BOAT owners in Queensland are reportedly becoming disgruntled over increased registration costs, reduced services and boat ramp overcrowding. As a result a new alliance, Ramp It Up, has been formed from some of the state’s 238,000 owners of registered boats.
First item on the agenda for the alliance is Brisbane’s Wellington Point Reserve boat ramp where over-demand for space and repeated illegal parking by cars in reserved boat trailer spaces, is causing unnecessary conflict.
Ramp It Up is offering to work as a conduit with Redland City Council and other users of the reserve to provide a workable solution to the current conflicts.
Ramp It Up spokesman David Anderson said more than 100 local boat owners already had aligned with Ramp It Up, and with one in five Redlands households owning a registered boat he hoped the numbers would quickly expand into the thousands.
“There are many issues confronting boaties – we’ve got local Councillors telling us that a motion recently passed about a trial, reduced parking arrangement at the Wellington Point Reserve ramp, was not the motion they thought they were voting on; we’ve had decisions made about access times to parking at the ramp without the critical matter of tide heights and water depths at the end of the ramp even being mentioned; we have police saying that a ‘don’t book offenders’ approach is just ridiculous yet, some elected representatives still advocate this flawed strategy; people who never have owned a boat are making wild claims about who and when people go boating as if every boat and person were exactly the same – it’s time to put some intelligence, facts and reason back into the discussion,” Mr Anderson said.
Boaties interested in becoming part of Ramp It Up can email their contact details to David Anderson at: daveanderson_1@hotmail.com
