Letters: Toondah JAM, Regional Plan

In Letters this week, concern raised over the impact of 3,600 apartments on our roads, and how the current draft SEQ Regional Plan is ignoring a decade of previous planning based on community values.

One resident highlights how the planned Toondah Harbour mega development is a recipe for traffic disaster with up to 10,000 new residents joining our already crammed road system. As well as the impacts on our environments.

Another local calls out the state government’s draft SEQ Regional Plan saying it only pays lip service to the things that matter to communities like livability and quality of life – ignoring a decade of previous planning based on community values.

Toondah Harbour … chaos

Considering 3,600 units are to be built around Toondah Harbour is mind boggling.

As resident in Capalaba close to CBD for 30+ years, I have watched helplessly the destruction of our local environment: filling Capalaba wetlands, killing off our local koala population in the process. What developers want, developers get…simple! They have deep pockets, can and do buy anyone, as my late husband Paul used to say.

Behind the scenes deals done with Walker Corp donating huge sums into greedy, grubby hands in local and State governments ensure developer/s get what they want.

In my mind, Deputy Premier Jackie Trad agreed to continue with this highly destructive project much too soon after taking over from LNP.

Traffic on Cleveland – Redland Bay Road

TRAFFIC. People everywhere, shopping centres, local streets, neighbours, all are asking….how are our Redland roads to cope with the high volumes of traffic?

Today, Finucane Rd from 4-way intersection at Capalaba is backed up around Windemere Rd Alexandra Hills. There are waiting times growing longer in a.m. rush hour. A friend on Parakeet St, Birkdale waits much longer to access Birkdale Rd as Ormiston motorists are taking this route to avoid congested Finucane Rd. Same story with Mt Cotton Rd where I was informed by motorist of experiencing road rage. We are now seeing on our once local roads, vehicles normally seen on highways….semi trailers, (one jack knifed recently slicing the roof off small car, decapitating 25-yr old female driver at Finucane/Old Cleveland/Moreton Bay Rds intersection) diesel powered huge trucks, etc.

Increasing with new developments popping up like mushrooms in Redlands, causing health problems to nearby residents as no need for developers to leave green barrier but they are permitted to build wall to wall units right smack up to roadsides…no escaping deadly exhaust traffic fumes.

What action will State, local and Federal governments take to alleviate present and future traffic gridlock in Redland City for commuters plus providing fast transport to major Brisbane hospitals?

On another matter, a recent Courier Mail article lists ALP overseas jaunts….. staggering when we see so many citizens trying to survive on Struggle Street.

Then we hear Labor’s Ex-Prime Minister Bob Hawke, for the second year in a row, speaking at the Woodford Festival of the need to abolish State governments. He claims we are over-governed and savings would free up money for much needed infrastructure…badly needed in SEQ. There may be moneys left over to buy wildlife habitat as I can’t see Redland City Council or Labor Party pollies changing planning rules that allows for the total wipe outs especially of koalas…. since developers have the final say.

Please tell me I’m wrong?

What is not wrong is that 80% of our SEQ koalas have vanished Let’s face it, the old council song of ‘we will plant ‘offsets’ is nonsense. They know and we know they don’t work – after tall majestic habitat trees for wildlife have been turned into mulch.

AG
Birkdale

Draft Plan sacrifices community values

I’m writing to express my concern at lack of critical comment being aired about the draft SEQ Regional Plan. It is a plan with a narrow perspective as it is focused on population growth and urban development. It only pays lip service to the things that matter including livability, lifestyle and quality of life. Community values will be sacrificed on the altar of greed and development.

The plan puts some weight on the megatrends that it identifies. It then fails to discuss scenarios where by the mega trends (those identified in the Plan and others (that it has overlooked) might come about. Impacts are not likely to roll over us sequentially but most likely in waves one on top of another. In a nutshell the Plan paints a fairy tale future….of living happily ever after.

But fairytales are just that and they are not a plausible path to the future. Neither is this regional plan.

The draft Plan omits key components of the previous iterations:
• Koalas are relegated in importance and to a footnote about another expert panel
• there is no state of region report
• the format has no line of sight to previous editions and so trashes the community investment and expertise of the last decade
• it removes reference to the Queensland ESD Policy….was it an inconvenient truth?
• it gives up on establishing a framework for the integration of so other plans and policies—left to there own devices each agency will flounder along and so nobody is responsible for the overall outcomes.
• No response to the dearth of regional open space in SEQ …first seen by Wayne Goss as a critical regional priority….greenspace acquisition is no longer a regional issue…sadly for future generations SEQ will have a third rate open space network compared the all other Australian capital cities.
• the Plan gives up on an integrated approach both in terms of the plans and the institutions. Mechanisms established for previous regional plans will be abandoned.
• NRM Planning and the health of Moreton Bay should be central to a regional plan…but the Bay as a pivotal piece of infrastructure is omitted from any meaningful discourse.

I could go on, and I imagine those organisations that led previous responses are tired and even burnt out. The consultation supporting this version of the regional plan is a sad imitation of what needs to be done…and a poor imitation of what was done in 2004 and again in 2009.

I do hope R2030 has the resolve to guide submissions on what is a dismal planning effort now before the community.

DP
Capalaba

Editor’s Note: Redlands2030 welcomes all points of view on the matters of interest to Redlanders. Rather than reflect unsatisfied writers to the local paper, writers are welcome to send any letter they send to the Bulletin to Redlands2030…. at the same time. Given the audiences are not always aligned, we think there is room for people to have their efforts published in both.