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. Preference will be given to letters of 100 words or less. Some of the opinions below are comments from SCN’s Facebook page.
- Read the story: Paid parking required in planning for major precinct
Graham Kelly, Mooloolaba: When is this council going to learn? All it needs to do is look at other councils which have installed parking meters only to find they had to be removed at great expense after both ratepayer backlash and retrograde results for commerce in the area. There are many far more pressing projects requiring council funds, rather than waste it on a project which is historically doomed to failure.
Wayne Jackson: Are they going to be the same meters in Bulcock Street, Caloundra that cost rate payers $14,800 each?
Gail Podberscek: Is there any data on whether free parking in Caloundra has increased numbers visiting? Would that be a consideration?
Julie Marsland: Haven’t we, the ratepayers, spent enough on useless meters and a failed parking system at Happy Valley?
Russell Parker: Won’t ever use a meter that requires a credit card. Cash is king. Why did the very expensive double-booking meters in Caloundra fail? I for one just refused to use them, and I suspect many others did too.
- Read the story: Dedicated officers for illegal dumping
Pam Van der Kooy, Buderim: With regard to this article, I cannot understand why Sunshine Coast Council does not supply dump vouchers. Surely this would help to reduce the 13,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste, as well as reduce the cost involved in the clean-up. Brisbane City Council provides 10 dump vouchers to every household each year that covers up to 100kg of waste per voucher (including mattresses – one of the typical items that are dumped because no one wants to pay $26). Brisbane City Council also has a bulky kerbside collection once a year, while some Sydney and Melbourne councils provide pre-booked hard waste pickups. If you are going to load up the trailer with rubbish, it is far easier to take it to the dump and hand over a voucher than head to the local forestry area.
Megan Corcoran: Rather have free dump vouchers and free kerbside pick up a few times a year for that.
Inge Kraus: Why can Brisbane council do free vouchers for ratepayers and not the Sunshine Coast councils?
Eleesha Rose: Heres an idea, what about you use that $295,000 to run the tip and allow us to dump for free like it used to be once upon a time? Problem solved.
Phil Pidgeon: When you are charged $50-plus to take your rubbish to the tip one can understand why illegal dumping is happening.
Kevin Palmer: People choosing food and bills over dump fees.
- Read the story: Main roads to close for ‘iconic’ event
Jimmy Richards: We’ve had weeks of notice so it’s been very easy to make alternative plans. Thanks to the organisers for the extra tourism. Welcome trihards!
Jody Moore: Why not put it on back roads and the leave motorway open?
- Read the story: Wheelchair user stranded after taxi no-show
Chris Edwards: I’m not disabled but I waited for more than an hour for a Black & White Cab yesterday that did not arrive. After almost arriving home on foot, a driver called me and asked if I still wanted a pickup. I called the company three times and was told by a recording that the taxi would arrive shortly.
Penny Hegarty: Just letting you know that after reading your article regarding the no show taxi, apparently nothing has changed. My mother and I had to have the funeral parlour delay my sister’s funeral as the taxi, which had been booked two days prior, was a no show at Sundale in Nambour. No satisfaction after many distraught phone calls. If it wasn’t for White Lady Funerals sending someone to pick us up we would have missed the service. Just not good enough.
Harold Joss: I’ve used [two Sunshine Coast-based taxi companies] for 35 years. Nothing has changed, they’ve always been pathetic and still are a one-hour wait after booking. It is not acceptable in this age. No wonder people use Uber. To have booked days earlier and not have anyone turn up is totally unacceptable.
- Read the story: Hotel defends new cabins after ‘eyesore’ criticism
Russell Carter: Everyone keeps banging on about the council or state government or the feds should be providing accommodation for the homeless. Here is an example of an easy and cheap way to do it. The big question is, who would want it in their area? Just look at the whinging going on about this style of accommodation.
Neil Mellor: The hotel development looks overcrowded on the site. I wonder who it’s targeting? Seems like these structures would suit a caravan park, not contemporary tourist accommodation.
Grant Hutson: Thirty-two one-bedroom short-term accommodation units, 32 one-bedroom? It’s obviously not a family holiday accommodation complex. Who exactly is going to be staying there?
Stephen Compton: A one-bedroom unit is useless if you’re a family wanting accommodation for a sporting fixture in the area.
- Read the story: Farewell to ‘Golly’, a cop’s cop and comfort in crisis
Jeanette Netto Williams: RIP Steve Gollschewski. Great man.
Veronica Twible: Thanks for doing a great job Golly! RIP.
Otto Mac: Lovely man. RIP Steve.
- Read the story: Discount retailer to shut doors despite growing trade
Hazel Victor: Noooooo don’t take Silly Solly’s away from us at Birtinya, we need you to stay. Everything goes to Maroochydore. We are important here as well. Please don’t leave us.
Linda Sorrell: Oh bummer, that’s my favourite (store).
Karen Croft: That’s terrible news!
- Time warp?
Margaret Wilkie, Peregian Beach: In remembrance of Tim Curry, are people up and dancing to the tune of the Time Warp and taking a big jump to the right? Please explain.
- New fatherhood
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs: There’s a lot of noise these days about men’s behaviour and the damage done by the worst corners of social media.
But now and then a voice cuts through with something genuinely useful. One of them is Australian comedian‑teacher Daniel Delby from the Hard Yarns podcast.
When he talks about fatherhood, he doesn’t reach for macho cliches or influencer bravado – he goes straight to the heart of it: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them”. There it is: the whole job description of a new dad in one line.
Your kids won’t remember the lectures, but they’ll copy the way you speak to their mum, how you handle frustration, how you show kindness to strangers, how you laugh at yourself. In the end, fatherhood is about being seen and being worth imitating.
It came back to me on Father’s Day at the beach, watching a shambling convoy of young dads doing the quiet, unglamorous work of raising small humans along the promenade. One bloke was pushing a pram with a tiny baby, the basket underneath loaded with a packet of nappies and a six‑pack of beer.
Another dad was leading two kids on scooters, who were ignoring him completely while still orbiting him like their sun.
A third was carrying a tiny pink backpack that absolutely did not belong to him, but he wore it with the resigned dignity of a man who knows the battle is lost.
Those dads weren’t giving speeches. They weren’t laying down wisdom. They weren’t trying to be influencers or role models, or any of the things social media tells men they should be.
They were just showing up – tired, rumpled, slightly under‑caffeinated – doing the small, steady things their kids will one day copy without even realising why.
And maybe that’s the real heart of Father’s Day. It’s the reminder that fatherhood is about being seen. It’s about being worth imitating. It’s about showing love in the simplest, most ordinary everyday ways.
As an old dad, I reckon the kids won’t remember the lecture, but they’ll remember the man.
- Across and down
Phil Broad, Nambour:
Squares turn into diamonds
And mazes start to grow
The actual word I’m looking for
Never seems to show
Money is the root they say
And good oil burns at night
But not a gap I seem to fill
Does scare turn into fright
Classical and rhetoric could all turn into one
God the bloody inks run out the puzzles just begun.
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. Preference will be given to letters of 100 words or less. Some of the opinions below are comments from SCN’s Facebook page.
