An internationally renowned wetland, the Pumicestone Passage is protected under five international conventions, including the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.  Cumulative impacts from urban development, intensive land-uses and recreational pressures are putting nationally listed species, including migratory birds and marine species at greater risk.

At an estimated 50,000 people, Caloundra South is set to be the Sunshine Coast’s largest development.  The state government intervened in the local government planning process and handed planning to the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA) in questionable circumstances in October last year.

SCEC Campaigns Manager, Narelle McCarthy said the development could create significant impacts on the local ecology.

“In pushing into such a sensitive catchment, all levels of government, the ULDA and the developer are accountable for ensuring this cornerstone of marine biodiversity in south-east Queensland and Australia is protected and enhanced into the future,” she said.

Daisy Barham, Queensland marine campaigner with AMCS said the importance of marine life in the Passage cannot be underestimated.

“The importance of protecting the marine life of the Pumicestone Passage and the broader Moreton Bay Marine Park cannot be underestimated. People enjoy the Sunshine Coast for its marine life and natural lifestyle, these values need to be protected,” she said.

“This development will place additional pressure on a very sensitive area at a time when its marine life needs our help. The Pumicestone Passage is habitat for magnificent marine life such as turtles and dugongs. The threat posed to these animals is alarming and must be addressed.”

Earlier editions of the print version of Eco have highlighted the very significant social, economic and environmental values of Pumicestone Passage and identified various threats to those values.

The Passage has values of international and national environmental significance under the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. These include major Ramsar wetlands; numerous international migratory bird species covered by bilateral agreements with Japan, Korea and China; and several land and marine threatened species such as the false water rat, dugong, turtle and possibly even the sawfish.

The Glasshouse Mountains National Landscape, a listed National Heritage Area, can be glimpsed from the Passage and adds greatly to its overall scenic values. However, the Passage is also a mecca for recreational fishermen, boaties and for swimmers looking for sheltered waters. It underpins Caloundra’s tourist accommodation and hospitality industries, fishing and boat supply businesses, and several ecotourism businesses like boat cruises and kayaking. Lindsay Holt reports.

This “jewel in the crown” of the Coast’s natural assets is now threatened by the wrong-headed decision of State Infrastructure and Planning Minister, Stirling Hinchliffe, to use his ministerial powers to fast-track urban development of Stockland’s Caloundra South site through a Structure Plan process he has forced upon the Sunshine Coast Council. On 2 September he went even further by calling-in the Stockland’s Bellvista Stage 2 development application and threatened to call-in the Caloundra South Structure Plan if Council didn’t take a decision on the Structure Plan in an impossibly short timeframe.

Stockland’s Caloundra South development and other potential future urban developments

Important infrastructure agreements and sustainability requirements remain to be resolved and are at stake. The Minister used simplistic and highly questionable arguments to justify his interventions, which deprive residents of the Sunshine Coast and our Council representatives of a fair chance to decide our own future and achieve sustainable outcomes.

Minister Hinchliffe is fast-tracking Caloundra South as a development of a city about the size of Gladstone, comprising a minimum of 22,000 dwellings for a minimum of 46,000 people in the Bells Creek catchment of the Passage, and featuring a major retail and commercial hub.  This is in addition to an estimated 9,450 dwellings and 19,755 population in current and future planned development in the adjoining Lamerough Creek catchment of the Passage.

The total urban population in the Lamerough and Bells Creek catchments will therefore be about 66,000 – that’s equivalent to creating a city one and a half times the size of Gladstone on the southern boundary of Caloundra. It’s also equivalent to the total population of the Caloundra City Council area just 13 years ago in 1997! Just imagine all those people plus the holiday-makers, tourists and day-trippers wanting to fish and go boating in the Passage and swimming at Bulcock and Kings Beaches and beaches like Moffat, Shelly, Dicky and Currimundi that are within easy range.

On top of this, urban expansion is proposed for Beerwah, Landsborough and the Glasshouse Mountains township, while Minister Hinchliffe’s current SEQ Regional Plan includes future urban areas for the Stockland’s landholding in the sensitive Halls Creek catchment below Caloundra South, and for land astride the CAMCOS rail corridor between Beerwah and Caloundra South.

But it’s also necessary to consider the urban development and population growth occurring down in the Moreton Bay Regional Council area because these communities utilise Deception Bay and the Passage for recreational fishing, boating and swimming, and these urban developments are in Deception Bay catchments. An industrial estate is planned north of Elimbah, while Hinchliffe’s SEQ Regional Plan includes the West Caboulture future urban area, which is much larger than the combined size of the Stockland’s Caloundra South and Caloundra South Halls Creek landholdings and can therefore produce far greater population pressures on the Passage.

The existing Caboulture urban areas, the numerous bayside urban areas, and the future West Caboulture and Elimbah urban and industrial developments are all in catchments flowing into northern Deception Bay, which in recent years has had a D- to Fail rating under the Healthy Waterways monitoring program.

In the last decade or so these Deception Bay catchments have also seen significant intensive rural industry developments such as strawberry growing and poorly regulated egg and poultry production industries, which are significant users of  groundwater, and agricultural and veterinary chemicals with potential to impact water quality and activate acid sulphate soils.

The poor water quality in Deception Bay affects water quality in the Passage significantly because there is a net northerly tidal movement from the Bay into the Passage. It then takes up to 23 days for water originating in Deception Bay to exit at the Caloundra bar. If the shallow, warm, sunlit, slow moving water in the Passage contains sediment, other nutrients and iron compounds there’s an ideal recipe for algal blooms and outbreaks of the toxic fireweed Lyngbya that has closed down swimming, fishing and boating in Deception Bay and the southern Passage in recent years.

Other indications that the Passage and Deception Bay are under ecological and recreational stress are declines in fish stocks, sea grasses, dugong, turtles and macroinvertebrates.

Through Minister Hinchliffe’s fast-tracking of the Caloundra South Structure Plan and Bellvista 2 processes and the enormous scale of the potential future urban development he built into his SEQ Regional Plan, the Minister has created the greatest urban planning, environment and sustainability issue on the Coast in a decade. Pumicestone Passage has never before faced such an extreme assault on its social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Instead of taking a precautionary approach, the Minister has so far pushed hard for planning approval for Caloundra South without having first required comprehensive sustainability studies to be undertaken and completed that can determine whether the Passage can accommodate the various off-site and cumulative impacts that this and other urban development in its catchment will have.  E.g.  the Minister is not waiting for the outcome of the studies the Queensland Water Commission recently commenced into regional water resources, water quality and hydrology. These studies will produce information pertinent to sustainably managing Pumicestone Passage and the acceptability of the proposed Caloundra South development. The obvious question is: what’s the rush?

SCEC’s campaigner Annie Nolan said that: “The State Government did comprehensive studies of Pumicestone Passage back in 1982 and 1993. By the time of the 1993 study the State and local Councils had already approved urban development producing a population greater than the 75,000 limit for the catchment recommended in the 1982 study. There has been an appalling lack of political will at all levels to limit the off-site and cumulative impacts of urban development and population growth on the Passage. Such negligent disregard for the ecological sustainability of a natural wonder of international and national significance cannot continue. Without contemporary comprehensive studies of the Passage it’s not possible for any level of government to decide the merits of the proposed Caloundra South development, nor any other future development in the Pumicestone Passage and the related northern Deception Bay catchments.

Left to right : Rob King, Jim Pulsford, Deane Haspel, and SCEC campaigner Annie Nolan examining plans for Stockland’s Caloundra South development.

That’s why SCEC organised a familiarisation boat trip for candidates in the recent Federal Election and placed ads in regional newspapers asking for their response to three questions relating to the impacts of Caloundra South on the Passage, whether the Queensland Government should approve that development without Federal environmental studies being completed, and whether they would work to ensure the Queensland Government has all the necessary studies in place prior to giving any approvals. The responses of the candidates are on www.50000people.com.au, but in summary the Greens, the LNP candidates for Longman, Fisher and Fairfax and many independent candidates supported doing studies before approvals are given, but the Labor candidates either did not reply or avoided commitment.

Premier Bligh claims she is listening to what the public is saying. The Sunshine Coast public and its elected regional Council have made it abundantly clear that they oppose rampant population growth and want sustainable development, not development at any cost. The Bligh Government and Minister Hinchliffe in particular must listen to what the public is saying on this issue and reverse the Government’s  present extreme views on developing Caloundra South and ignoring the ecological sustainability of the Passage.

Comprehensive sustainability studies must be done before any decisions are taken by the State Government on Caloundra South, Bellvista 2 and the last stage of Pelican Waters.  Commonwealth E.P.B.C. Act environmental impact assessment requirements should also be met before any State decisions are made – or the Bligh Government faces another Traveston Dam fiasco.”

Decisions in the 80s gave the green light to high rise development

Survey after survey has confirmed the sentiment of most Sunshine Coast residents — “We don’t want another Gold Coast.

With some predictions that the population here may reach a half a million by 2030, restraining the aspirations of developers and property marketeers is important for residents, and there are many examples of how the community has worked to prevent the urbanisation of the Coast from top to bottom.

One group of Coolum residents gathered in 2004 and set up Development Watch Inc, its spur to action being an inappropriate development proposed for Mount Coolum. They were perhaps inspired by the bulk of Mt Coolum overlooking this coastal suburb. The prominent peak is now protected as National Park instead of hosting a major development involving chairlifts and restaurants – this was an odious proposal of the late 80s defeated by an irate and determined community.

Coolum itself is far from being the sleepy village that attracted so many who live there. It suffers the ignominy of high rise on the beach as a result of shoddy decision-making by Maroochy Council in the 80s. Now it’s faced with fast-growing industrial and commercial precincts and expanding suburbia.

Development Watch fights to keep it all at bay by making sure that the community is well informed and has a strong voice in making its views known.

The group has about 50 members, they meet in Coolum bi-monthly and take a close look at any applications for development that are inappropriate not just for the Coolum area but also for the wider Sunshine Coast.

Careful monitoring of development proposals is very important, to make sure that they’re in line with the various State Acts and Policies and the planning schemes of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, and also compatible with community aspirations. Members are adept at reading and understanding the fine print and negotiating the bureaucratic maze.

They keep a keen eye on Council’s website and PD Online – the Council’s self-help service – and pick up development applications of interest at the application stage.  They then monitor the application’s progress through the system and will usually know when the white signs go up.? The group involves the wider community with letter box drops, by getting petitions signed and holding public meetings. They formulate detailed submissions to local and state government to make sure that community views are represented.
Their involvement may not end even when Council rejects an application. Developers will often appeal the decision to the Planning and Environment Court.  Development Watch may then elect to co-respond with Council to provide them with support and to reinforce the community view.  Current applications now before the court range from an application for commercial offices in a residential area at Coolum Beach to a 950 dwelling residential development at Pacific Paradise.

President Brian Raison says that while the primary aim is preventing inappropriate development in the Coolum area, it’s important to have a regional perspective.

“Any major development proposal north of the Maroochy River could have an adverse impact on Coolum residents and businesses.  Even residential developments further afield can affect parking, traffic congestion and liveability in Coolum,” he said.

“Take for example the proposed Caloundra South development – the Coast’s population jumps by 50,000 if it goes ahead. Creating a city the size of Gladstone so close to existing towns will really have a serious effect on liveability along the coast and in the popular hinterland towns.”

Unsustainable population growth is the key threat, according to Mr Raison. With a State Government determined to accommodate huge population increases in South East Queensland, and much the same outlook at the national level (both the Federal Government and Opposition seem to favour a forecast population 60% increase by 2050, which outstrips all other industrialised nations) what’s the best way deal with this?

“For starters, the Federal Government has to be convinced to have a population policy,” said Mr Raison.

“It has given no indication as to how it will stop the ever-increasing tide once its absurd target of 35 million by 2050 is reached.  The country’s post-secondary education system needs serious overhaul so that skilled workers for Australia’s future needs are sourced from within, rather than relying on an unacceptable level of immigrants.

“This is an arid country and we will become a net importer of food unless the Federal Government can think beyond the ballot box and can also dampen the drivers of immigration.?“The Federal view is unlikely to change unless the States understand the problem.  I don’t have a positive view of that happening.  Development Watch is focussed on convincing our Council to maintain its publicly stated policy of determining carrying capacity before committing to development.  With the Department of Infrastructure and Planning having the power to impose development on our Council, this conflict may only be resolved in the courts. That is, if our Councillors have the courage to pursue this course of action.”?Development Watch also sees unrestrained tourism growth as a threat to community liveability and well-being.

“We must have tourism, of course, but there is a limit to the number that can be accommodated,” said Mr Raison.

“Tourist blight – the disease that sees the very things that attract tourists to an area destroyed – is a serious concern of ours.  As an example, Council plans to construct a new airport runway.  Accommodating and amusing the increased number of tourists that will be required to justify expenditure on this project will exacerbate this blight.

“Remember, the Queensland Government requires the Sunshine Coast to have, in 20 years time, the same population that the Gold Coast has now.”?We are keen to hear from residents in the Coolum area who would like to assist in ensuring Coolum remains a great place to live and visit.

Phone Brian on 5446 4493 if you would like more information.

More information about Development Watch

Professor Ian Lowe. Image greghardwick.com.au

Eco: Ian, what do think is the motivation for the Queensland government’s fascination with  continuing the mantra of population growth?

Prof Lowe: Well, there’s a superstition and it is only a superstition that growing population means a growing economy which gives the impression that things are going well.

I was at a conference a few years ago in Canberra, in which John Coulter, a former Democrat leader in the Senate, produced some figures that showed that there’s actually a negative correlation between population growth and economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita.   So even if you’re so naïve as to think that the GDP is a measure of well being and that its growth means people are better off, places with a higher rate of population growth are doing badly and the places with a stable or even declining populations are actually doing well.

And there’s a simple economic explanation for it — if the population is growing, you need to invest in things that are in economic terms unproductive, like houses, sewage, water and roads. Where if your population is stable and you are only replacing old houses as they fall apart you can invest in having a more productive economy. So even in economic terms it’s just not very smart.

But the point is, of course, if there are more people here, then you need more houses, and more clothes and more food so the overall size of the economy is bigger and the government can say: “The economy is growing at three per cent, aren’t we good?”.

But again as John Coulter pointed out, if you have a rational economic system you would set against the increase in wealth, the decline in natural assets. So for example, if you sell Gorgon gas to China, yes you would have some money but you wouldn’t have the gas which would mean you that you didn’t have an asset for future generations of Australians to use and similarly if you concrete over your best agricultural land to accommodate another 500,000 people living in Queensland, yes you have the asset of those extra houses but you have the negative of having lost that agricultural land.

Eco: How do we overcome that issue, where especially here on the Sunshine Coast we’re almost addicted to growth.  In terms of the economy we are very much dependent upon the housing, construction and development sectors. How do we make the transition away from this and reposition ourselves for the future?

Prof Lowe: Well, what we need is a coherent, long-term economic strategy. Anyone with half a brain can see that it’s not sustainable to have 60 per cent of your jobs in the construction sector because you get this negative cycle that people are coming here because there’s jobs, but the jobs are only here because people are coming here.

Eco: So it’s like a Pyramid selling scheme?

Prof Lowe: Absolutely, yes. Well, you could argue that it’s a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a particular type of corporate fraud for which you go to jail in which you produce generous dividends for the shareholders by selling the capital stock of the company. We’re running down the capital stock of the Sunshine Coast to provide generous dividends for this generation of shareholders in ‘Sunshine Coast Inc’ and that’s clearly not sustainable.

So if you were serious about the long term future of the Coast, you’d be thinking about which employment sources are genuinely sustainable. Now, local tourism aimed at people within Australia is a lot more sustainable than international tourism and that’s probably an area we can sustain but we should be investing in the knowledge-based industries that are likely to grow in the future, rather than assuming that we’ll always be able to find another wetland to concrete over to build houses for people who have come here to concrete over the wetland.

Eco: It appears, and one of the big discussion points has always been, that we don’t want the Sunshine Coast to become another Gold Coast. But it looks as though the new South East Queensland Regional Plan has basically said that within about 20 years we will have a population equivalent to that of the present-day Gold Coast.  Do you think it’s possible to have a population the size of the Gold Coast on the Sunshine Coast and still retain the sort of values and character that makes the Sunshine Coast what it is?

Prof Lowe: I can’t see how that’s possible. I mean if you look at the Gold Coast, it’s a similar area of coastline and the only way you can accommodate that many people and not damage as much of the coastline, would be to have more of them in the sort of  high-rise developments of the Gold Coast that no-one on the Sunshine Coast wants.

So, there’s a  fundamental conflict if you want to accommodate 500,000 people you either have to have a sprawling low-rise development which in transport terms and carbon terms is not sustainable, which then means you lose all your agricultural land and your natural assets, or you have 20-storey high-rise towers which produces an urban landscape that people see at the Gold Coast and they don’t like.

So, a more rational strategy would be to say we want to keep the target population of the Sunshine Coast at a level that would enable us to maintain our natural assets. And if you think about where all this began, Noosa Shire basically took that strategic decision to limit residential numbers and tourist numbers at a level that would maintain their natural assets. In economic terms, it’s entirely rational because tourism is their biggest industry.

Tourists don’t come to admire high-rise buildings or listen to inspired speeches from politicians, they come because of the natural assets. If we want the Sunshine Coast to continue to have a viable tourist industry, our first duty is to maintain those natural assets rather than concrete the joint over and turn it into another Gold Coast.

Eco: The Sunshine Coast Regional Council’s response to the draft South East Queensland Regional Plan was that they wanted the state to take any population targets out of the plan for the Sunshine Coast until they undertook what they called a sustainable carrying capacity exercise which not only looked at the biophysical constraints but also the character of the Sunshine Coast.  What do you think? What is the sustainable carrying capacity of the Coast? What does it really mean?

Prof Lowe: Yes, there’s no doubt you can cram more people into the same area if you want to have a different quality of life. I point out to people that Brisbane is roughly the same surface area as greater London and greater Tokyo which have respectively 8 and 12 million people compared with the 1.25 million of the greater Brisbane area. So there’s no doubt you can accommodate 5-10 times as many people in the same area but at a very different quality of life.

So, I agree with the principle that we should be looking at the carrying capacity but that carrying capacity is not an absolute number. There are different numbers based on different standards of living, different qualities of social experience. I mean in a sense we had that discussion as part of Maroochy 2025 and those people who were involved voted strongly for limiting the population and maintaining our natural assets. And, I would argue that the mayoral election on the Sunshine Coast was essentially a referendum on the future of the Coast.

The people voted 70/30 for the vision of not extending the Maroochydore/Caloundra approach to Noosa, but extending the Noosa approach to Maroochydore and Caloundra. I suppose what I would like to see is our elected representatives standing up for the platform on which they were elected and saying we were elected with an overwhelming mandate for limiting the population for the Sunshine Coast to a level that maintains our quality of life

Eco: I think it was interesting that when a recent survey was done in the Sunshine Coast Daily in conjunction with the University of the Sunshine Coast, it showed that 77 per cent of people considered that overpopulation of the Sunshine Coast was the most important issue which is almost identical to the current Mayor’s polling. So there is a high correlation, I think, between those two. One of the things that politicians are scared of, I suppose, is that the state government will take over planning powers away from Council and just ram through poor quality development. What’s your view on that?

Prof Lowe: Well I would rather they stood up and had a fight with the state government than adopt what one of my colleagues calls the “pre-emptive crumble”. Rather than have the state government enforce lousy planning on us we’ll do it for them. They were elected for the mandate to stand up to the state government and fight for the Sunshine Coast and I think in the current political climate the state government would be very reluctant to overrule a popularly elected regional council.

Eco: Especially the fourth largest local government in Australia?

Prof Lowe: That’s right. So I would rather the Council stood up to the State government and said we were elected with a mandate to protect the natural assets of the Coast and we’re going to do it. If you want to take us on, we’ll fight you politically and might even think about fighting them legally. A state government has powers over local government but the commonwealth government has powers over the state. Now Kevin Rudd’s probably not going to want to pick a fight with Anna Bligh but there’s no doubt that quality of life is a political issue. I’d welcome it becoming a political issue rather than just accepting that the state government caving into the developers is going to overrule what the people want.

Eco: Exactly. I know you’re a busy man Ian and I would like to thank you very much for your time and sharing your views on this important topic with Eco News.

The proposal will see about 14,000 extra people and 6265 new dwellings and buildings. Combined with the proposal for Caloundra South, we are set to have an extra 64,000 residents, sharing our roads, our beaches and increasing the pressures on our rapidly disappearing natural environment.

The Palmview structure plan area

Yet again, flooding is an issue and so too is the health of waterways and native habitat. The site contains areas of high environmental value such as the Mooloolah River and its floodplains. Disturbing a river’s floodplains has many impacts, none so obvious as the sudden and unwanted water-front views experienced by many local residents during heavy rain events.

Important ecosystems and an endangered rainforest plant species (Medicosma sp.), one of only three colonies in the world, will be under threat.  With more development, comes the need for more protection of our natural areas.  Remove a little bit here and another bit somewhere else, and some simple arithmetic tells us that soon there will be very little left with the remainder becoming increasingly fragmented.

However, the Sunshine Coast Regional Council has incorporated a number of commendable sustainability initiatives in their structure plan for Palmview. Provision of an open space network for ecological, recreational and amenity purposes to contribute to biodiversity values, six star energy efficiency in buildings and excellence in ecological design practice in all development with fully integrated water cycle management are such examples

Yet, as with any development, it is not only the impacts of the development in question, but the larger, cumulative problems that deserve serious attention. If smart public transport systems are not in place then it is obvious, to say the least, that congested roads, in fact more roads, will be our common future.

In 2006, over 90 per cent of our daily journeys to work within the Sunshine Coast were made by private transport. And only 2 per cent used existing public transport. Urban development, without adequate public transport options, will lead to a greater number of cars, more pollution, more noise and eventually, more roads. As the state government rushes to invite more people to our region on our behalf, they are forgetting that any new urban development must be properly planned from the start.

Palmview, according to the local council, is poised to be a pilot development incorporating sustainability principles and infrastructure on a large scale. As such, it would appear logical for council to focus on truly ecologically sustainable development being delivered  in this region with unequivocal commitment from the state government and the development industry, contingent on any development proceeding.

Any increase in population must be based on a sustainable carrying-capacity criteria which carefully considers the biophysical constraints, including ‘look and feel’ rather than just an  acceptance of a predetermined, arbitrary figure.  Or, is that asking too much?

***

What has the Sunshine Coast Environment Council got to say on on Palmview? Their position paper can be viewed at the SCEC website

The latest community group to become a member of SCEC, PAGE is fighting to protect community members and at the same time playing an active role in reducing carbon emissions on the Sunshine Coast.

PAGE – the useful acronym doubling for the Powerline Action Group Eumundi and People Advocating Green Energy – was formed in 2007 in response to a proposal which threatens the communities west of Eumundi with high voltage powerlines and pylons marching across an idyllic landscape.

What to expect - transmission towers, power lines and their easement cut a swathe through Beerburrum State Forest. Photograph: John Burrows

The proposal comes from Powerlink, the government agency responsible for Queensland’s power transmission network, and involves power lines connecting a present substation at Woolooga, up past Gympie, with a new substation close to Eumundi.

It’s all part of a larger scheme to extend new transmission lines on wide easements the length of the Sunshine Coast. Exact details aren’t readily available, but it’s clear that the scheme will lock the Coast into a carbon dependent future.

Most of the new line from Woolooga is planned to run alongside an existing easement, but it’s the final nine kilometres, running through Eerwah Vale, which will have a profound effect on community and environment.

PAGE has been fighting the proposal from the outset. They make the compelling point that it’s just another large-scale old-world engineering solution to current climate change challenges and argue strongly for alternatives.

Demand management could see power use by many businesses and households reduced by up to 30 per cent. During Brisbane’s water crisis, a public awareness campaign plus regulation resulted in water use being cut dramatically – up to 54 per cent in 18 months. Why not try the same approach with power?

Powerlink also seems to disregard renewable energy. PAGE promoted a plan by Sanctuary Energy Ltd to provide power on the Sunshine Coast using solar thermal generators, a plan which our Transmission Network Service Provider casually dismissed.

PAGE also supports SCEC’s 1000 Solar Roofs Project, a successful community initiative to provide solar panels to roofs on the Sunshine Coast – there are over 800 households signed up at the time of writing, demonstrating the huge potential for renewable energy.

Recognising that political support is vital, PAGE has met with the Minister for Mines & Energy and the Opposition. They also organised a State Election candidate’s forum, held at Eumundi which was very well attended. There was support from the former Noosa Council, and PAGE is planning a presentation to the Sunshine Coast Regional Council for its backing.

PAGE has an informative website, and has held community meetings and information days. Affected residents had the benefit of workshops to help them respond to documents required under the community consultation process – the draft Terms of Reference and recently the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

The draft EIS was 1900 pages long and widely seen as being too complex, not to mention daunting in size, for most people to digest.

Community members got together with an environmental scientist and other specialists to respond to the draft EIS, and produced a comprehensive and hard hitting document, concluding that the assessment and the assessment process were fundamentally flawed.

“The draft EIS can be characterised as misleading, incorrect, inadequate and lacking in critical detail,” said PAGE coordinator Graham Smith.

“It clearly lacks any independence in its analysis, conclusions or recommendations.

“Unfortunately, this is consistent with the woeful consultation and poorly detailed studies undertaken by Powerlink and their paid consultants.”

In their response to the draft EIS, PAGE emphasised their desire to one day make clean, sustainable energies a reality in the power profile of the Sunshine Coast and Queensland.

Along with many other crucial issues, the assessment of environmental impacts was seen as totally inadequate.

The Richmond Birdwing Butterfly - a local colony faces extinction if Powerlink has its way. Photograph by Jennifer Broomhall

A case in point — the beautiful but endangered Richmond Birdwing Butterfly has only a few small pockets of suitable habitat remaining, and the most northern of these, right in the path of the proposed powerlines, could be compromised if Powerlink gets its way.

Koalas too are set to suffer – a loss of 20 hectares of koala habitat at a time when their numbers in SEQ are plummeting.

Both of these species have special interest for photographer Jennifer Broomhall and husband Fred who live on a property which will be affected if the powerlines come through.

Registered under the Land for Wildlife programme – along with 21 other properties which will be affected – the Broomhall’s block straddles a ridge which is a watershed for the Mary and Maroochy River catchments. There is high plant diversity with areas of riparian rain forest and remnant vine forest.

Koalas are seen (or heard) frequently, thanks in part to koala food trees planted since the couple moved there 32 years ago.

The Richmond Birdwing Butterfly occurs there as well, and like the koalas is much photographed. It only has one food source – the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly vine. There’s a fine specimen of the vine on the next door block, unfortunately right in the path of Powerlink’s easement.

The draft EIS recommends that this vine be translocated, even though scientific opinion is adamant that it doesn’t survive replanting. So the local population of the butterfly is doomed if the Powerlink proposal goes ahead.

PAGE has found many deficiencies like this in the draft EIS. With the final EIS due by the end of this year, the group plans to continue campaigning and gaining community support, and intends to lobby the Minister for Mines & Energy highlighting the many inadequacies in the process.