Brisbane is not a bad city, with decent public transport and the inner/middle suburbs dominated by the magnificent 'Queenslander' house. The suburbs of the past 30 years are depressing outposts of poor, energy-wasting houses, car dependency, insufficient local employment. Government planning policies are to blame. Legislate for water and energy-efficient housing design, make sure there are enough business zones to provide local employment, ensure that transport works before opening up new areas. These are government responsibilities, they cannot be left to the private sector. It's not that hard, it just requires vision and determination. Perth is going the same way with coastal strip development many kms north & south but maybe the transport works better for the outlying areas.

“New building in South-East Queensland should suit the climate and decrease rather than increase demands on scarce water and increasingly expensive electricity production.”

Peter, how can new buildings decrease the demand on these resources? Any new building will increase demand. Yes they should be much more efficient, but even if efficiency was greatly improved for new buildings, the overall demand would still rapidly increase. Even if we were to implement ways of greatly improving efficiency in existing buildings, the rapid rate of expansion would cancel it out and overwhelm it.

Besides, with an outlook of continued unending human expansion, the only thing that improvements in efficiency will do is allow more people to move into the area before the critical mass is reached. This will mean a greater problem, or catastrophe, when the crunch comes.

Crikey, the critical mass in terms of demand on water supplies must be very close to being reached now.

The answer is not improved efficiencies, or at least not in isolation. We have to deal with the issue of continuous rapid growth head-on.

Kevin, I agree with the first half of your post, but I don’t like the idea of decentralisation while the continuous growth paradigm is still firmly entrenched. It would just lead to the more rapid despoliation of other areas. There are still significant parts of the Queensland coast that are not too ravaged, but could easily be.

It is unfortunate that your objective is decentralisation rather than implementing limits to growth. Unending expansion that is actually facilitated by federal, state and local governments, is the real madness here.

There are no two ways about it; governments fail in their primary duty of care to their communities when they allow open-ended expansion, pandering to the business lobby (from where their political donations and all sorts of other favours come) and clearly going against the predominant opinion of their constituency.

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Shonga, Townsville has continued to worsen as it grows, within the reign of the current mayor – some 15 years now. I agree with you, it is a negative momentum, with the diseconomies of scale clearly prevailing.

Cairns has been even worse in that timeframe, with very significant negative factors in the height of its expansion phase in the 90s.

These councils are a total disgrace in their outright promotion of this rapid and unending growth. But I guess it would be even worse if policies of decentralisation in SEQ were implemented.

Thermoman, you have the classic NIMBY approach.

Happy to live in a society created by your ancestors and the civic-minded folk who developed the community you now live in, but the first to say "Stop, no more" when you feel that your comfort zone is being infringed upon.

The "no more immigration" banner is simply a smokescreen for your selfishness.

The transparency of your position is only underlined by the ridiculous statements you make along the way.

>>...a Federal Government dominated by the vested interests of the property developers... This is so much easier than investing in risky enterprises like little Finland (population 5 million) has done with its Nokia mobile phones<<

Anyone who does even the most rudimentary research knows that Nokia made its own way in the world, and received no assistance from the Finnish government in carving out its market niche. Would you support a government who somehow made it difficult to build new houses, while investing taxpayer dollars in "risky enterprises"? Because that is the bottom line stupidity of what you are saying.

>>It’s far easier to just whack up more high rises and watch the real estate prices spiral out of all reality<<

Economics 101 says that if you increase supply of a good or service, the price of that good or service will decrease. You are saying the exact opposite. Now, I have little time generally for economists, but on this simple theory, I have to agree with them.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Every state can identify with the seemingly unchecked growth of the 'burbs.
Mile after mile of bush being bulldozed and a sea of roofs taking the place that once was our heritage.
Migrants must be pouring in to account for all this housing boom, the only things not booming are the things that once kept pace, the water ,transport, electricity and communications.Medical services got left behind years ago.
The state government is all green and gushy when it comes to saving power but when it comes to public housing, there is not a solar system in sight, it is all gas guzzling gadgets that are installed.
The developers are having a grand time.and there appears to be no end to the bonanza.

Pericles you write; “Happy to live in a society created by your ancestors and the civic-minded folk who developed the community you now live in, but the first to say 'Stop, no more' when you feel that your comfort zone is being infringed upon.”

Everyone has a right to protect their quality of life and to protest long and loud if they perceive it being reduced. We are all grateful to live in a reasonably healthy community, that has been built up from hard work by our ‘ancestors’. And we would all be very grateful if it stayed healthy.

This issue is much bigger than just comfort zones, it is about the very coherence of our society.

“The ‘no more immigration’ banner is simply a smokescreen for your selfishness.”

It seems to me that the accusations of selfishness, nimbyism and so on are a smokescreen. It is easier for some to just label others as misfits rather than deal with the issues in a polite, impartial and half-professional debating manner.

“Economics 101 says that if you increase supply of a good or service, the price of that good or service will decrease”.

Increasing the supply of a good or service will not decrease the price if the demand increases at the same or a greater rate. Of course with rapid population growth the demand for all sorts of stuff is rapidly increasing, necessitating an ever-increasing supply of just about everything, just in order to stay at the same level in terms of quality of life.