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 and Instagram pages.
- Read the story: Tax relief for workers and pain for investors in budget
Brett Wills: These reforms are going to do nothing more than send the building industry broke. They will add to the homeless and unemployed figures and push this country into recession.
I bought my first home at 21. I never lived in it. I went overseas to work. I lived in my second home for six months while I renovated it. All this time I was living in shared houses with friends.
My third house I lived in. I was married and had kids. Paying 16.99 per cent interest rates. Two professionals and barely getting by. All of these houses were bought in places where no one wanted to live. Eventually the towns all expanded and they became popular suburbs.
If the government was serious about this, it would drop all the taxes, excises, bureaucracy and surcharges they put on building a new home. That alone would drop the cost of owning a home by 20 per cent.
At some point this ludicrous debt has to be paid off. And right now, it’s on our kids and grandchildren’s shoulders. That more than anything is going to stop them owning their own home. This is what Labor does every time they gain power. And it takes us decades to recover.
Gail Podberscek: The reason our young families can’t afford homes is due to greed. Poorly designed broadscale houses with no back yards or places to play. Huge mortgages. Profit for real estate agents, banks and developers. An LNP Royal Commission into banks that went nowhere, although they were seen to encourage commitments people couldn’t afford. A whole industry of ‘investment’ where not only rental properties gathered equity, the renters were paying off mortgages that maybe even the investor couldn’t afford! And Labor is blamed for migration? It’s hard to believe Australia has become like this…
Rodney Hansen, Bongaree: Another interest rate rise and another blow to young Australians. Once again, it is the first‑home buyers and young families who are being used as the nation’s shock absorbers while inflation is blamed on ‘excess demand’ rather than the obvious driver Unchecked government spending.
What makes this situation intolerable is that the people making these decisions politicians, senior bureaucrats and Reserve Bank officials – are almost entirely insulated from the pain they impose. Most are older, mortgage‑free and financially secure. They do not lie awake at night wondering how to cover another $1200 a month in repayments. Yet they continue to rely on rate hikes as their blunt instrument of choice, knowing full well who will pay the price.
If fairness still matters in this country, and it should then we need structural reform – not more hollow lectures about “belt‑tightening”. A permanent, targeted tax deduction for first‑home mortgage interest is one such reform. Investors already enjoy this benefit on their rental properties. Why should young Australians buying their first home be denied the same support?
A sensible model is easy to design: apply the deduction only to first‑home owner‑occupiers, cap it to the first $500,000 to $700,000 of the loan, limit it to the first 7 to 10 years when households are under the most pressure, phase it out at higher incomes, and exclude redraws or equity loans. This is not a handout, it is a fairness correction.
Critics will claim it risks lifting house prices or reducing revenue. But a tightly targeted deduction is far less distortionary than the cash grants governments hand out every election cycle. And if Canberra is comfortable subsidising investors through negative gearing, it is indefensible to deny similar relief to young Australians simply trying to secure a home.
A permanent first home mortgage interest deduction won’t solve every problem, but it will finally put fairness back into a system that has forgotten who it is supposed to serve.
- Read the story: Region’s mega projects dealt major blow
Phil Broad, Nambour: This federal budget, Labor has pulled $11 billion from regional infrastructure and ignored the Sunshine Coast which, in essence, will be co-hosting the Olympic Games in 2032, only six years away.
To add salt to the wound, Labor is providing $3.8 billion to prop up the failing suburban rail link in Melbourne, where the Victorian Government embarrassed Australia by pulling out of the Commonwealth Games and sent millions of dollars to Glasgow for nil return to Victorian tax payers. The integrity of this federal Labor government must be questioned, especially when breaking promises made to the Australian public repeatedly.
Two questions must now be asked daily: will you bring in a death/inheritance tax? Will you charge a capital gains tax on the family home when sold ?
- Read the story: Multimillion-dollar boost for iconic tourist attraction
Margaret Mourik, Peregian Beach: Bring back the ice-cream sundaes made at the Big Pineapple back in the 1970s.
They were a famous drawcard: serve them in a hollowed pineapple with ice-cream and fruit, eat with a real metal spoon, no plastic waste, eat in and relax. The leftover empty pineapple can be composted, the spoon can be washed up = zero waste. Take time to enjoy the surroundings, climb to the top and look at the view. We seem to have lost the ability to relax and enjoy simple pleasures.
- Read the story: Landmark CBD site eyed for four-tower overhaul
Chris Leon, Shelly Beach: So it looks like we are going to have 179 apartments at the top of town and 170 at the bottom of Bulcock Street with other high rise hotels proposed for the middle of town.
Just wondering how the surrounding roads will be able to handle the extra traffic? The roundabout at the top of town is tight and only handles the current flows.
I remember a few years back there was a suggestion that the CBD should be moved to the airport site. Caloundra main street is void of big name retailers with many small businesses operating.
I’m not against development as the uniqueness of the coast has in my eyes already diminished. What I don’t like is building something and then trying to solve the problems it has caused afterwards.
- Read the story: MP pushes funding for ‘must-have’ projects
Andrew Moran, Battery Hill: The Sunshine Coast has outgrown the old conversations. They’re not delivering what the Coast needs. It’s time for new ones.
Our population has surged, our roads are overloaded and traffic volumes on key arterials have doubled. Every day we sit in mobile car parks while even more growth is approved – new suburbs, higher densities, bigger loads – without the infrastructure to support it.
We’re told solutions are coming “by 2032”, subject to funding, subject to capacity, subject to everything lining up. Meanwhile, thousands of residents travel off‑Coast for work because the local economy still can’t support the population it already has.
Local jobs are critical infrastructure, too often ignored. Local jobs reduce traffic, strengthen families, and build the Sunshine Coast’s future. If there’s a real plan to create more local jobs and more better jobs, that plan needs to be presented to the community so we can see and support what’s proposed and understand the commitments being made and what’s being delivered. We need to make it work. Because the usual “more of the same” isn’t working.
Matthew J Steel: State and federal governments ignore any infrastructure north of the Maroochydore River it seems. The Sunshine Motorway is a disgrace.
Geoff Cousens: We don’t need a trainline costing billions. Run electric shuttles from existing line, improve that line with faster trains.
Amy East: Everyone’s been saying this for years. Why has it taken so long for MPs to realise this? It’s funny how they haven’t increased the train schedules.
Kerrie Thorne: But don’t worry, that $5m investment into private enterprise (aka Big Pineapple revamp) is probably more important than local infrastructure!
Conrad Hoskin: What infrastructure? Public transport is barely enough now, it’s going to be cooked when the Olympics start!
Anne Foyster: So why continue to build when you don’t improve infrastructure first? Same old problem, build first and try and fix everything else later, never changing circle.
Mamee Jones: Australia is targeting 185,000 permanent migration places with a heavy focus on skilled workers to alleviate housing construction shortages. And this is why. Migrants building your new homes need infrastructure too.
David Ireland: The Wave should just go from the Nambour side, north of the Maroochy River, across to a bus exchange in the airport precinct. The proposed route requires a tunnel under Little Mountain and doesn’t even go into the Caloundra CBD. It doesn’t have enough stations anyway.
Ingrid Bokvist: A train from Maroochydore to Brisbane is needed. Shits me to tears that I can’t get a train to Brisbane airport. A day travelling, hours lost. Not to mention the traffic off the Bruce Highway for people working in Brisbane. Sadly, I won’t live to see it if it happens.
Mark Baster: The Sunshine Coast is way behind with roads and rail. We are the fastest growing region in Queensland. And of course, now no matter who’s in government nobody wants to build anything due to cost. As it never ever stays under budget, it always blows out!
- Read the story: Service station beside motorway proposed
Graham Lockey, Coolum Beach: Here we go again! Having been refused permission by both council and the planning appeal system this applicant tries again to build an unnecessary service station on flood land. More disturbing is that the proposal suggests that yet another set of traffic lights should be imposed on motorists to suit a commercial venture. Traffic lights near a roundabout are always a disaster causing congestion and waste of time for everyone. Bli Bli already has a well-established and competitive service station so a second outlet is totally unnecessary, especially on flood land. Hold the line Council and refuse this application.
Paul James, Maroochy River Farmers and Landowners Association: We have been asking for this liquid fuel infrastructure for over 20 years. The closest station that can take heavy articulated equipment is Kunda Park or Forest Glen. The strategic liquid fuel storage will boost local reserves up to 300,000 litres. Given the supply chain disruptions in the past two months, this is a great outcome for future years and disruptions.
Greenfield sites allow hydrogen provision and fast chargers. It’s very difficult to retro fit these into old service stations. Council should express approve this infrastructure. It was needed a long time ago.
Brad Scouller: It’s a town planning faux pas that the area is zoned rural in the first place.
- Read the story: Police target unruly behaviour across bus network
Doug Nicholson: When will law-abiding Queenslanders be allowed to carry pepper spray for self-defence like in WA and NT?
Ness Charlton: Why the hell would you want people carrying machetes on a train? They have confiscated those from commuters. Sometimes we need a few laws. We are hardly a Nanny State for taking these off people who have no reason to be carrying them. If we talk about removing firearms from people after Bondi, then yes – nanny state because the people who committed that are criminals and terrorists. Different scenarios entirely.
- Read the story: Fast-food chain confirmed, retail giant rumoured for plaza
Rod and Laurel Steffens: Wonderful news for the plaza. Could the desperate folk of Nambour please have a few shops too?
- Love and other human errors
Gary Reynolds, Peregian Springs: In this hard world, it’s getting harder to love. Yet love remains the one thing we still long for, even after we’ve stopped pretending it’s simple.
In classic literary romance, love rises like a tide – as when Jane Austen wrote: “You have bewitched me, body and soul”. But real life is far less tidy and far more demanding.
Enduring love has never been a polished arrangement between perfect people. It is a lifelong duet between flawed souls who keep choosing each other, even on the days when choosing is hard and life is harder.
Think about how we fall in love. After thousands of years, you’d imagine we’d have perfected the process. Instead, we still tumble in like toddlers chasing bubbles – arms outstretched, and hearts wide open, no thought of a hard landing.
Leonard Cohen understood this when he sang: “I know there is no cure for love”.
Humans – for all our charms – are emotional typos. We trip over our own feelings. We misread each other’s intentions. We fall in love with someone’s laugh, then spend years trying to change their habits. We promise patience, then lose it in the Woolies car park.
But love – real love – is the gentle daily decision to forgive. It is the courage to stay soft in a world that rewards armour.
Good friends of mine in their eighties say: “It is knowing, truly knowing, we are always there for each other, reliably in each other’s corner, no matter what”.
Finding our forever isn’t about perfection. It’s about finding someone whose errors harmonise with ours, someone who still reaches for our hand in the dark without searching.
In the end, love is the most human thing we do. And no matter how dark the world becomes, we must persist – by reaching out to each other.
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.
