I got a reply from the Professor, saying that its not just Brisbane getting the survey's, Townsville is getting them as well.

When the survey's were first drafted, they were sent to a sample of the public in Rockhampton and Townsville for feedback, after the feedback was considered, the current survey was circulated to 500 people in Brisbane and Townsville (no other regions were mentioned having being included in the survey).
He also said that this is just the beginning, more and different 'research', will be undertaken over the next 2 years.

Apparently, this Survey will not be used to make recommendations, but to judsge the public feelings towards the Goverments actions in regards to zoning, water quality, and so called "climate Change".

There's a bit more detail in his reply, but basically all it says is that CQU are not the bad guys. Please don't hurt the nerds.

This is his entire reply. There was no confidentiality message accompanying it, but I really don't care either way.

Dear Scott,

Thank you for your interest in our work. We have developed the survey after a lot of work with different organizations involved in the reef to clarify what appear to be the major issues. We have then summarized these into the key areas where broad protection measures could be considered.

We have worked hard to ensure that the way we have presented the issues is understandable and have checked the survey with a sample of people in Townsville and Rockhampton – just drawn at random out of the general population. They have made some very helpful comments back, and have helped to improve the final version

We are collecting 500 surveys each from Townsville and Brisbane by just selecting households at random and asking them if they would consider completing the survey. The aim of this exercise is to understand where the average person thinks the priorities will be. It would be too costly to send the survey to everyone along the Queensland coast, but the current samples of 500 for each community will give us a very good understanding of what people in those two communities think about the scenarios.

We don’t know yet what the answers will be, as the collection won’t be completed for another couple of months. We know that this is just one way of looking at the issues, and plan to do some more work over the next two years that focus on specific sites that have different conditions and pressures. This will give us an opportunity to get a better feeling of what people in some of the coastal communities think about the protection options.

The results of our work will help to identify the broad priorities for focus – it is a long way off from recommending specific management actions. That is more the responsibility for government. Our work will help to confirm whether the current proposals from the Australian and Queensland governments to help protect the reef with broad initiatives for climate change and water quality improvements are about right,

We’ll be happy to send you details on the results as they come out,

Cheers

John


Dr John Rolfe
Professor in Regional Economic Development
Faculty of Business and Informatics
CQUniversity
Rockhampton, Qld, 4702
Ph. 07 49 232 132
Fax 07 49 309 700
Email j.rolfe@cqu.edu.au