Noosa Shire has been something of a social experiment for the past four decades, premised on the assumption that high living amenity derives from two conceptual ideas: maintaining a “village feel” through the avoidance of big city symbols such as residential congestion, high-rise buildings, traffic lights, and billboards, while placing great emphasis on the natural environment. 

The question thus arises as to whether that bold, progressive experiment – largely hatched by NPA stalwarts Noel Playford and Michael Gloster during Playford’s three mayoral terms in the 80s and 90s – has succeeded. Are Noosa residents experiencing higher than average wellbeing? 

In 2007 I published a book which considered data from around the globe on what was then a relatively new field of research: happiness studies. At the time, a national wellbeing index was being collated out of Deakin University. Let’s start there, before moving on to some other analyses.

THE AUSTRALIAN UNITY WELLBEING INDEX

Since 2000, Australian Unity in collaboration with Deakin University has been measuring subjective wellbeing through national surveys conducted by The Australian Centre on Quality of Life.  

Back in 2007, when I was researching the topic, the Unity Wellbeing Index compared federal electorates across Australia using data from 13 surveys undertaken over five years. At the time, the happiest federal electorate was Wide Bay, which encompassed Gympie, Maryborough, Hervey Bay, and Noosa. Despite having one of the lowest average household incomes (remember, the bulk of the electorate was north of Noosa), Wide Bay ranked as the highest Australian electorate for wellbeing. At the time, it turned out that the highest-ranking electorates were characterised by having less income inequality, low population densities, more elderly people and more married folk. According to the researchers, the most significant factor which consistently separated the highest from the lowest electoral divisions was people’s sense of connection to their community. 

By the 2021 Unity Wellbeing Index, Wide Bay was still the highest scoring electorate in Queensland, but not the nation. That top spot was now held by Mayo in South Australia, which includes the Adelaide Hills and the coastal town of Victor Harbour. Notably, Victor Harbour is also a hotbed of older residents. As the report noted, “The research shows that people in regional electorates have higher wellbeing than those in cities.” So, let’s look at a regular survey of regional Australia.

REGIONAL WELLBEING INDEX

The University of Canberra carries out annual surveys of regional areas. In 2016, while I was mayor, Noosa Council encouraged local residents to participate in the ninth Regional Wellbeing Survey. Across the nation, 12,891 people took part, with 320 of those from Noosa Shire. On the Personal Wellbeing Index, a scale of 0-100, Noosa residents came in at 76.9, which compared favourably with all of rural and regional Queensland on 71.8 and rural and regional Australia more generally on 72.3. This survey also measured people’s connection to their community, and on this front Noosa again performed above average. 

The 2023 Regional Wellbeing Survey is the most recent data available. It seems that Noosa Council no longer pays a subscription fee to receive specific localised data, thus Noosa is lumped in with other LGAs. Just 128 respondents across the Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast and Noosa Shires participated, scoring 73.7 compared to the national average score of 70.9. But wait, there’s another recent attempt at measuring regional electorates for wellbeing.

SGS CITIES & REGIONS WELLBEING INDEX 

In 2024, SGS Economics published a Cities & Regions Wellbeing Index for the second time. This was primarily a desktop analysis, using data from a range of sources, not from their own surveys of residents, so I’m highly sceptical of the results. This approach took Gross Regional Product (GRP) as its starting point and married it with six wellbeing indicators that appear to be ranked by the subjective opinions of the SGS team. A wellbeing analysis run by economists: what could go wrong? Their 2024 report found that the highest scoring LGAs for wellbeing in Queensland were Brisbane City, Noosa, Douglas, and Redland. Noosa had a score of 5.81 and a ranking of 71, compared with the Sunshine Coast LGA on 5.33 and a ranking of 126. Brisbane, however, scored 6.74 and was ranked 10th. But, as I say, this was done by a bunch of economists and arguably reflects a bias towards GRP, which research across the globe tells us is a poor explainer of subjective wellbeing. Let’s try another, survey-based approach.

PLACE SCORE LIVEABILITY CENSUS

Place Score is a funded social research company that collates and provides information to local governments and the private sector. The Place Score Liveability Census is described by the company as “the country’s largest social research project”. Noosa Council participated in the November-December 2021 survey (published in 2022). I was officially informed that council planned to sign up again in 2026. (Note that council have contracted Place Score to carry out a Council Satisfaction Survey this year, which is a completely separate body of work focussed specifically on council’s performance.)  

At a national level, the 2021 Liveability Census results were probably skewed by Covid. Nevertheless, based on responses from a truly excellent sample size of 1,655 Noosa residents, Noosa Shire achieved a liveability score of 70 out of 100. This compares with a national benchmark average of 68. Broken down into neighbourhoods, Kin Kin, Noosa North Shore, and Cooran were the only locales that performed below the national average, with the rest of the shire ranking above 68. Noosa also scored favourably against the rest of the Sunshine Coast on 68, and Brisbane on 69.

But here’s the interesting bit. Respondents were asked to nominate the aspects of their locale that they most valued. In Noosa, the top values in order of importance were: elements of natural environment (77%); protection of natural environment (66%); general condition of public open space (58%); and sense of neighbourhood safety (55%). Interestingly, close to 70% of Noosa respondents were female. 

Noosa Council didn’t subscribe to the 2023 Place Score Liveability Census, which had over 25,000 respondents nationally. Looking at these results, they replicate what wellbeing surveys across the planet have been telling us. Over 64s are generally happier and more satisfied with where they live. With a cost-of-living crisis, we shouldn’t be surprised that 25–44-year-olds rate liveability lowest across the board.

CONCLUSIONS

So what are the take-home messages here? First, that by all accounts, Noosa sits at least average if not above average on the various wellbeing indices. However, we already know that older people score higher on wellbeing than do younger citizens, and we have no lack of that cohort in Noosa.

Noosans appear to rank the natural environment as an important factor in their wellbeing. Plainly the sort of people that are attracted to live in Noosa are coming here in large part because we have looked after the place, and that is primarily thanks to over six decades of effort by Noosa Parks Association. 

Millions of people who don’t live here want to visit Noosa and experience the great planning experiment for themselves. If nothing else, that reinforces Mayor Playford’s 1996 statement that, ‘The environment must come first because the Shire’s economy hinges on it.” What neither Noel nor anyone else in the late 80s realised was that tourism would become a behemoth that may now be actively undermining resident wellbeing. 

To my mind, the tourism sector is turning Noosa into a money-hungry theme park with no limits on tourism growth. That awful boat that straps tourists to its deck and thrills them by racing at breakneck speed across Laguna Bay is a sort of symbol of tourism’s excesses, and surely the antithesis of Mayor Playford’s thinking. While the human passengers on the Oceanrider may be getting a buzz, the ocean’s creatures such as turtles are arguably threatened with mutilation. If Noosa promotes itself as an environmentally aware exemplar, why does Tourism Noosa support it being turned into an amusement park ride?

Overtourism has the potential to seriously impact on the natural environment and also undermine living amenity for locals. Apart from crowding and traffic congestion, the proliferation of short-term accommodation such as Airbnb has been shown to hollow-out communities, robbing residents not only of sleep, but also a sense of connection to their neighbourhood. Our sense of safety is largely linked to our familiarity with neighbours.

Apart from tourism, escalating land values in Noosa also threaten wellbeing, generating greater income inequality. More trophy homes and out-of-town property owners do not augur well for Noosa’s future rankings in the wellbeing stakes.

But at least we live in a place where the natural environment is generally respected and 43% of the shire is protected from human development. A meta-analysis of ten years of studies published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health noted, “Results from experimental studies provide evidence of protective effects of exposure to natural environments on mental health outcomes and cognitive function.” The UK Mental Health Foundation agrees, noting, “People who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile.” For Noosa residents, the historical protection of our natural environment has been and will remain its greatest adjunct to resident wellbeing.

The Unity Wellbeing Index, with which I began with in this article, is still going. In November 2024, it found that satisfaction with life across Australia hit a record low based on many years of data. The overall dissatisfaction appeared to reflect “increasing inequality in wealth and social mobility, a growing sense of division, and a declining sense of connection.” 

Meanwhile, on the just-released 2025 World Happiness Report rankings, Australia has slipped from 10th to 11th place. We are now beaten by Mexico, Costa Rica and Israel. The happiest places on the planet remain, as always, the Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden), where there are high taxes supporting top-notch social support systems, and where there is less income inequality than in many other Western nations. The top-ranking countries also experienced greater social connectedness, plus confidence in their governments and thus less suspicion of government corruption.

Given the global ructions being generated by America’s failed experiment in neoconservative selfishness, where the wealthiest individuals have risen to populate the White House and call the shots, I’d rather be riding out the global ructions in Noosa than most other places I can think of. Now I think I’ll go for a walk in the forest across the road.