By Rod Ritchie, President, Cooroy Area Residents Association
Noosa’s residents are adjusting to a number of issues related to structural changes that have occurred the last several years.
During the last term of council, elected at the start of the Covid pandemic, change was the one constant. The very fabric of our shire was affected in many ways. With lockdown and the following temporary cessation of interstate and international tourism, the shire’s residents realised that the economy was dependent on more than accommodation and food services industries, and appreciated its economic diversity, as health, education, professional services, retail, construction and IT industries kept the economy afloat.
However, when tourism rebounded, it was in a format that impacted residents more than ever, and other problems remained on the council’s to-do list. Although some are more solvable than others for Noosa Council staff, many factors were outside of their control, making some solutions more difficult.
An affordable housing and rental property crisis.
Noosa has long been a place where high-density development and urban sprawl were held in check. This has made our shire attractive to tourists, investors and residents. The affordable housing crisis is a systemic problem that is not confined to Noosa and is not just a matter of building more affordable housing.
Our housing stock is undergoing a dynamic change. Houses once in the full-time rental pool are being claimed by owners or sold to investors keen to cash in on their STA appeal. This has pushed affordability further out of the reach of residents looking for a place on the real estate ladder. It’s also meant rental prices have soared. As a result, we have an extremely tight market for long-term letting, with hospitality and service workers forced to seek lower-priced accommodation in towns outside the shire.
Solutions: The state government is legislating to empower the Planning Minister to override local planning schemes to ensure affordable housing will be built. Council could look for opportunities for approving social housing on public land, before the state selects areas for them. It must also lobby the state and federal governments for building subsidies.
A short-term accommodation tsunami is affecting suburban life
As with the situation in popular destinations world-wide, the booming short-term accommodation industry grew before regulations could be put in place. Noosa Council has become the first council in Queensland to enact local laws to regulate short-stay letting and home hosted accommodation. These new local laws are now in place, and although they have slowed down new applications, enforcement of these regulation and compliance measures are only gradually becoming effective. Unfortunately, this booming industry has had a detrimental effect on our communities, particularly the coastal precincts, once diverse residential areas, which are morphing into neighbourhoods catering predominately to the STA market.
Solutions: Noosa Council planning staff have rejected most recent applications and most councillors have supported the recommendations. While so-called party houses have been banned throughout Noosa under state legislation, a more common problem is residential houses with large groups of holidaymakers. Operating outside the legislation, these have been problematic for a long time. Council must work on improvement in enforcement of, and compliance with, the new laws.
Tourism has gone down market
Remember when Tourism Noosa (TN) pitched Noosa to low volume, high-value visitors with classy ads? During Covid-19, when the industry lost international and even interstate visitors, they had to pivot from these visitors, to high-volume, low-value ones. Essentially, this marketing shift led to a boom in day-trippers, drive-ins and intrastate visitation, and residents now find themselves stuck in traffic jams that they only previously knew from peak holiday periods. Naturally enough, our infrastructure struggles to cater for this market.
With the new visitor demographic has come new social problems. And in the push to include the hinterland in the tourism Noosa marketing strategy, we risk importing coastal problems such as housing shortages, infrastructure and traffic pressures. Given the demographics of our small towns, such as Kin Kin and Pomona, already struggling with a massive hinterland quarry truck traffic problem, these pressures the hinterland can ill afford.
Solutions: Council has taken the formulation of a Destination Management Plan seriously. Last year, the community and industry were widely consulted, through workshops and an invitation to have their say, and a draft plan was written. This plan will be given to a consultative committee and Noosa’s councillors, for further input before a final version comes back to the community for comment. The plan will then become part of the Tourism Noosa funding agreement for the final two years of the quadrennial funding agreement. Key Performance Indicators will be included, holding Tourism Noosa to visitor benchmarks.
A plan for the Noosa River
The health of the Noosa River is vital for residents, agricultural and commercial fishing interests, and tourism and boating and fishing users. Council’s Draft Noosa River Catchment Management Plan, an important starting point for the implementation of future programs to improve the health of the Noosa River, seeks to provide direction for future consultation and implementation on ways to better manage the adverse impacts of various activities within the Noosa River catchment.
A part of the plan is the establishment of a Noosa River and Lakes Conservation Park with Noosa Council as Trustee. With a boundary the same as the Noosa River Fish Habitat Areas, the park would provide the community and stakeholders with better clarity on who is responsible for managing issues within the Conservation Park.
Solutions: Once the council plan is opened for wider community consultation, a staff report will come back before council for assessment, discussion and for a vote on approval. The state has just announced changes to regulations on the Noosa River, documented elsewhere in this issue.
The future
Noosa Council does not have the powers to instantly provide a remedy for all of these problems. However, we will need to work with the state to come up with innovative solutions, because the shire is under pressures that was unimaginable just a few years ago. Without action, and a real plan for the future, our lives are all diminished and the special place we’ve worked so hard to preserve will further deteriorate.
We are, in many ways, a victim of our own success in years of environmental advocacy by councillors, planning staff and local lobby groups. While tourists enjoy Noosa for obvious reasons, we must ensure that residents and their amenity are the major part of any equation that ensures Noosa remains a sustainable place to live and visit.
