Up close with Ian Lowe
Ian Christesen, on behalf of Eco News talks to Professor Ian Lowe about the problems associated with the Sunshine Coast’s ever increasing popularity. A popularity which arises from having ideal temperatures and a stunning natural environment. With developers focusing their attention on large areas of land, poor planning is perhaps one of the biggest threats facing the Sunshine Coast today.
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.
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