South-East Queensland Regional Plan (SEQRP)

The SEQRP became law on 28 July 2009. It has been in the making since 2005, coinciding with Terry McKenroth’s abrupt exit from Parliament. Following his considerable influence in its content, Mr. McKenroth went on to consult to property developers as to where the opportunities to seek development approvals were.

The SEQRP was conceived out of Labor’s chronic 20 year ignorance since its election in 1989 (interrupted briefly in 1999) of the need to continually up-date infrastructure. It was driven from an economic perspective more than a market perspective.

The theory is that it is not economically viable to provide infrastructure to outlying areas. Given that developers fund most of the infrastructure (water, sewerage, drainage, roads and parks), this theory is not easy to defend. There is the argument that the State Government provides hospitals and police stations, however just about every other piece of infrastructure is funded from developer contributions. The government gets off lightly.

So the argument runs that it is more economical to have infill development (meaning apartments/townhouses) within existing residential areas. This creates two problems:

1. The neighbours don’t generally like a change to their amenity, particularly if the locality has been conventional detached housing for a long time, and

2. It is very costly to upgrade water, sewerage and stormwater mains to accommodate increased densities, because the pipes are generally laid at depth within existing road reserves. So, in reality it is no cheaper to provide infrastructure in infill areas.

Market Considerations

The SEQRP has not evolved out of market needs, rather out of a government funding crisis. There is no evidence that the assumption of 60% of new development being infill will eventuate. People won’t necessarily be attracted to apartment living simply because the Town Plan has large areas dedicated to it, and neither will developers, if the market doesn’t respond.

Over a long period of time (30 years), the proportion of Australians living in attached dwellings has been constant at 28%. The SEQRP is assuming that this will change to 50% of new house buyers over the next 20 years. This is a very brave assumption, totally unsupported.

Demographics are constantly changing. The baby bonus has resulted in the natural population increase (births over deaths) in Queensland increasing from 25,007 in 2004 to 35,799 in 2008 (ABS 3101.0), overtaking interstate migration. This has increased the number of traditional young families, who overwhelmingly do not want to live in apartments.

High-Rise Preferences

The Gold Coast’s fascination with high-rise apartments is unrelated to residential development preferences, because they are primarily holiday apartments. It makes perfect sense to build high density near the beach, but not in the suburbs, where residential amenity is paramount.

High density brings with it parking and traffic issues, shadows, and that insidious feeling of a city in decline.