The debate about the Sunshine Coast’s future is sometimes reduced to a simple question: do we want more height and development, or do we want to protect our lifestyle?
I think that is the wrong choice.
The real question is whether we accommodate inevitable growth through a thoughtful plan—or allow scarcity, sprawl and rising costs to determine who can still afford to live and work here.
The latest figures contain a clear warning.
During 2025–26, Sunshine Coast building approvals represented approximately $3.43 billion of proposed investment, an increase of 31.6%. The value of non-residential approvals almost doubled to $1.24 billion, indicating a significant pipeline of workplaces, services and economic activity.
Yet the number of homes approved increased by only 0.7%, from 3,221 to 3,244. Across Queensland, dwelling approvals increased by 26.5%.
At the same time, the Sunshine Coast continues to attract approximately 8,000 additional residents a year and recently captured 8.8% of Australia’s net regional migration—the largest share of any region in the country.
The reporting periods and measures are different, and an approval is not a completed home. But the direction is difficult to ignore: investment, population and employment demand are growing much faster than our housing pipeline.
Jobs are coming—but where will the workers live?
Our infrastructure pipeline will create an enormous amount of opportunity. It will also create fierce competition for trades, professionals and service workers.
Queensland house-construction prices have already increased by 8% over the past year, compared with 5.9% nationally. Infrastructure Australia expects regional workforce shortages to rise sharply as public projects compete with private construction for many of the same people and materials.
That pressure will not remain inside the construction industry.
Every major project creates demand for engineers and trades, but also for teachers, health workers, childcare educators, hospitality staff, retailers, accountants and the many local businesses supporting a growing population.
Those people all need somewhere to live.
This week I spoke with a large, long-established Sunshine Coast employer considering whether future operations may need to move elsewhere. The concern was not a lack of customers or confidence in the region. It was whether their employees could continue to afford to live here.
That is only one conversation, not an economic survey. But it is the kind of warning we should take seriously.
A beautiful region that businesses cannot staff and working families cannot afford is not delivering a balanced lifestyle.
The height debate is really an affordability debate
Restricting well-designed height in designated centres will not stop people wanting to move to the Sunshine Coast. It will not stop investment or employment demand.
It is more likely to make the limited housing that remains increasingly expensive and push development further outward.
That means longer journeys, greater pressure on roads, more infrastructure per household and the continued conversion of land at the urban fringe.
We should be careful about claiming that any single planning dispute caused today’s affordability problems. However, places such as Noosa and Sunshine Beach demonstrate what can happen when extremely strong demand meets tightly constrained supply: extraordinary property values, very high rents and increasing difficulty accommodating the people needed to operate the community.
The lesson is not that every tall building should be approved. It is that saying no to density does not make demand disappear.
Density can protect what we love
Good density is not simply about fitting more apartments onto a site.
It can support better public transport, reduce the need to drive for every journey and create enough local activity for cafés, restaurants, gyms, retailers and cultural venues to thrive.
It can make room for young people, essential workers, entrepreneurs, retirees and intergenerational families to live closer to one another.
Most importantly, concentrating appropriate height in designated centres—slightly removed from the beachfront—can help protect the coastline from becoming a continuous wall of towers while establishing Maroochydore as a genuine regional CBD.
Compact growth can also be greener growth.
Even our better masterplanned communities show how smaller private lots can be balanced with larger shared parks, cycleways, playgrounds, wetlands and walking connections. People may have less private land, but they can gain greater access to nature and community space.
That is often more ecologically responsible than continually extending low-density suburbs across the landscape.
A good plan now needs to be executed
The proposed planning direction is sensible: concentrate more homes around established centres, employment, services and future transport while protecting the beach, natural landscape and distinctive communities outside those areas.
But a plan alone will not house a nurse, retain a call-centre employee or give a young Sunshine Coast family its first realistic opportunity to buy.
Execution should mean:
- Clear and predictable planning rules.
- Prompt decisions on projects consistent with the adopted plan.
- Height that earns its place through excellent design, housing choice and active streets.
- Parks, trees, public spaces and transport delivered alongside density.
- Transparent measurement of approvals, commencements and completed homes.
- A serious focus on accommodation for essential and lower-paid workers.
- Infrastructure and construction programs sequenced around the workforce actually available.
We have previously seen communities fight individual developments without fully considering where the displaced growth would go. Sometimes the result has not been the preservation of an untouched landscape, but more outward subdivision, greater scarcity and higher housing costs.
We should learn from that experience without blaming the people who genuinely wanted to protect their community.
This is about preserving the Sunshine Coast’s soul
I do not want the Sunshine Coast to lose its natural beauty, village character or sense of community. Those qualities are precisely why people want to live here.
But preserving our soul cannot mean preventing the next generation from participating in it.
Growth is coming because this is an extraordinary place. Jobs and investment are coming because people believe in its future.
Our responsibility is neither to resist that growth nor accept it blindly. It is to shape it confidently—placing the right density in the right locations, protecting our coastline and ecology, and ensuring the people who teach our children, care for our families and operate our businesses can still call the Sunshine Coast home.
The plan gives us that opportunity. Now we need the courage and discipline to deliver it.
Sources: ABS Building Approvals, ABS Producer Price Indexes, Regional Movers Index, proposed Sunshine Coast planning approach and Infrastructure Australia.