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: Illegal camping blitz continues
Elizabeth Watson, Noosa: To council: this is in defence of all the homeless persons on the Sunshine Coast who have nowhere else to go. It upsets and angers me how much time, cost and effort is used to send out councillors to go fine people who have nowhere else to go.
Why isn’t council focusing on buying and developing more affordable housing and also buying and redeveloping all the empty buildings just sitting about empty, that are not in use, so that these homeless people have use of these shelters? It gives them places to stay or camp?
Why is there so much talk of buildings for the homeless, yet no action has been taken. Yet it’s easier to shove fines on these homeless people, who don’t have the resources or money anyhow, and with simply no other choices of where they can live. It’s a greedy unreasonable grab for revenue.
If people can prove they were living here originally, and are locals to the Sunshine Coast, then why not really help them out? If people are camping here to surf and have a holiday on the Coast, then fine, they cop a fine for illegal camping. If they are here on ‘holidays’, they can go and pay to stay in the caravan parks.
Homeless people can’t afford the huge rates that caravan parks charge. They are all a total rip off for holiday makers. Why can’t they do special discounted charges for genuine homeless persons to camp and live safely?
It sickens me that these fines for ‘illegal campers’, are caused and pushed more by complaints from selfish, self-indulged owners who live safe in their huge monstrosity of over-sized homes, but can have the gall to complain! It’s so miserably selfish of them.
Their homes would house at least six to eight persons, while some larger monstrosities would easily house eight to 10 persons, given the size of homes, garages, carports and outdoor areas built with plenty of room available in them.
To me they (owners) have a built-in need, a growing greed by many, to have and own more. Yet they can sneer and look down on others who have less or nothing, yet don’t think or realise that maybe these very same homeless people used to own their own homes too and businesses as well, but now sadly don’t. The many reasons for their downfall are not necessarily due to any fault of their own.
Homelessness numbers are growing fast daily on the Sunshine Coast due to the ridiculous cost of rentals and housing in Queensland. Councils and governments need to work together properly to fix this huge issue. It’s basically been caused by our government allowing rentals, homes and food costs to escalate like they have.
I’m fed up with reading what is being said or what might happen. We read and hear many broken promises. We see too much finger pointing and blaming of others. Stupid excuses. No real ownership of blame.
Albanese wins top marks in this exact problem. Ignorance is bliss. He does not own up to him being one of the main reasons that Australia is in the position it is in. He, along with his merry band of useless people.
I ask Sunshine Coast Council and the Queensland Government… How about really doing something about it all?
- Read the story: Work underway on facility replacing landmark loo
Justin Joubert: New loo with a better view.
Ray Page: So not only are ratepayers up for $20m for a set of steps, we are now funding a new loo. How much will that cost?
Tim Neale: Some of the restaurants there will get a loo but not a view.
Jo Priestley: Beautiful views of the loos while sitting at the restaurants and cafes.
Sydney Strewig: I wish it was a beachfront cafe/bar instead.
- Read the story: Restaurant recognised among world’s best for wine
Yvette Elliot: What a superb meal we had here. Great to see they’re getting the recognition they deserve. The sommelier and wine paired with our meal choice was five star.
Scott Mcfadzen: Awesome wine list and complemented well with its food.
Gail Lockyer: Many excellent restaurants however not all apply for the awards.
- Read the story: New maps detail metro vehicle route and stations
Andrew Moran, Battery Hill: The release of new maps and early works for The Wave Stage 3 is welcome, but the announcement raises more questions than it answers. The Sunshine Coast needs real transport solutions, not brochures.
Stage 2 and Stage 3 remain unfunded. Final route details won’t be known until 2027. There is no updated cost, no delivery plan, and no clarity on how the metro, heavy rail and interchange will be delivered together. The region faces construction workforce shortages, competing priorities and escalating costs. None of these challenges are addressed.
The community deserves transparent information. Some answers. What it will cost? What will be delivered when? Where’s the construction capacity coming from with Olympic projects being given top priority? An outline and explanation of the job, education and community claimed the development will deliver?
Compared with other regions’ transport projects, The Wave remains a brochure, not a plan. Elsewhere, funding, staging, integration and community benefits are clearly documented. Here, we have maps, early works and big promises – but no full cost, no funding for key stages, and no evidence of how this will serve the region’s needs.
The Sunshine Coast needs a credible, funded, staged plan that reflects real constraints – not another glossy announcement.
Chris Robin: Why is he (Minister for Transport and Main Roads Brent Mickelberg) wearing a high vis vest, does he have a heavy pen?
- Read the story: ‘Incredibly challenging’: popular restaurant closes
Hannah’s Blue Butterflies Road Safety Awareness Inc.: A sign of the times, sadly.
- Read the story: Surf club access to open for holidays
Anthony Robinson, Alexandra Headland: It seems that there lacks a coordinated approach and supervision for the Alexandra Buff coastal walkway. Council acknowledges there needs to be cost cutting but little evidence of this is exercised in this project with extended hire of safety fencing /cones and unfinished concrete path work. The “finished” pathway in front of the Mooloolaba Surf Club is a joke! When will the sand been reinstated and proper beach access available?
- Read the story: Businesses face winter ‘survival’ amid seawall project
Philip Hankin: The businesses around Moffat headland are thriving from what I see.
- Read the story: Long-running surf retailer enters administration
Ann Sutherland: How about the poor people who have bought family and friends Beach Beat gift cards for birthdays and Christmas? How do they redeem them from closed down stores? The owner needs to honour all these outstanding gift cards. This should’ve been part of the article too. It’s not all good news.
- Read the story: Odour concerns prompt intervention at hinterland facility
Laurie Burfein, Landsborough: I totally agree with Ross from Landsborough regarding the odour and especially the daily heavy truck traffic from Norganics. We have lived in our home for 37 years, on Gympie Street south and unfortunately living at the back of them, we have to put up with the noise of the trucks entering and leaving the factory daily, sometimes late at night. They then roar past our house on Gympie Street south and sometimes we feel the vibration through our home. They do need to relocate as Ross said, and regarding the land, leave it as a buffer as we are slowly losing what the hinterland used to be.
- True Blue Aussie misanthropists?
Margaret Wilkie, Peregian Beach: Just asking if those ‘celebrities’ influencers, pollies, businesses, columnists and others who spew out hateful, malicious, malevolent, deceptive words to undermine their country and community say more about themselves than the people/communities they attack?
- History of hope
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs: Most mornings, the news does its best to convince us the world is wobbling like a card table at the weekend markets. It’s easy to feel as if civilisation is one bad headline away from coming unstuck.
But when we step back and look at the long sweep of history, a different picture emerges.
If we examine the last five centuries of the world’s ‘Great Powers’ – the big egos with big armies – and ask how often they were actually at war with each other, the early centuries look like a soap opera with cannons. The 1600s and 1700s were essentially one long neighbourhood dispute where everyone brought artillery instead of a cake.
Then the 20th Century arrives and delivers the two biggest, bloodiest spikes of all. The First World War and Second World War stand out like red cliffs – brutal reminders of how bad things can get when humanity forgets its better angels.
But then something extraordinary happens. After 1945, large‑scale armed conflict between major powers dropped. And keeps dropping. Not to zero – humans are still humans – but to a level that would have sounded like pure fantasy to anyone living in 1750. For the first time in half a millennium, the great powers mostly stopped blowing each other up.
That is the quiet miracle hidden in the data. Not that the world is perfect – far from it – but that the long arc of history has bent, slowly and stubbornly, toward restraint. Toward cooperation. Toward the idea that maybe we can sort things out without flattening each other’s cities.
It’s easy to forget this when the headlines are loud and the world feels unsettled. But step back – way back – and you see a different story. A story of learning. Of progress. Of a species that, despite its tantrums, is slowly growing up.
Sometimes the most hopeful truths aren’t shouted from podiums, but revealed quietly when we examine the historical facts. They remind us that peace – like wisdom – often arrives slowly, awkwardly and after a few false starts. But it arrives. We don’t need to be fooled into replacing it with a continuing verbal war in our society or within some families’ personal relationships.
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 above are comments from SCN’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
