Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency.
- Read the story: New public housing plans open for feedback
Maree Crawford, Melbourne: Yes, looks great, it’s certainly not a huge new complex. Car park area is good. It definitely would not cause huge traffic congestion, that’s an unfair statement. I would definitely be interested in renting, as I’m relocating to the Sunshine Coast at the end of the year. I lived in Noosa/Tewantin for many years. My career was in corporate travel in Brisbane, which also covered the Sunshine Coast. I’d love to retire in the Maroochy area. I’m currently in Werribee, Melbourne for family reasons caring for my two beautiful grandchildren to help my daughter with her corporate career. She will transfer to the Brisbane office in 2027.
Petrania Evans: I agree with people saying it is an area with congested traffic. I live at 232 Main Road so I know. It is also a dangerous location as cars speed around the corner and we do not see them coming. Something needs to be done about that very quickly, now! There have been accidents in the past and I remember a car speeding into 230 Main Road taking the walkway fence between 232 with it.
Lou Whitehand: One-bedroom units should not be built. They can never be used for families as they’re too small. One-bedroom units will bring single people who are drug dependent and dealing in crime to Maroochydore. Building apartments squashes too many people into a small space. This is not healthy. New design please!
- Read the story: Petition calls for permanent one-way traffic change
J Hutchinson, Golden Beach: With reference to the petition to make the esplanade from Nelson Street to Onslow Street permanently one-way, it is important to consider all of the impacts of this restructuring of the street. Since the return of the ability of drivers from the southern section of the esplanade to enter Landsborough Parade at the Nelson Street roundabout, it is once again possible to safely turn right on to this road. While the esplanade was closed between Nelson and Onslow streets for two-way traffic, turning onto Landsborough Parade caused major problems at certain times of the day, so unless a roundabout was placed at the exit of Mawson or Onslow, this issue will be exasperated. Maybe the few car parks on the western side of the esplanade could removed so that traffic could flow freely along the esplanade. Also, maybe if some of the pedestrians who continue to consider it is their right to walk in the middle of the road instead of the shared pathway it would also help traffic.
Graham Lockey, Coolum Beach: This idea is excellent. The road section is ideal for this change. Council should also consider other roads where parking on both sides of the road results in a single traffic lane, ie Bungama and Allambie streets in Maroochydore. There are, I’m certain, many other roads within the SCRC area which could benefit from conversion to one way traffic flow, which would allow greater parking areas, especially as developers are increasingly seeking to underprovide off-street parking.
- Read the story: Rally planned as coastal works spark debate
Bob Carroll, Maroochydore: Over three kilometres of popular coastal foreshore from Mooloolaba to Cotton Tree has been partially or fully closed with facilities like the Loo with a View removed and not replaced, parking spaces removed or blocked off, and traffic disrupted with road closures with key connecting roads like First Avenue closed for over six months.
It is impossible to have activity in all of those areas at the one time, so why didn’t council do one section at a time? The CEO is clueless, and when questioned about delayed delivery on key projects, he babbles on about budgets being restricted and council having to live within their means?? Why start these projects when you cannot devote all of your resources into one area at a time?
Council fence all the areas off and then do nothing behind the fence. Call into any of these areas on any given day and you will see no activity at all in most areas or limited activity with workers sitting idle on their mobile phones.
In your story ‘Guided by Science’ you show a photo and say: ‘Stage One of the Mooloolaba foreshore revitalisation is now complete’. If that is the case, why is it not open to the public? Further to that, the sweeping concrete ‘steps’ are double the height of the accepted industry standards for ‘steps’, making them inaccessible and dangerous for elderly people or people with any hint of a mobility disability.
- Read the story: Foreshore revamp milestone beckons after delay
P Hurrey, Palmwoods: This terraced seawall is very ‘artsy’ but very impractical. How long will it take before some child goes running down these steps to get to the beach, falls and cracks their head on the concrete? Someone slips, mis-steps, is distracted, falls and injures themselves? The majority of these steps have no handrails. The personal injury claims against council are sure to come. The amount of heat generated on a hot summer day by this mass of concrete will be considerable, raising the surrounding ambient temperature. Council would have you believe that people will then be lounging on these very hard, very hot steps. Why would they? Would you?
- Read the story: Council expected to defend appeal over holiday rental rules
P Brown, Noosaville: I support the council defending an appeal lodged by the owners of a property at 8 Witta Circle, Noosa Heads. The property was granted a Short Stay Letting approval in March 2022. Disturbing people outside reasonable hours in the neighbouring properties by those staying should not be tolerated in a residential area. I support the council’s defence.
- Read the story: Govt touts Coast health workforce after scrutiny
Andrew Moran, Battery Hill: The workforce numbers released by the Health Minister and the Member for Caloundra don’t answer the critical question: is the Sunshine Coast University Hospital and health service being funded at a level that matches actual demand growth?
With demand rising at about 6 per cent a year and funding increasing by 3.5 per cent, the answer is clearly no.
There’s also been no explanation of how Sunshine Coast Health will “meet demand within its funding allocation”, or what services may need to be prioritised or delayed as a result.
The community understands health services are under pressure. What they need is clear, transparent information – not headline numbers that don’t address the underlying funding gap.
- Read the story: Coast’s newest AI centre to escape government rules
Robyn Deane, Nambour: With the questions about data centres and what they are good for, readers need to keep in mind that it is thanks to a data centre somewhere that they are able to read the Sunshine Coast News, do internet banking and a myriad of things we take for granted these days. It is also absolutely essential that all levels of government monitor the expansion of data centres and safeguards are put in place to ensure that the public doesn’t end up subsidising their development.
Hence, it is reassuring that there is an agreement between energy ministers from every state and territory except Queensland and the Northern Territory that new data centres will have to bring their own renewable energy to the grid, reducing the risks to our climate and power prices. Polling has found that 82 per cent of Australians support the agreement.
In Queensland, the polling showed four in five Queenslanders agree that new data centres should have to pay for the additional renewable energy and storage they use.
Shame on the Crisafulli Government for not agreeing. Why is the LNP Government not in agreement?
- Read the story: Record field set for marathon festival on closed roads
Noela Coulter: Peter Watkins is right. Spread the marathon over the Coast. Every year we have people parking on our footpath and across our driveway. Parking on yellow lines, bus zones and across chicanes down Pacific Terrace is overlooked. A friend nearby got fined $90 recently for having two tyres of his vehicle on his own footpath! Go figure. If mayor Natoli wants us to have the marathon here for the Olympics, she had better get her act together and sort out the parking problem. Not that she’ll be in office then the way things are looking.
- Read the story: Hospital parking spillover sparks council review
Graham Laws, Little Mountain: As a person with a disability, the parking is bad every time I visit my heart specialist. While I’m getting in my car, my wife goes to get a ticket out of the machine and twice we have got to the gate and the ticket has expired. We are not made of money and whoever controls this system needs to make sure the ticket doesn’t expire until you have left.
- Read the story: Ashley Robinson: service is more than a smile
Meg Agostino: I’m afraid to say, but Ashley Robinson’s article about customer service sounds very entitled and doesn’t make it any easier for frontline employees who have to deal with a lot more than elderly and entitled people like him. Maybe be a bit more awareness.
- Read the story: Census to reveal extent of Coast housing crisis
Graham Lockey, Coolum Beach: Thank goodness Vinnies is doing its survey. Homelessness is evident across the region. The ABS Census results, it is claimed, are to be released to the public in stages in 2027 and 2028. Given a large proportion of Census returns will be done online and the manually entered ones are scanned into the system and there’s not that many questions, how can a massive computer system such as the ABS has take up to two years to ‘crunch the numbers’?
Strange the ATO doesn’t need that long to decide our taxable incomes! The only possible answer is the published results will not be pure numbers. We all know how unemployment, inflation and other numbers are ‘seasonally adjusted’, ie massaged to hide the facts. It’s time to get the Census data out to the taxpayers in what’s a sensible time of no more than six months for important sections like employment, housing and demographic spread, or is the software ‘outsourced’ and not fit for purpose?
- Public seating
Marg Houk, Mountain Creek: I have noticed a great lack of benches/seats generally in shops such as Big W at Kawana Shoppingworld and K-Mart at Sunshine Plaza. Everything was removed during Covid, but very little has been replaced. Time to make it a bit easier for the elderly, parents with little children, customers generally to find a place to pause and take a break when visiting such public places. Put the seating back now please – see how much happier your clients will become!
- One notion
Margaret Wilkie, Peregian Beach: Maybe one notion proposed by the Red Queen’s party in making abortion illegal, wouldn’t it be simpler to make a vasectomy mandatory for all males over the age of 18? Just asking.
- The gift that multiplies
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs: Every so often, a statistic stops you in your tracks. I was gobsmacked when I realised that one organ donor – just one – can save up to seven lives and improve dozens more. That’s not abstract. We’re talking about real people, real families, real futures.
In today’s world based on image, we’re used to big announcements and ministers appearing in photo‑ops on the news. But the most powerful acts can get under our radar: ticking a box, having a conversation with our family, or registering online. Those small steps create ripples that can change lives in ways that border on miraculous.
Right now, families are sitting in hospital rooms, hoping for a call that sadly may never come. Doctors are doing everything they can with what they have. And in those moments, the power of one person – one decision – becomes impossible to ignore. Yes, the power of one – us.
And yes, thinking about our own mortality is confronting. But organ donation isn’t about death. It’s about giving someone a chance at life. It’s about our heartbeat, our breath, our tomorrow continuing in someone else.
And it’s simple. We don’t need money, influence, or heroics. We just need to say yes – yes to helping a child grow up, yes to helping a mum return home to look after her family, and yes to enabling a stranger to see another sunrise.
We all wonder whether we matter. Organ donation answers that clearly – we do.
With our gift, our life can outlive us in the most extraordinary way. We won’t be on the news, but our decision could save seven lives – and transform dozens more.
- Thank you for your kindness
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs: I received a lovely surprise reading Sunshine Coast News when I came across a letter to the editor after mine on Grandfatherly Advice. It came from Judy Lovell of Burnett Heads.
She wrote: “I just want to let you know that I do not live on the Coast but read Sunshine Coast News for one reason only – letters from Garry Reynolds of Peregian Springs. Garry is an articulate and thoughtful voice in a world which can seem unpleasant at times. I love his civilised and intelligent contribution. I wish you could give him a regular spot, as his articles would no doubt be worth a read, Thank you, Gary”.
Well, thank you, Judy, for your kindness. And thank you so much to the team at Sunshine Coast News for publishing my letters. Even more, thank you for your kindness in publishing Judy’s letter. I smiled as I thought to myself, you could have let it slide by, and I would have kept happily beavering on – and I still will.
- The cry of nature
Phil Broad, Nambour:
The white skeletons they reach the sky
Their blades no movement –
I wonder why
The huge steel towers they dwarf the land
That once grew food for the common man
Boom boom boom as they clear the mountain top
The bulldozers will they ever stop
Cutting a huge swathe through the ancient bush
Destroying the homes and nests in a rush
When the wind does blow
You can see below
The carnage of steel meeting soft feathers
And this they call progress
Think of the whales and the schools of fish
Their pathways destroyed by concrete and steel
When the sun won’t shine for days on end
They become one with night
And so they blend
There is no light
Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency.
