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That is the question that will be partly answered this week when the Sunshine Coast council finally reveals its response to the state government’s South East Queensland Regional Plan.

Just why the council failed to allow its community access to the document before its lodgement though is another question many are now asking.

Granted the regional plan review was brought forward by a year and the council has been busy.

But the issue of the shape our future takes is central to this region’s politics and something that surely should have been addressed as a community first.

Instead it is likely that community groups will take a much tougher position than the council in whom they have placed their faith.

The state government plan’s intent, to double the region’s population in the next 21 years, has been presented with little regard for the impact it would have on the social, environment and economic wellbeing of this community.

It appears to be designed around the needs of a small group of development companies rather than being part of a coherent plan for the future of this state.

Why else would a 1400-hectare area south of Caloundra, 1250ha of which is owned by Stocklands, suddenly be given status as an urban footprint investigation area?

How willing council is to take on the state government’s growth-for-growth’s-sake agenda is yet to be revealed, but it is clear that community groups want a fight.

Caloundra Ratepayers Association wants both the existing Caloundra South and Palmview – for which council has already produced a growth-management position paper – to be removed from the existing plan.

Councillor Chris Thompson is also fighting the state’s growth assumptions for central Maroochydore and will make an independent submission on that matter.

The peak lobby group for resident associations, OSCAR, is still finalising its submission to the regional plan review. It will include a call for strategies to limit growth rather than manage it and seeks a sustainable population based on a full and proper assessment of the land’s carrying capacity.

That position speaks to the heart of the council’s own promise to make the Sunshine Coast an Australian model for regional sustainability.

Whether or not its approach just tinkers with the edges of a growth curve, which is already showing hugely negative impact on the region’s social and environmental wellbeing, or takes the government head on remains to be seen.

But there are worrying signs that the council may have been spooked by its bureaucracy into not taking the government head on over an issue that is fundamental to our futures.

The fear that the state would take over this region’s planning function if the council does not bend to its will is just that, fear, and should be tested rather than assumed.

It should be acknowledged that the state government’s western corridor growth strategy has taken some pressure off this region.

But if successive planning reviews are just going to be invitations to jam more people into the region, we will just see the inevitable erosion of quality of life and real hope of true sustainability.

We need more than the trite comments of the premier – whose government’s ear is too finely tuned to narrow sectional interests – about not being able to put a fence around Queensland, and a real understanding here that you can’t protect the future with words.

The growth debate must be engaged.

Bill Hoffman

Source with thanks: http://www.thedaily.com.au/blogs/bill-hoffman/2009/apr/16/growth-debate/