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Mostly cloudy min 12° - max 24° Developer giants declare growth war
12:00a.m. 9th July 2008
It could be the first sign of an inevitable showdown.
Four months after the Sunshine Coast community delivered an unambiguous message at the ballot box, the Property Council has indicated it is not going to accept limits on growth and development lying down.
It has warned of diabolical consequences if this policy is pursued and the region is shaping up as a key battleground in the debate about the continued rapid expansion championed by the development industry and backed by the state government.
Mayor Bob Abbot romped home in the March elections with around 70% of the Coast-wide vote and up to 95% in his former Noosa Shire – an increase of more than 20% on his 2004 result.
A report prepared for the Local Government Association described it as “a stunning triumph for extreme dark green environmental policy’’.
It said Mr Abbot had found a formula which was the equivalent of “political platinum’’.
“Candidates in Australian politics who start with a base of 73% and then obtain a swing towards them of 22% have stumbled upon a winning formula that is the political equivalent of turning lead into gold and then into platinum,” it said.
“The voters of the Sunshine Coast clearly want population caps and protection from the coastal high rise, inland dormitory suburbs and associated traffic chaos that is now all too familiar on what used to be a very pretty part of east coast Australia.
“This is the sort of message that the state Labor government can ignore at its peril and it is also a message that should be taken on board by our prime minister and treasurer, who both grew up under the old-style Bob Jelly planning that characterised the Sunshine Coast since the ’60s.”
In June, Mr Abbot described the government’s plans to fast track land releases to allow an influx of 75,000 new residents to the region as “madness’’.
Mr Abbot said the plan would fail to make a dent in housing affordability.
Now the Property Council has launched an all out assault on attempts to limit land supply on the Coast, warning of “disastrous social and economic impacts’’ if the brakes are applied.
Mr Abbot’s comments at a Property Council function last week triggered a tirade from its executive director, Steve Greenwood, who has warned that the consequences would be dire unless the council changed tack.
“If the Sunshine Coast community wants to make land so expensive that young couples cannot afford to buy on the Coast; that police, teachers and nurses can’t afford to live on the Coast; that businesses can’t find premises and staff because of the lack of land and high cost of living – then continue to support calls to limit land supply,” Mr Greenwood said.
“If the Sunshine Coast community wants businesses to fail and to move away from the Coast to other less-expensive areas; wants unemployment to increase; wants the high cost of home ownership and renting to result in more people losing their homes – then continue to support calls to limit land supply.”
Mr Greenwood acknowledged legitimate concerns about a lack of infrastructure in the region but said proposals to limit population growth until infrastructure provision catches up were “very short-sighted’’.
“The bottom line is that attempts to limit population growth don’t deliver good community outcomes,” he said.
“The community should ask the question – show us the evidence that limiting land supply will work? Where has it worked before? What other unintended things could happen?
“The broader community should be aware that the Sunshine Coast business community is highly alarmed at calls for population growth limitations and the economic fallout should the council continue to pursue this policy.”
Mr Abbot said his message had been consistent throughout and he had no intention of backing away.
He said it was vital growth was supported by appropriate infrastructure.
He described Mr Greenwood’s statements as “more of the same old rhetoric’’ and said he expected there was plenty more to come.
“I’m sure we’re looking at a protracted battle over the pace of development on the Sunshine Coast and if the government wants to bring that forward, then we want the infrastructure in place,” Mr Abbot said.
“The people of the Sunshine Coast are sick of being behind the eight ball and I’m not surprised by the Property Council’s reaction, but my interests lie with the people of the Sunshine Coast and representing the views they expressed very strongly at the last election.”
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Recent Comments
They are warning of “disastrous social and economic impacts’’ if we try to apply the brakes to population growth. Well, that's our problem, our risk, not theirs.
So, they are going to launch all out war against our Council. Well what about the 200,000 of us who are on the Council's side? Are they going to wage all out war against us as well.
You can take us all on if you like Property Council and UDIA but there are a lot more of us than there are of you.
I say to Anna Bligh and the developers, give us the roads, bridges, schools, medical facilities, water treatment plants and sewerage treatment plants before trying your bullying tactics.
We do not want to be the "Gold Coast" we are the Sunshine Coast and are proud of our way of life and difference. Take heed developers and take heed council - remember why you won your jobs.
Don't forget, these same developers and members of the Property Council and UDIA don't live where the majority of us live - they live a life of luxury elsewhere or in the multi-million dollar properties on the coast.
They don't care how much others struggle, just as long as they can make a quick dollar at our expense.
If it has to be a battle - Big Bob and his constituents versus Big Business - I'm happy to be on Bob's side!
Has nobody learnt any lessons from overseas and down south? - are we doomed to repeat the mistakes all over again?
Do we need more social problems?
More demand on dwindling resources
Yeah - Good move lets cram more in and get rid of any tranquil beauty spots that may be left and make those developers rich.
To hell with any quality of life and who needs tourism potential.
Kids dont need open space to grow learn and adjust. Keep em indoors - its safer.
Besides they wont miss what they never had.
Im sure we can rely on the developers to look after the communities best interests, after all, they are going to give us affordable housing .. Yay!!
The Property Council has its own agenda and whilst they are entitled to have their say, they need to provide a balanced argument. Mr Greenwood should know that if infrastructure was in place, then that would help attract people to settle. However, by allowing a possible 78,000 more people to settle within the coast's region isn't sustainable and there is a urgent need for us all to consider what pressures we are under along with whether we allow the Bligh led, ALP Government to have another term in office.
As we head towards a very interesting state election, the government is likely to sweet talk its way back into office. The Sunshine Coast's community must remain behind their council and also, engage in a public debate re a population cap. The Queensland Government must hear the people's voice. Mr Greenwood should also consider that I think, the old Port Douglas Shire Council adopted a population freeze. Perhaps Mr Greenwood along with others within the property council should seek a seat in the Queensland parliament at the next election. This would be a interesting test to see how much support they would get from the voters. I'm pleased to see the Mayor's passion.
The phrase “we don’t want to be another Gold Coast” is a well worn cliché; however, like all clichés, it is based in reality. I just spent a weekend on the Gold Coast, and it had markedly deteriorated in the last couple of years, with increased violence and drunkenness, and terrible traffic. We do not want the Sunshine Coast to follow suit; we are already seeing some of the impacts of unchecked growth.
The only reason that land is so expensive is nothing to do with checks on growth; it is because of profit-taking by large developers, who are sitting on huge land banks waiting for prices to rise or to sell all their other overpriced developments. It’s not that building houses is so expensive, it’s the land that is expensive; and this is because those who control the land; control the price of land. Allowing the developers unbridled access to new land will do absolutely nothing to help lower income people buy houses; does anyone honestly think that a developer is going to sell a newly acquired parcel of land any cheaper to help low income households?
To my mind, the projection of 75,000 new residents is seriously flawed anyway; and ignores some of the broader world economic issues. One of the major reasons that SEQ had such high growth rates was that after the Sydney Olympics, prices in Sydney were so much higher than SEQ; and many people sold up to buy a far superior property on the Coast. However, the property market in Sydney and Melbourne is in dire straits, and prices are rapidly dropping. Where are the push and pull factors now? Why would people want to move from their homes and families to an overpriced, overdeveloped area with extremely poor infrastructure and no work?
Further, the construction sector is not going to provide the type of employment the Sunshine Coast needs; the Coast has a serious lack of diversified employment, with an emphasis on hospitality and construction. There is already a nation-wide shortage of skilled tradespeople. We don’t need more employment in this sector; we need employment in higher level sectors, so that skilled professionals are not forced to commute to Brisbane every day.
And the lack of political will by the State Govt to spend any money on public transport (CAMCOS anyone?) and other infrastructure, means that the Sunshine Coast will likely suffer a nett loss of highly skilled and educated residents to Brisbane. If the developers have their way, the Coast will probably end up as a vast dormitory suburb of stressed out mortgage payers, battling bumper to bumper traffic for hours every day, like Los Angeles.
The Property Council's comments were 'these are the implications you're signing up to'.
Invoking the environment, infrastructure, the great god Bob and so on, doesn't change them. They're just uncomfortable when you have to confront them. Particularly if they don't affect you.
I can just imaging these people sitting around their Council table mulling over the plight of the poor struggling first home buyers and the need to reduce property values in order to make them more affordable.
The developers are always bleating about State and Local bureaucracies grinding slowly in the release of land for development, and lately they have been citing it as the cause of low housing availability and affordability.
A month ago Anna Bligh called their bluff by offering to fast-track the availability of some sites that were already scheduled for release. Their response was the predictable one - they claimed that they couldn't get the land on to the market any quicker than they already were. They also said that land had to be released on to the market in an orderly and managed way; that is, eked out to maximise profits. Today's story is just the latest twist in this tail-chasing plot.
When a developer comes into your community and ignores every single concern raised by residents, wins approval by a single vote .. and then we find a direct corelation between gift received from the developer (all legal of course) and councillors votes ...then that developer and its shareholders benefit by hundreds of millions of dollars and the town plan lies in tatters we are hardly being irrational when we vote for Bob Abbott.
Doc you can call Mayor Abbott any colour of green you like but the fact is we have seen the "implications" our previous council 'signed up to' when they gave these developers a free run. And we hated it, rationally and passionately.
Considering the size of the stones being thrown by the PCA we can all expect the mutual contempt to continue for some time. Clearly they have no intention of accepting or respecting a democratically elected council or the people it represents..
split off a bit of the sunshine coast, say one or two of the clapped out cane farms that can no longer sell their cane to the cow candy factory - and give it to the developers. Let them develop as they see fit. Let them have carte blanche to do the developing without council or government intervention - and leave the rest of the coast to the people.
and we'll see what sort of rubbish they end up with
Big bucks versus the will of the people.
ATAPRO , where have you been hiding, I have missed your laconic but dry wit.
As far as Mr. Greenwood is concerned
"Mr Greenwood acknowledged legitimate concerns about a lack of infrastructure in the region but said proposals to limit population growth until infrastructure provision catches up were “very short-sighted’’.
Nice validation of our "legitimate Concerns" Mr G.
and nice to see you fire up your development bulldozer and steamroll over our concerns in the same breath !
Obviously Mr. G hasn't had long enough sitting in the gridlocked traffic, to consider the implications of just what is considered to be "a good community outcome".
and by the way Mr.G. in case you missed it, the community has been asking questions and has voted accordingly.
Either Mr G. is himself "very short-sighted" or maybe he was the kid who took his bat and ball and ran home crying when he didn't want to accept the umpires decision.
Either way I believe that Mr. G could get some applicable advice from Gordon Ramsay.
“If the Sunshine Coast community wants businesses to fail and to move away from the Coast to other less-expensive areas; wants unemployment to increase; wants the high cost of home ownership and renting to result in more people losing their homes – then continue to support calls to limit land supply.”
Well excuse me Mr Greenwood, but this place was very affordable BEFORE it was developed like crazy.
And we had no traffic problems, a much smaller drug and alcohol problem and our businesses survived very aptly.
Development has pushed up the price of land on the SC. If Mr Greenwood thinks we dont know that, then he is even more arrogant than we thought.
These comments make me see red:
Mr Greenwood acknowledged legitimate concerns about a lack of infrastructure in the region but said proposals to limit population growth until infrastructure provision catches up were “very short-sighted’’.
“The bottom line is that attempts to limit population growth don’t deliver good community outcomes,” he said.
“The community should ask the question – show us the evidence that limiting land supply will work? Where has it worked before? What other unintended things could happen?
Pull the other one.
This social and political commentary stuff is just hard work. I have handed that mantle over to someone else who shares my views on most things.
I didn't label Bob, I simply asked 'what is the plan to address the implications/consequences of the regions preferred planning?'.
And the answer is.........
Planning on these issues to date doesn't seem to have moved much beyond:
. elect Bob
. something (not the Gold Coast, property
developers are bad)
. live happily ever after.
At some stage (hopefully sooner rather than later) we need a substantive discussion of the implications and own up to the consequences of the options we face. Regardless of whatever we choose to do.
There are other similar sized (non Gold Coast) communities in Australia we could learn much from. Communities where kids can go to school and uni and not have to leave town to get a job, where housing is more affordable and where pay is based on value add and not simply hours and so on.
Bob's not enough.
It seems to me that Bob is saying that growth needs to be moderated while the PCA is saying that we need to be full speed ahead. No limits!
Allow these things to catch up and surpass current demands before blindly continuing to add. And please do not think that these business are interests are in it for the community benefit - if that was the case they would be selling the blocks much cheaper and building small 3 bedroom rectangles to keep the housing affordable Which by the way is exactly what was built in the area that I live in some 20 years ago.
Why spoil the Sunshine Coast?
Believe it or not MONEY is not everything we are alive for!!!
There are places on earth that really should be preserved. - We have some of them around here. They cannot be preserved if they are to be harvested for water storage, desalination, power lines, rubbish dumps, roads, houses and general infrastructure OR OVERUSED, abused and polluted.
Go mess up some pine forest south of here or some old rundown unused farms north or west of here.
Dense Urban concentrations of people have proved to be undesirable - ANYWHERE.
Without insulting our intelligence Mr Greenwood - on your bike!
As for political party's or councillor links & associated funding by any of these "Honourable Members"...
you really have to hide your dealings well these days!!
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
And that too, is one of the reasons why the previous Noosa Shire was so successful, and why so many people voted Mr Abbot in as Mayor...there's little actual difference in environment between Noosa and say, Maroochy, but a world of difference in how development has manifested. We need to work on being a proud region in our own right, not as a tacked on distant suburb of Brisbane. Yes, the city is important; but we can no longer just sit back and rely on the traditional industry of tourism, construction and the retirement community; we need innovation, creativity, culture and our own unique identity...not just little boxes, made of ticky tacky and all looking just the same...
If he had to stand against someone who was not universially disliked by most of the Coast the outcome may have been different.
I think that possible candidates were few on the ground as everyone knew amalgamation would be a massive nightmare for the 1st term and Bob had the antiamalgamation vote.
Bob won fair and square but must remember he now governs for all the Coast- that's everyone including developers, construction and civil contractors,business and all those who rely on numbers of customers to make a living and provide jobs. The notion that we can go back to "1971" is fanciful and does the Coast no good.
If we want performing arts centres,major sports centres etc etc we need critical mass.
This requires continuing population growth. It is possible to do this well- we just need to be smart about it.
Life is full of tradeoffs. Ranting about nasty developers does nothing. Better to start dialogue and actually achieve outcomes for the whole community.
The price of houses has risen exponentially since way before I was born. The rule of thumb is that they double about every ten years.
Here's some rough figures on the price of a good 4 bedroom house on a family sized block.
In 1960 22,000
In 1970 45,000
In 1980 90,000
In 1990 180,000
In 2000 360,000
Now we could draw a graft and estimate the rest!
In 2010 720,000 ?
In 2020 1,440,000 ?
You could do the same for the price of a bus ticket!
In 1960 10 cents (thereabouts)
In 1970 20 cents
In 1980 50 cents
In 1990 $1.00
In 2000 $2.00
In 2010 $4.00
Does anyone really think that they can stop it from happening?
Sometimes we all need to stop and take a look at the big picture. Eventually inflation will force up wages and eventually interest rates will come down, and as sure as the sun comes up every day house prices will continue to rise.
So how do we stop it from happening?
The cycle could be stopped momentarily by irresponsible lenders giving money to people that can't pay it back (such as in the US) but it will recover again.
or..
We could halt immigration. Eventually our negative birth rate would drive down the population thus removing the demand for housing.
or..
We could wait for something more sinister such as an epidemic of trans-mutagenic avian influenza that would decimate 50% of our population once again driving down the population and removing the demand for housing.
but..
I recommend we just get on with life and stop whinging about it.
If you really want to buy a new house and you can't afford it just, give up that new plasma TV along with your new X-box and your new blue-ray DVD player and your FOX TV subscription and your mobile phone and your broadband subscription and your cafe' latte's and your designer clothes and buy a house with 3 bedrooms with one living room and make your first pieces of furniture out of milk crates like everybody else used to do not so long ago.
I think the track record by developers so far is SO BAD, I think the ranting about "nasty developers" is quite justified.
As for sensible dialogue and planning - It really has not got us anywhere. Been there done that.
Usually the community and environment get shafted - big time.
Thats why we voted Bob in - its going to change. Why? - cause we are all going to help in what ever way we can. - I can tell by the passion and fire in the posts so far on this subject.
It has to change because it needs to be sustainable.
Sustainability and developers profits do not mix
That is why we have a problem.
You have to live with it, it's democracy and its alive and well.
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