Joint Statement: State Government to address Sunshine Coast housing ...

[ozbob]

Joint Statement:

Premier and Minister for the Arts
The Honourable Anna Bligh

Minister for Infrastructure and Planning
The Honourable Stirling Hinchliffe
05/10/2010

State Government to address Sunshine Coast housing affordability crisis

The State Government intends to declare Caloundra South an Urban Development Area, Premier Anna Bligh announced today.

Ms Bligh said under the declaration, planning for the Caloundra South Structure Plan site would be transferred to State Government agency the Urban Land Development Authority.

She said the decision to transfer planning for the site was made after Sunshine Coast Regional Council repeatedly failed to meet statutory planning deadlines under the Sustainable Planning Act.

"The Sunshine Coast has the highest housing prices and least affordability in the state,'' Ms Bligh said.

"This was the case in October 2007 when the area known as Caloundra South was identified as one of four in the Queensland Housing Affordability Strategy and sadly it is still the case today.

"Two of those originally identified areas being Ripley and Yarrabilba are now being progressed by the Urban Land Development Authority in partnership with Councils as I have already announced.

"Another of those areas at Coomera has attained Council approval for a structure plan and I note reports from Council that it will be ready for approvals in the coming few months.

"Yet at Caloundra, with the potential to deliver around 23 000 homes, employment centres and transit services, planning has too often failed to be properly progressed.

"Council need to plan for the future - not play games.

"Poor planning will make it impossible for people born on the coast to continue to live there, and could see key workers like nurses and teachers forced to move elsewhere.

"Councils' own housing affordability study has determined the region is in crisis, yet they continue to make lame excuses to delay the process at every turn.

"Ongoing suggestions the State Government is directing growth to the Sunshine Coast are untrue and incorrect. People continue to move to the Sunshine Coast because it is a unique and desirable location.

"Council's repeated delays and refusals to meet planning guidelines has prompted my decision to take action.''

Ms Bligh said council had been granted two extensions and requested a third.

She said the possible declaration could see planning approvals made in suitable early release areas in the next few months instead of the current indefinite situation. The remainder of the site will be planned by mid-2011 to support consideration of future development applications within a statutory period of no more than three months of assessment.

If the UDA is declared, the BellaVista 2 development adjacent to the Caloundra South site will also be included to ensure orderly planning outcomes for this area.

The Caloundra South site has the ability to produce up to 23,000 dwellings for 50,000 residents over the next 10 years.

On September 2, Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Stirling Hinchliffe made it clear he would consider using call-in powers to progress the Caloundra South Structure Plan and BellaVista 2 if council continued to refuse to meet these statutory deadlines.

"The Sunshine Coast Regional Council's own Sunshine Coast Affordable Living Strategy 2010-2020 shows the region is in crisis,'' Ms Bligh said.

"In addition, BankWest data released in July Sunshine Coast homes were the most expensive in the state.

"Failure to plan for the future will not stop growth. What it will do is see people forced to drive long distances to drop their kids at school, get to work or visit the shops.

"Poor planning will see those long drives conducted on heavily congested roads because the necessary infrastructure can't be funded. Poor planning will also ensure that the housing affordability crisis continues to worsen.''

She said contrary to council claims, good planning would protect the region.

"Good planning ensures sites unsuitable for development, such as the Sunshine Coast's iconic cane fields, will remain protected,'' Ms Bligh said.

"Planning ahead safeguards the coast's landscape and lifestyle and ensures the people who know and love the area, including those born in the region, can afford to live there when they grow up.

"Continued growth highlighted in council's own study means there is a real need for good planning right now - something the State Government addressed with the inclusion of statutory planning deadlines for local governments as part of the Sustainable Planning Act enacted in December 2009.

"The State Government put these deadlines in place to ensure councils planned for the future by progressing suitable sites for development, providing affordable housing and ensuring key workers like nurses and teachers can afford to live where they provide their invaluable services.''

The State Government established the ULDA in 2007 to address housing affordability throughout the state. Since the Bligh Government's Growth Management Summit in March, six UDAs have been declared to provide housing in fast growing communities outside the state's south east. A seventh UDA was also declared on a 10ha site bounded by Vulture St at Woolloongabba on April 23. Cabinet has endorsed the declaration of a further three UDAs at the new communities of Ripley, Yarrabilba and Flagstone.

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[#Metro]

Its a very narrow definition of "affordable housing" if that means unaffordable car transport to and from work in Brisbane twice a day!

[colinw]

Hmmm, the Government accuses the council of "lame excuses to delay the process at every turn", but if you read Hansard is that not exactly what they are doing to the Caloundra/Maroochydore line and Beerwah to Nambour duplication?

I would suggest that the pot & the kettle are both very dark shades of black in this case.

[Stillwater]

Throughout this debate, I have seen no definition of 'affordable' housing'.  What is it?  The price of bricks, glass, timber, plasterboard and fittings are largely fixed, as are a tradesperson's wage.  The only way 'affordability' can be built into the equation is if the developer is let off contributing to upgrading the sewerage system, or devotes less space to parks, builds roads without kerbing and channelling etc.  In such a case, 'affordable' becomes 'slum', and the people who go and live there will soon look at neighbouring suburbs and demand that the council provide comparable facilities.  Does anyone believe these 23,000 lots are going to come onto the market all at once, thereby bringing down the price?  No the developer will release pockets of lots over time to obtain maximum prices.  There are more than 6000 approved blocks of land on the Sunshine Coast that developers have yet to release to the market.  This 'land banking' is driving the prices up.

[#Metro]

It should be affordable 'living', not just housing.

[ozbob]

Basket public-transport-poor cases north, south, east and west!

[ozbob]

From the Sunshine Coast Daily click here!

Canals ruled out at Cal South

Canals ruled out at Cal South

Bill Hoffman | 7th December 2010

INFRASTRUCTURE Minister Stirling Hinchliffe last night ruled out canal development at Caloundra South and said approval for further urban expansion south of Bells Creek would not occur on his watch.

That announcement brought more certainty than responses from Caloundra South developer Stockland, who as late as last Friday when asked whether it was considering canal or lake blocks within the project, said "it is too early for us to provide such detailed information on what the project will look like".

Mr Hincliffe was speaking at an OSCAR-hosted forum at the University of the Sunshine Coast, where he received a polite reception from a large crowd of around 300.

However, it was clear the audience was not buying the minister's rationale for taking planning control for the massive Caloundra South development from Sunshine Coast council.

But while that outcome was not surprising it was also clear that the audience was split on whether that control should be returned to the council.

If the minister has a credibility problem, the council also has work to do to regain the trust of its ratepayers.

But it was the government's objectives of delivering best practice environmental outcomes to a community that would eventually accommodate 50,000 people while also delivering housing affordable that took the biggest hammering.

Mr Hinchliffe was peppered with questions about environmental protection of Pumicestone Passage, the delivery of infrastructure to support what the meeting dubbed the City of South Caloundra, the size of environmental buffers to the Bruce Highway, and the need for public transport to support the new population from the first stages of the project.

Presenter Caroline Hutchinson dashed from one side of the lecture theatre to the other and back, microphone in hand, as audience members rose to confront the minister.

Mr Hinchliffe promised Caloundra South would be developed as a "15-minute" community where every need was within easy access by foot or public transport and which was self-contained.

He said it would generate its own employment opportunities, set best-practice standards for building design and construction and provide housing that was accessible to a range of income groups.

Just how this utopia will be created may be available for assessment within two to three months. Urban Land Development Authority boss Paul Eagle promised to return in either February or early March to test with the community the implementation process to deliver world's best practice to Caloundra South.

The meeting for its part overwhelmingly resolved that there should be no State Government or ULDA approval granted to Stockland until the project's impacts were tested under the Federal Government's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

It also voted that approval should also be subject to a commitment by Stockland to improve the environment within the development, improve water quality and that development be sequenced to ensure that essential services be funded and on the ground before the next stage starts.

Marc Wilkinson, Stockland's operation manager, said the developer and the community were not far apart in their aspirations.

He said integrated water management and self-sufficiency to 80% or greater was the company's aspiration.

OSCAR president Ian Christesen said the key was to introduce sustainability that was demonstrable with measurable outcomes.

"It's not good enough to just tick the box," he said.

[#Metro]

Mr Hinchliffe promised Caloundra South would be developed as a "15-minute" community where every need was within easy access by foot or public transport and which was self-contained.

People WILL travel, no doubt about that. Where is the PT??

[Fares_Fair]

From the Sunshine Coast Daily click here!

Canals ruled out at Cal South

Canals ruled out at Cal South


He said it would generate its own employment opportunities, set best-practice standards for building design and construction and provide housing that was accessible to a range of income groups.

How could it do this ?
Are all the residents going to be builders and tradesmen ?
That will be self-sufficient right up until they finish the last house,
then there will be mass unemployment or an awful lot of people commuting to Brisbane looking for work.

That kind of statement sounds like empty rhetoric.
I'd like to hear their explanation for this one.
Utopia, where perpetual motion rules supreme.

Regards,
Fares_Fair.

[Stillwater]

So that means about 10,000 permanent jobs within 15 minutes drive of Caloundra South.  It is going to be 'best practice' for a housing estate -- a 15 minute community.  It's starting to sound like the Magic Pudding.

[Golliwog]

Or perhaps the State Government got involved because they don't want it to be just another housing estate?