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The document asks the Bligh government to take a fresh approach to planning, putting the focus on both the land’s real capacity and the interests of primary stakeholders.

Much of the data necessary to inform the first of those objectives already exists.

If the state government became less fixated with population growth projections and instead focused on what its own state of the region reports have to say about the impacts of relentless growth, it could quickly find many of the answers it needs but to date has refused to acknowledge.

It is simply delusional to think you can ignore or spin away information contrary to your pre-determined objectives. But that has been the approach of Queensland Labor governments for much of the past 20 years.

Council must now maintain an argument that things should be done differently here.

There is a very good case for both the federal and state government to embrace this community’s enthusiasm for change and to use us as a model or experiment in more sustainable, climate change adaptive practices.

The University of the Sunshine Coast is producing scientists with the skills to better understand how to manage what are now unavoidable consequences. And amalgamation has brought the regional focus necessary to both protect catchments and biodiversity corridors and to implement policies to rejuvenate and restore where damage has occurred.

It is possible to build here an Australian model for communities that are more self-reliant for their water, energy and food, that better address their social needs and which live with and benefit from a robust environment with flourishing ecosystems.

It is an approach that also offers a path to a new economy with industries based on the green technologies which will be needed across the country.

Simply allowing population to grow unchecked and with no consideration for the natural elements will bring with it nothing but a continued deterioration of our quality of life while making a few wealthy in the short term and by a very narrow measure.

As can be seen by the present state of things here, unfettered growth during the past 30 years has not brought with it economic resilience.

Allowed to continue it will produce communities dependent on heavily-centralised, expensive and ultimately unsustainable infrastructure and who will demand more of ever diminishing resources. Contrary argument pushing a magic population number as the key to economic health will be as delusional as it will be self-serving.

Fundamental change will be forced on us at some point in the near future. The sooner we act, the less expensive and difficult that change will be and the more beneficial its outcomes.

These are realities that council and community groups want the state government to acknowledge and act on. Whether it has the capacity to hear the arguments or whether its ear will stay tuned to very sectional interests will be seen in the shape of the final planning document.

But council should understand there are very few compromises left to make.

All will be detrimental to the interests of primary stakeholders, those who live here and have invested their futures here in the hope that there was a better way than the one they left.

Best practice planning based on real conversations with communities would provide a model that if replicated may reduce the dysfunctionality that in the first place created the urge to shift and the resultant pressure on south east Queensland.

Otherwise we are doomed to simply repeat old mistakes.

Bill Hoffman

Source with thanks:  http://www.thedaily.com.au/blogs/bill-hoffman/2009/apr/22/future-past/