Melbourne City Council has recorded a surplus 7 times greater than expected for the 2010/2011 year including a $2.66m surplus from subsidiary companies such as The Queen Victoria Market and Citywide Service Solutions (road and waste management).
The report, from Leader Newspapers, doesn’t specify how much of the surplus actually comes from QVM (if any). However, given the extreme suffering our businesses are experiencing, you can imagine our reaction to this news. After we had taken our rational pills we realised that extra QVM profit is a good thing. We want this market to be a vibrant profitable business.
The important thing is that any surplus is quickly ploughed back into getting more customers past our stalls so that traders can start moving off the poverty line. Let’s see – how do we get more customers? – a key marketing program directed at tourists? – organise (and pay for) busloads of customers? – just for starters.