The photo and caption says it all.

It doesn’t have congestion.

It doesn’t have noise and clamour.

It doesn’t have serious security and public safety problems.

It doesn’t have any of the disabilities that are rife and insoluble throughout the urban sprawls filling the coastline to the south and north.

It doesn’t have camping prohibited.
Why?
Because housing hasn’t yet taken over every open space.

This makes the Cooloola Coast very attractive, very valuable, and very much under pressure as lovely places like it get harder to find.

Residents and visitors love it like it is. Mostly they have no problem with development that is fair and in genuine accord with the community’s values. Developing to service visitors who truly appreciate the place is the most sensible and profitable option. It is tragic that truly appropriate development gets no distinct recognition or preference.

Developers are racing to cut the place up it into whatever can maximise their profit. Too often this private profit is made from the liquidation of irreplaceable public assets; things like peace and quiet, tranquil village character, and uncluttered, picturesque landscape. These are not selfish claims by residents. They are the very things the most regular tourists come for.

Council loves the Coast as a milking cow for rates. For decades they have fallen over themselves to approve anything that might add to that income, regardless of the impact caused to the coastal village atmosphere or the economic costs that will accrue from making the Coast something much different than the bright jewel it now is.

Careless disposal of Shire divisions by the majority of Councillors has left the Coast without any certainty of represention in the new Regional Council. There could be no better proof that the majority of current Councillors do not care about the Coastal villages, their residents, or their visitors.

The Coast is littered with examples of Council mistakes, negligence and downright bloodymindedness. These stand as monuments to a terrible lack of close and respectful relations between community and Council.

A lot can happen over the next four years.

Left to be decided by the current free-for-all, the area will steadily mutate into something entirely and upopularly different.

Alternatively, a new, inclusive method of management could set standards and direction according to what ALL of the people who live and invest here want. It would decide things by one vote per person, and do it in the open, rather than one vote per investor dollar, counted up in secret meetings held behind doors that are closed to you and I.

It is time for integrity to prevail upon on all decisions affecting the coast.