by Janine Hill

TELEVISION presenter and university lecturer Rosanna Natoli has formally announced she will run for mayor of the Sunshine Coast at the March local government elections.

If successful, Ms Natoli will be the second mayor in her household. 

Her husband, Joe, the sitting councillor for division four, was mayor of Maroochy Shire prior to its amalgamation with Caloundra and Noosa shires in 2008 to form the Sunshine Coast Council.

She revealed she had been thinking about nominating long before current mayor Mark Jamieson’s mid-November announcement that he would step down at the next election

“I was thinking about it for a couple of years when it really started to be the community colliding with decisions being made by the council,” she said.

“That’s when I started to think the community wasn’t being listened to and local government is meant to be the level of government closest to the people and it hasn’t been really close for a while.”

Aside from meaningful consultation, Ms Natoli said infrastructure was a big issue for the Sunshine Coast and she would advocate for heavy rail from Beerwah to Maroochydore, the duplication of the train line to Nambour and hydro or electric buses to every suburb on the Coast.

She said she would like to see more gravel roads sealed, more support for agricultural businesses in the hinterland, and different ways of providing housing “because what we have done isn’t working”.

Mr Jamieson has said that someone with experience running a big business would suit the job of mayor but Rosanna believes her professional experience, community involvement, and ability to communicate stands her in good stead. 

She planned to spend the next three-and-a-half months connecting with the community as much as possible.

“I think that’s what people want, someone who represents them,” she said.

A journalist who has worked with Channel Seven on the Sunshine Coast for 29 years and taught at the University of the Sunshine Coast for 24 years, Ms Natoli has donated her time to MC at charity functions. 

The mother-of-three is patron of homelessness charity Roofs to Recovery, the Sunshine Coast Oriana Choir, the Maroochydore Orchid Society, the Sunshine Troop disabled dancers, and the Rise2 Foundation for domestic and family violence recovery, is an ambassador for the Buderim Hospital Cindy Mackenzie Breast Cancer Foundation, and is a member of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia.

Ms Natoli said her husband had been supportive of her decision to run for mayor from the start.

She felt society had advanced enough to accept that a woman could be mayor at the same time as her husband was a councillor.