I rise this evening to speak on the sad passing of a leader in the Maleny community, Jill Jordan, who lost her battle with lung cancer in Bowen on 8 January this year. Jill was a great inspiration in the Maleny community due to her forward-thinking ideas on community spirit and of people cooperating for the benefit of the whole. I believe these ideas have made the Hinterland town of Maleny what it is today.

Due in most part to Jill’s leadership, Maleny has become the cooperative capital of Australia, with 18 cooperatives since the Maple Street Cooperative was formed in 1979. The Maple Street Co-op began as a place where members could obtain natural and organic food, filling an obvious void in a gloriously beautiful and environmentally significant town. The food co-op is different to the supermarkets as it is owned by the members and, therefore, the members depend upon its success. They help make the decisions, they buy their produce from the co-op and volunteer to keep prices down and ensure its viability.

After the success of the Maple Street Co-op, in 1984 Jill turned her skills towards the creation of the Maleny and District Credit Union to provide services and enrich the community. Sixty members initially joined but it has since grown to just under 5,000. Jill was also involved in the creation of many other successful cooperatives in Maleny such as the environmental Manduka Cooperative, LEED Cooperative, LETS and the Upfront Club.

In the early nineties, Jill became a Caloundra city councillor with a view to ensuring Maleny was being developed in what she believed was a good way. This meant that no decisions would be made in haste. I supported Jill’s campaign to run for the mayoralty in 2004. She would have shaken up the establishment and I would have loved to have worked with her and her many exciting ideas.

Jill also became CEO of Biolytix, an innovative waste water treatment product founded by Dean Cameron. It was with reluctance two years ago that Jill left Maleny to take care of her ill father in Bowen. The community has never forgotten the great commitment that she has shown towards working together for a common goal: to make Maleny stronger by working together.

I found Jill to be formidable but in a very good way. She was determined to live her life to the fullest and to make sure that she did her absolute utmost to do what she believed was right for herself and for the people of Maleny. She was strong and forthright, yet so gentle and persuasive.

I am sorry that I had not spoken to Jill since passing on my condolences on her father’s death. She has left an indelible mark on me, and I envied her strength, her courage, her ability, her strong work ethic and her huge capacity to care for all those around her. It was evident that the community of Maleny continues to have a strong connection to the great person that Jill was as her many friends and colleagues packed the Maleny Community Centre and had to spill out onto the streets to say goodbye to the great visionary at her memorial ceremony.

Jill has been described as a visionary, a catalyst of change, a philosopher, environmentalist, community worker, strategist, mentor, hippy, leader and friend. I would like to pay tribute to her integrity and wonderful personality, her engaging smile, her unparalleled community spirit and the many legacies that she has left behind. Her memory will continue long past her absence in Maleny. We loved Jill Jordan immensely and we are very much the worse off for her passing.