easily said pro-destruction ideology. Human-made environments have a long and unfortunate track record of destroying the habitats and homes of other creatures. The proposed Toondah Harbour development would have been another example. The absolute lack of awareness of the impact of destructive unfettered destruction of native habitats is evidence of the factors that are leading the world to a global environmental catastrophe. A growing number of academics and publicly minded intellectuals are publishing books canvassing the very real possibility of a collapse of the global consumptive, polluting, global system. In 2015, Pope Francis published a letter to all people of goodwill in which he pointed out that we are turning the planet into a rubbish heap. He encouraged everyone to undertake ecological education so that people might be more aware of the devastating impact their lifestyles are having on the homes of other creatures. The various groups criticised in the awarded article have done an amazing job trying to raise public awareness of the potential negative impacts of proposed development/destruction projects on habitats, homes and creatures. So rather than th3 brickbats of the article, the coomunity should be awarding bouquets to those who have stood for the good of all creatures.
I am one of the many thousands of people who stood up to stop the atrocious Toondah Harbour development. We all played a part in preventing that environmental and urban catastrophe. Over the course of more than a decade we wrote letters to newspapers, governments and council (that went unheeded), as well as lengthy submissions disproving the false and disingenuous claims of the developer. We attended meetings and rallies, marching on foot – and in a wheelchair (my mother). We refused to accept governments’ crooked processes that would pull the wool over our eyes and smother democracy. We prevailed – although I am appalled at how many fellow Queenslanders could still think that development should have gone ahead. There were many notable leaders in our epic community struggle. But four towering figures kept it together all those years. Those blokes deserve a bloody medal. They might have to settle for the grateful thanks of the thousands who were there, who know, and who won’t forget what it takes to stand up to big profit when it comes to protecting democracy and the environment. And a warning: the PDA remains in place.