I doubt very much I am alone in wondering at the disconnection between the argument in favour of amalgamation and the manner in which both state and federal governments are constructed.

Amalgamation of local authorities was presented, and I agree, as a better way to manage the affairs of a region whose community of interest stretched further than the boundaries of individual shires.

The March election certainly exposed a strong regional desire for future growth to be managed through the prism of lifestyle and environmental protection.

Yet at a federal level, the Sunshine Coast remains divided into the seats of Wide Bay, Fairfax and Fisher, whose boundaries show scant regard for the community of interest established by the new Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

Noosa and Sunshine Beach sit oddly in the division of Wide Bay stretching north to Maryborough and the tip of Fraser Island while, notwithstanding the location of member Peter Slipper’s electoral office, the seat of Fisher heads south to the outskirts of Caboolture.

And while amalgamation streamlined local government representation from 36 councillors to 12, at a state level we are set to be afforded another representative to support the five we already have in George Street.

State representatives in the seats of Noosa, Maroochydore, Kawana, Caloundra and Glass House are about to be joined by a sixth based at Coolum.

I understand there is an imposed limit on the number of people in each seat, but given the population densities here, why is that so?

It should be of some considerable concern that most of the lobbying in regard to the boundaries of individual seats and their number is dominated by political parties rather than communities.

The ultimate shape of many seats and the interest they serve would appear to be more those of political parties, the weight of whose membership should afford only marginal gravitas.

It has often been said that we would be better served by fewer politicians, a concept amalgamation has embraced.

Unfortunately what was good for local government has not been replicated here further up the food chain.

We are not ready
Natural disasters in Burma and China are a reminder of just how fragile our hold on the earth can be.

The world’s fertile crust sustains a human population of some 6.6 billion people, of whom some live in considerably better circumstance than the majority.

It is easy to sit in the comfort of our first world homes and to feel immune to catastrophes that always seem to strike elsewhere and generally in communities whose living standards are way below our own.

As a consequence we have allowed ourselves to become comfortable in our arrogant self delusion and in doing so have rendered ourselves vulnerable to the consequence of cataclysmic events.

The vast majority of the Sunshine Coast’s population lives on the floodplains of coastal river systems.

And although since 1978, housing estates have been built to levels to survive a one-hundred-year flood, that in itself does not excuse the inaction that has followed the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004.

Without in any way wishing to sound alarmist, there should be clearly understood disaster evacuation plans for all Australian coastal communities to allow the orderly shift to higher ground in event of major flooding or tsunamis.

It beggars belief that resource and urgency could be found to place a terrorism hotline contact number on every fridge door in the country yet we remain as ignorant and unprepared in the face of natural disaster as those we now pity.

The Boxing Day tsunami was a wake up call our governments have failed to heed.

Australia remains without a tsunami early warning system and has no clearly understood evacuation plan to shift large numbers of people in an orderly manner to higher ground, regardless of the hour of day.

Our governments legislate and regulate against all manner of imagined risks yet leave us exposed to those that are both very real and of horrific potential consequence.

It simply is not good enough.

Are we doomed to replicate here the experience of Hurricane Katrina in the United States before we get the message?