Article: The Coast has to be smarter than this

[ozbob]

From the Sunshine Coast Daily click here!

The Coast has to be smarter than this

The Coast has to be smarter than this
Bill Hoffman
2nd Jan 2013 5:44 AM

OF ALL the lazy, disingenuous claims made about the Sunshine Coast and its local government entities over time is that this region has been anti-development.

The lie is breathtaking in its audacity and incapable of any level of justification given the exponential growth of the region in the past three and a half decades. But it keeps getting repeated, constantly bleated by those for whom more is never enough.

Most galling of the constant demand that we be "open for business" or that red tape or green tape be cut is the total denial that more of the same won't just deliver exactly that.

Since 1976 when this region's population was just 55,000 there have been "progress" councils, "developer" councils and occasionally a "touch of green" councils, but what has been constant is the pressure of growth.

By 1981 the region's total population was 98,000, by 1986 (110,000), by 1991 (160,000), by 1996 (205,000), by 2001 (248,000), by 2006 (298,000) and today (316,000).

It's always been hard to understand how the Sunshine Coast could have been any more open for business.

For all the growth the region has fared poorly.

The rail service to Brisbane is a joke and the national highway compromised by development on its flanks to the point that it grinds to a halt each morning.

Fortunately growth has slowed since reaching a peak of 10% in 2003, with a decade-long downward trend line driven by global economic conditions resulting in only 0.6% population growth last year.

The challenge the region now faces is to break itself free of its craving for another boom to hide the realities of an imbalanced economy.

With six ministers in the new Queensland government that should not be an impossibility.

Sunshine Coast Council retains the vision to be Australia's most sustainable region, a goal that has real synergies with the need to broaden our economic base and to make it more resilient to outside pressures.

With a university that has an international reputation for research into climate change adaptation, why would it not be possible for the region to become recognised as a centre for environmental sustainability best practice?

What a brand that could be as the world searches for answers to the future.

Attracting businesses - and that should include concrete and asphalt batching plants and any other industry for that matter - that aspire to and demonstrate that level of excellence would seem a smart way to build a future.

Certainly it would be a lot smarter than remaining hooked on the demonstrably Ponzi scheme unsustainability of an economy reliant on population growth.

[Fares_Fair]

It's time for our 6 Sunshine Coast MP's to take a stand... and actually do something about the grossly inadequate rail line.

[Stillwater]

All of the LNP members on the Sunshine Coast, at one stage, promised an integrated transport plan for the Coast.  That was when they were in Opposition.  When they became members of the government - and Ministers in that government (the people who control the agenda) - nothing happened.  Why is it that a pollie promise is worth so much less than an undertaking given by the ordinary man and woman in the street?