The idea of a “sustainable Australia” is now one of the many banners unfurled during the Federal election campaign, but for Noosa, planning for the population is positively retro.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard led a dramatic shift from former PM Kevin Rudd’s selling of a “Big Australia” and has consistently highlighted the uncoordinated growth spurt in Sydney’s western suburbs as a signal of what we need to avoid.

Noosa has had its apparent population cap in place since 1996 and its architects and supporters believe the country is ready to heed our experience in securing what we love most about our country, our cities and our regions.

The cap was formally put in place by the former Noosa Shire, though the term “population cap” appears nowhere formally, not even in the 1996 Noosa planning document that introduced it.

The legislation effectively restricted the height of buildings, the size of signs and the areas that developers could build on.

There may be no border patrols or boom-gates at our region’s entry because they are not needed.

Our population would be controlled because the encroaching hoards could not find anywhere to stay.

Former council head strategic planner Paul Summers was part of the team who “drafted the instruments” that would create the population cap.

He said the restrictions had nothing truly to do with population growth, but about number crunching once the community worked out what they wanted to protect.

“In terms of the population cap, there’s no such thing – it’s more of a development cap,” he said.

“The community was demanding good planning and you couldn’t achieve it without the community.

“But the first time the words ‘population cap’ were used was on December 11, 1996 by Mayor Noel Playford.

“It was not drafted around population numbers but around a sustainable level of development.”

The idea was first mooted in the 1980s by the Noosa Parks Association but was heavily criticised and its supporters lambasted as “looney toons” according to 1997 report from then-NPA president Michael Gloster

“The local development industry, aided and abetted by sections of the local real estate industry, lampooned us as social engineers and as loony toons greenies,” he said in the report.

“Within the leadership of NPA, we had learned an invaluable lesson – don’t mention population cap again, as it just provided a target for those opposed to it.

“Our underlying logic was straightforward.

“By banning high-rises, you banned development from going up.

“By surrounding coastal community with national parks, you banned development from spreading out.

“So you’ve effectively capped development and you’ve effectively got a population cap.”

Keeping mum on capping population appears to be an idea taken on by Gold Coast mayor Ron Clarke who in 2007 floated the idea of restricting population.

He too was slammed by development groups and criticised as “elitist and snobbish” the same attacks levelled at Noosa for decades.

That was in 2007. In 2010, Cr Clarke said he would not discuss a population cap but said it was time look at slowing the other Coast’s growth.

And if he follows the Noosa example, he may not mention a population cap for another seven years.

Long-time supporter of the development cap is former Noosa Shire mayor Bob Abbot, who now leads the council for the entire Coast.

Mr Abbot said there were some “unacceptable consequences” of the development cap, including the difficulties with unemployment and housing costs in the region, but that the plan itself was “absolutely” worthwhile.

“If I could go back, there would be things I wouldn’t do again and things I wanted to achieve, but I would not change the cap,” he said on Tuesday.

“It’s history.

“And we’ve said for a long time that the model in Noosa, of developing a planning scheme and protecting it, is an example for other areas.

“In Australia we have been focusing on putting everyone on our coasts for 50 years and that has to change. It’s time to promote industry in the regions.”

The estimated population cap, if there was one, would be about 55,000 people in Noosa.

In 1997, Noosa was expected to reach capacity in 2003 but the development restrictions have created a slowdown in growth.

Based on statistics from the last census, in mid-2009, Noosa had 51,604 people with 788 arriving here between June 2008 until June 2009.

“By banning high-rises, you banned development from going up. By surrounding coastal community with national parks, you banned development from spreading out.”