Is it just me, or do other parents feel a little anxious about the sort of video games kids are playing these days?

I remember years ago attending a church seminar on satanic messages in music. You know, play a certain song backwards and you’ll hear messages like “It’s fun to smoke marijuana” in the weirdest of tones.

Others, of course, are far more overt, with devil worship and dabbling in the occult not only promoted but celebrated.

With a teenage son, I’m a regular visitor to gaming stores.

Each time I visit, it’s more of an insight into how bad some (not all) games are getting – with battles against demons, forces of evil and the like being a constant theme.

It’s got so bad that some in church circles have set up their own companies to develop Christian battle games in the same way there is now a multi-million-dollar industry called Christian music.

My son and I started talking about games and what’s in them after he bought one of the most popular ones on the market at the moment, Guitar Hero III .

When it comes to graphics and game play, it’s an awesome game – it’s just a pity they had to go and spoil it with the use of demonic images in the background, not to mention songs with names like Raining Blood, Number of the Beast, Miss Murder, Anarchy in the UK, Talking Dirty to Me, Black Magic Woman, and numbers from Alice Cooper and Poison.

It didn’t take too long for my son to make up his own mind that there are better things to be filling his mind with. He took the game back – much to the stunned look of the shop assistant, who said it was the first return of what was the big hit of last Christmas.

Call me a wowser but I couldn’t have been prouder of my son than that day.

He made a stand for what he believed in.

No time for snitching at the sidelines

So Maroochy mayor Joe Natoli is now talking about a population cap.

It seems the race is on to see who can be the greenest mayor of the first Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

I don’t know about you, but at the moment I’m just as concerned about what will happen to property prices if we try to apply Noosa-style population caps to the Sunshine Coast.

Already, many of our workers can’t afford the cost of buying a home, while rents are also skyrocketing.

Short of putting a gate up and saying, “Sorry, no more entries”, how is a population cap really going to work?

What is it going to mean in terms of the cost of housing, the rental market, and the building and construction industry?

These are all questions we as a community have to consider before we commit to glib statements made during an election campaign.

That said, we also have to get far more proactive and responsible as a community in protecting significant parcels of vegetation and the Coast’s natural beauty.

We can’t have an open slather approach to development like we have had in the past – but we also can’t stop the growth completely.

There has to be balance, and a commitment to making the tough decisions.

That means some buildings may have to go higher to preserve open space – and allowing some higher-density projects in pre-determined areas – otherwise we can expect to face the sort of lawsuits that Mr Natoli warned about last week.

The simple fact of life in Queensland is that if you take away a developer’s rights to develop a parcel of land, he or she can sue for compensation.

They doesn’t necessarily mean they will win. Noosa has won many battles as developers have tried to take it on in court, but they have always been fought on solid town planning arguments.

While no one likes to compromise, the new council will undoubtedly have to balance what the community is saying on population growth versus what is already approved in councils’ own town plans.

The true talent of the next mayor will not be in promising pledges he/she can’t deliver but in negotiating outcomes that bring about real wins for the community – sustainable development which balances the need for affordable housing and the protection of the Coast’s lifestyle.

One of the keys to the whole process will be genuine consultation with the whole community. One thing Noosa Council has done particularly well is bringing the community on board.

Too often in the past, public apathy has meant Maroochy and Caloundra have gone ahead and made unpopular decisions because no one in the community really took the time to respond to calls for submissions on key policy positions.

And, of course, there will be those who say, quite rightly, that too often Maroochy and Caloundra have ignored the views of residents when they have made their decisions.

As the Coast heads towards a new era in local government, it is no time for snitching at the sidelines.

All walks of life have to become involved in the debate, from the contractors and tradies who depend on construction to the environmentalists more intent on limiting it.