Sunshine Coast floods: Weather event should trigger development rethink

The devastation of the past fortnight’s flooding events should serve as a catalyst for a major rethink of how we approach development on the Sunshine Coast.

AS if the past two years hadn’t taught us enough about how little we truly are in control of our fate then Mother Nature had to send us another incredible reminder.

The sheer volume of water that inundated the region and now a large section of the eastern seaboard was hard to fathom.

Harder still is as bad as it was for us – and make no mistake this was a terrible event which claimed local lives – there are regions around us and now in northern New South Wales suffering countless times worse than we have.

It should be a reminder that, no matter how much we think we can prepare, design, engineer and predict, we will never truly be able to safeguard ourselves from what the elements throw at us.

Development remains arguably the most divisive subject in the region.

There is no doubt we are growing and will continue to do so for some time.

I don’t think the answer is to stop that growth.

There are opportunities in that growth to develop industries and employment options that will provide pathways in the next decade or so for youngsters my daughter’s age that just weren’t around when I landed here 20-plus years ago.

But the answer is not to let that growth go unabated and without restriction.

We’ve seen clearly this past fortnight that there are simply some places in this beautiful region where development should not happen.

There are places where development has already happened and it probably shouldn’t have too.

The challenge now is to use the knowledge we have and all the science available that tells us what were once-in-generation events will soon become more regular to shape the development patterns.

That means we need to be prepared to put density in the right places, not on the beachfront or in environmentally-vulnerable areas, but in the right locations with the right infrastructure (ie. a heavy rail line).

We need to ensure flood plains are retained and flood capacity preserved and, as much as we can, leave as light a footprint as possible in coastal hazard-prone areas. If not, we need to be ready for plenty more unplanned waterfront views in the future.