You are talking about Queenslands coastal developments ,well, West Australia is catching up too.
The Scarbourough area is going high rise as well as Rockingham and Mandurah with canal homes evreywhere in Mandurah the population explosion has taken over with mainly retirees in Mandurah all coastal areas that were definitely not going high rise. Just above high water mark.

One suburban development called "Secret Harbour", south of Rockingham has no Secret harbour as was planned 20 years ago has flattened the once protected high sand dunes to nothing and blocks start a few hundered metres from the Indian Ocean at huge prices and are only 2-300 Square metres ,Plus a duel highway and train track is now close by ,and so it goes ,rolling south past Mandurah and onwards doing just the same.
Will it ever stop? Prices are from $300,000 to millions now in the past 4 years .
Monstrosties of houses butting in to get an ocean view many buyers must be shocked as they are and have been bulit out by higher rise homes filling every Sq M of the blocks.What happened to environmental proection ? DOLLARS!

Inappropriate high rise is not confined to Queensland's coast. Victoria is doing its utmost but behind an insidious green veil. Cape Bridgewater, a landscape of international significance, overlooking a stunning beach, and containing some of the state's highest clifftops, could be home to 27 wind turbines, each towering over 100 metres. Cape Nelson and Cape Sir William Grant will suffer the same (albeit the Portland aliminium smelter has already dominates Sir William Grant.)

To the east 52 turbines are planned at Bald Hills, adjoining the Cape Liptrap Coastal Park, the closest wilderness to Melbourne and on a landscape recently classified as of state significance. Planning authorities also ignored the impacts on 17 bird species listed under Victorian laws and the objections of 1,500 individuals and other organisations, including the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Yes, most turbines will be built on land that has long been cleared however does this give a license to continue desecration? Curiously, the long awaited Victorian Coastal Spaces project makes no mention of these towering structures whilst Victoria's coast is to be host to more structures over 100 metres in height than the entire city of Melbourne.

How will people argue for landscape protection from ridgeline homes or township sprawl when the 100 metre precedent has been set by poor planning in Spring Street?

Maybe in more enlightened times[one hopes] this black history will be known as "The Age of the Developers" and children will learn that where the decaying Mcmansion slums now obliterate the water front, were once open beaches where anyone could wade,swim,fish or picnic.
But people called Town Counsellors and Developers conspired to take control of the land and sold it for thirty pieces of silver or what ever was the going price for land that once belonged to everybody.
Sad but true.

Whistling in the wind, I'm afraid.

We seem to have developed a "we want it all" mentality recently, and in doing so have lost sight of the fact that every act has consequences.

We elect a government that sees everything in terms of its worth to private enterprise - our telephones, our power systems, our health, our education - and then moan piteously when Macquarie Bank buys up all the infrastructure in sight and offers it back to us at three times the price.

Similarly with land. Our entire superannuation industry rests upon the rock of property values, and the perpetuation of this in turn rests on converting desirable land into desirable residences. Too late to moan about it now, I'm afraid, the bull is loose in the paddock and there isn't a government on earth with the balls to reverse the process. Even if the public wanted them to, which, frankly, I doubt.

Rest assured, when we have run out of minerals to flog to our northerly neighbour to feed their economic miracle, we will start selling them ever larger chunks of our coastline too. We will become a holiday and retirement destination for China, Japan, Korea and the rest, living off tips. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that, there are a number of European countries who performed the same function for the Brits and Germans for a while back in the sixties and seventies, they just swallowed their pride and got on with it.

We cannot have it both ways. We either close our borders and subside into an economic wasteland, or we continue to be part of the world economy, and survive and even possibly thrive.

Once you have sold something, it is hard to get it back. That is as true whether we are talking about eBay or your soul.

What a myoptic view Peter Spearritt has.
He criticises NSW from the top of Q1 and yet the Gold Coast Council could be sacked.
Why does he not criticise the Gold Coast and its Council from the top of Mount Warning?
Ahhhh, a one-eyed Queenslander who does not see the mistakes of Queensland.
Maybe NSW should take all its sand back that it is funnelling north to replenish the Gold Coast beaches

I'm a bit confused. I thought, when he was commenting on Gold Coast developments and the lack of green space, he was criticising QLD? And when he was criticising Caloundra and other Sunny Coast councils, he was criticising QLD? And when he was criticising the SEQ development plan, he was criticising QLD? His sympathy for the Queenslanders who 'escape' to Byron Bay (itself a traffic disaster) was, surely, not criticism of NSW?

Maybe I've lost the plot.