14/09/2026
A lot of people will welcome Sunshine Coast Council's new flood-resilient housing guidance, and to be fair, helping residents better prepare for flooding is a worthwhile goal.
But it's hard not to wonder whether spending more than $100,000 on a report to tell people living on floodplains to raise their homes is really the best use of public money. After all, traditional Queenslanders were being built high off the ground more than a century ago for exactly this reason.
Many long-time locals already understand a simple reality: water goes where water has always gone. Building higher, using flood-resilient materials and designing for inundation are well-established principles that have been part of Queensland building knowledge for generations.
Rather than spending six figures telling residents how to adapt to floodplains, perhaps the bigger conversation should be about why more development continues to be proposed in flood-prone areas in the first place.
This isn't a criticism of the staff or experts involved. They are working within the system they have. But as ratepayers facing rising costs, it's reasonable to ask whether common sense, local knowledge and better planning decisions could sometimes achieve more than another expensive report.
What do you think? Is this money well spent, or are we paying to rediscover lessons our grandparents already knew?
You can read the article here:
Sunshine Coast Council officers are recommending a new strategy for how homes are built and renovated in areas affected by flooding.
