Shire of Albert - History

History

By the late 1870s, the Government of Queensland had become preoccupied with the idea of getting local residents to pay through rates for local services, which had become a massive cost to the colony and were undermaintained in many areas. The McIlwraith government initiated the Divisional Boards Act 1879 which created a system of elected divisional boards covering most of Queensland. It was assented by the Governor on 2 October 1879, and on 11 November 1879, the Governor gazetted a list of 74 divisions which would come into existence. Four of these—Nerang, Coomera, Beenleigh and Waterford—were in the Gold Coast region. Town dwellers had different needs to the rural landholders so Southport ratepayers lobbied the colonial government to create a separate Divisional Board so that rates monies raised by Southport landholders could be spent on town improvements. This resulted in the Southport Divisional Board on 14 July 1883.

On 31 March 1903, following the enactment of the Local Authorities Act 1902, the divisions became shires. On 12 June 1914, the Coolangatta was created from part of the Shire of Nerang, and on 12 April 1918, Southport became a Town.

On 9 December 1948, as part of a major reorganisation of local government in South East Queensland, an Order in Council abolished all of the above Shires and merged parts of Nerang, Coomera and Waterford with all of Beenleigh to form the Shire of Albert. The remaining parts of the first three shires were added to the Shire of Beaudesert. A small coastal section of the Shire of Nerang merged with the Towns of Coolangatta and Southport into "Town of South Coast", which ultimately became Gold Coast City, and Redland Shire was also created by the same process. The Order came into effect on 10 June 1949, when the first elections were held.

The northern part of the Shire expanded rapidly from the late 1960s onwards with the development of the Logan area, which had become a southeastern suburban growth corridor for Brisbane. On 8 June 1978, the Shire of Logan was separately incorporated, and Albert lost 110.0 km2 (42.5 sq mi) of its area and 54,650 people in the change—almost three-quarters of its population. The effect of this change was to transform Albert into a purely Gold Coast-area council. With the astronomic growth levels experienced by the Gold Coast area from the late 1970s onwards, the new Albert grew from 18,753 at the 1976 census to 143,697 in 1991.

On 21 November 1991, the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission, created two years earlier, produced its second report, and recommended that local government boundaries in South East Queensland be rationalised with a view to creating stronger local authorities with a single community of interest. After much public debate, Local Government (Albert, Beaudesert and Gold Coast) Regulation 1994 was gazetted on 16 December 1994, resulting in the amalgamation of the Shire of Albert into Gold Coast City at the 1995 local government elections.