Code Red Requires Rethink

It is clear to me that the Sunrise Beach Community will pay for a lack of vision for many decades to come as bad decisions are enforced on residents without due acknowledgement of valid concerns and without any community engagement.

An out of step destructive development

At a gathering at Grasstree Court on Sunday 26 September, Professor Ian Lowe spoke passionately about our need to protect existing habitat, and Dr Ellie Sherrard-Smith explained how NASA images showed the earth breathing as the forests and the water kept the system that keeps us alive in perfect harmony.

Noosa Council declared a Climate Emergency, yet it is still allowing this destruction of native habitat to go ahead. What message does this send to our youth whom they are supposedly trying to engage in decisions making – yet they turn a blind eye to the ten year old who amassed 55,000 plus signatures on a petition to save his beloved birds.

While acknowledging the significant amounts of money already spent on the Uniting Church / Blue Care development on the back of an extension of a decade old development approval, one has to question how that box was ticked without any community consultation.

Development applications expire for a reason and community engagement requires more than the tick of a box.

Given the situation we find ourselves in at a local, national and global level, it is more important than ever for communities to have a say to ensure that we can be resilient as we battle the challenges around us.

This development doesn’t take into account the Climate Emergency, the Extinction Crisis, the Global Pandemic or any of the resulting changes in our neighbourhood since the extension was granted by Noosa Council in 2018.

The siloed thinking within and between our different levels of government is putting us all at risk as our representatives and leaders fail to see the bigger picture. Decisions are made one process at a time without looking at the cumulative effects and how they will impact on each other.

It affects us in more ways than just the environment – we need to look at this development and other plans around the Sunrise Shops in relation to all the other discussions that Noosa Council is grappling with at the moment. Affordable housing for our workers. The impact of Short Term Lets on our suburbs. Traffic in an already congested area.

No Place Making Design Thinking for Sunrise Beach

This development is the heart of our suburb, and yet our community has had no say in what it should look like. 

A couple of weeks ago we heard that Noosa Council is planning to spend $700,000 of ratepayer funds to extend the empty shop at the Sunrise Shopping Centre – again without asking the community what they really wanted.

This shop has been sitting empty for more than three years and the feeling in the community has been that it was too big and too costly. In many conversations I’ve had with friends and neighbours, the idea of splitting the big shop in half to accommodate two smaller businesses made more sense. A smaller fruit and veg shop like the Tewantin Market Garden would complement the butcher and baker, and wouldn’t it be great to have some sort of take away / restaurant that would attract the community to spend more time at the Sunrise village. The IGA will be in direct competition with the other shops that have been there for a long time and well loved by our community. The point is, we have never been asked!

I’ve been impressed by the way Mayor Clare has listened to other communities when they’ve been impacted by historical decisions, for example the Kin Kin Quarry, the redirection of flights from the Sunshine Coast Airport expansion and the impacts of the Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan where further consultation have been granted to allow all stakeholders to have a say.

But where is the community engagement? Where is modern placemaking design thinking? Years of advocacy and activism by many people in our community to try and stop this development and they have never once been offered an opportunity to all get together to discuss the matter. The one online event hosted by the developers didn’t allow for any interaction, and questions were never answered. It seems like the main tactic has been to divide the community rather than to unite us with a clear and agreed vision.

Here we have a pristine ecological site that is located right next to a cluster of schools that can provide so many educational opportunities to help foster the natural curiosity of our youth and to re-engage them with the natural environment. It is the perfect environment to establish a new connection with the First Nations people who have been displaced through colonisation – allowing them to re-connect with the land that was stolen from them.

All stakeholders promote their sustainability credentials on their websites, from the Uniting Church stating that ‘Nature has a right to the protection of its eco-systems, species, and populations in their inter-connectedness’ to Lendlease’s claim that “Our founder was an early pioneer of corporate responsibility, with a vision that was guided by two simple principles – doing the right thing and leaving a legacy for future generations”.

This is the perfect opportunity for Noosa Council and all the stakeholders involved to turn words into action and show that they truly believe in a more visionary and sustainable future and make the break from the destructive past.

The decisions we make now will impact this community for decades to come. Please give us the opportunity to be part of the discussion.