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About Kooky and Shaka →The Queensland Government approved the Lakesview project at Robina on the Gold Coast on 10 June 2026, clearing the way for 2,500 dwellings. The approval was announced in a media statement from the office of the Deputy Premier, who is also the planning minister, and was made through the State Facilitated Development pathway, under which the State assesses a housing proposal in place of the local council.
The statement names the developer as Walker Group, the company that trades as Walker Corporation. It describes Lakesview as the eighth State Facilitated Development approved in just over a year, with one more application under assessment.
Queensland Government media statement, 10 June 2026. Home counts are approvals, not homes built.
What has been approved
The project carries more than 50 hectares of open space, of which 15 hectares are lakes and wetlands, according to the announcement as reported by Inside State Government on 10 June. Pedestrian and cycle paths are to link the neighbourhood to Robina railway station, the town centre, a neighbouring school and the Greenheart parklands. A central landscaped plaza and a community clubhouse with a pool are part of the plan.
Walker Corporation's own description of the project, published when it was first selected for the pathway in September 2024, fills in some of the setting. It describes the land as an infill site already zoned for residential use, and the homes as apartments and townhouses. It puts the City of Gold Coast's Greenheart parklands next door at 257 hectares, and it valued the community infrastructure in the project at more than $150 million at that time.
The government statement of 10 June does not give a construction timetable, a breakdown of housing types or a number of affordable homes.
Related readPriority Development Areas approved 14,687 homes in 2025-26How the proposal changed since 2024
Lakesview has been through three sizes. Walker Corporation's September 2024 statement says the site was originally planned for 1,500 homes and that the State Facilitated Development proposal lifted that to 2,750. The approval announced on 10 June is for 2,500, which is 250 fewer than the 2024 proposal and 1,000 more than the original plan.
The affordable housing component has changed too. In September 2024 the developer said about 550 of the 2,750 homes, roughly 20 per cent, would be affordable housing. A Queensland Government statement of 23 September 2024, which declared Lakesview and a 45-home project at Wakerley as the first two sites on the pathway, said 12 sites under consideration would deliver about 4,945 homes, more than 25 per cent of them affordable.
The June 2026 statement takes a different line. It says requirements set by the previous government were removed to get the project moving. The developer is reported in the statement as saying that economic conditions are different from two years ago, that removing the mandate is what makes the project viable, and that the change gives the company and its financiers the confidence to proceed.
- September 2024Declared one of the first two State Facilitated Development sites, as a 2,750-home proposal with about 550 affordable homes.
- March 2026The pathway's criteria are rewritten by regulation. Council support becomes a condition of any new declaration.
- June 2026Approved for 2,500 homes. The statement gives no affordable housing number.
Both accounts can be read fairly. A share of affordable homes in a large project is a public benefit. A project that does not proceed delivers no homes of any kind. The two governments weighed those points differently, and the approved Lakesview reflects the second view.
Financing conditions have also moved in the period the developer refers to. The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate target to 4.35 per cent on 5 May 2026, according to the Western Australian Treasury Corporation's summary of the decision, and the cost of carrying a long project rises with it.
Related readApartments and townhouses lead Queensland's 2025-26 approvals growthWhere it sits among the State's housing programs
Lakesview is by far the largest project the pathway has delivered. The statement says the eight approvals together account for 4,232 homes. Lakesview's 2,500 is 59 per cent of that total, leaving 1,732 homes across the other seven.
The same statement sets out the other State programs it counts toward housing supply, which work in quite different ways.
| Program | What it does | Homes counted |
|---|---|---|
| State Facilitated Development | The State assesses a housing proposal in place of council. | 4,232 across eight approvals |
| Residential Activation Fund, round one | Pays for trunk infrastructure such as water, sewer and roads. | More than 98,000 |
| Land Activation Program | Brings government-owned land forward for housing. | More than 5,000 |
| Ministerial Infrastructure Designations | A State approval route for social and affordable housing. | 1,372 across 23 approvals |
Queensland Government media statement, 10 June 2026. Figures are the Government's own counts of homes "unlocked", not homes built.
The word "unlocked" is doing a lot of work in those numbers. For the Residential Activation Fund it means homes that a funded pipe or road makes possible. For State Facilitated Development it means homes with a planning approval. Neither is a count of homes under construction.
On social and affordable housing, the statement points to the designations route instead of the Lakesview approval. Besides the 23 designations already made, it says eight more projects are expected to add about 530 homes, and that more than 6,000 social and community homes are under contract or construction, backed by $5.6 billion.
How the pathway works
State Facilitated Development was created by the previous government's housing availability and affordability legislation and now sits in the Planning Regulation 2017. A project is declared by the planning minister, after which the State's planning department assesses the application in place of the council.
When the first two sites were declared, the government statement of 23 September 2024 set out two markers of timing. An application could be assessed in a minimum of 75 business days after the declaration, and an approved project had to start construction within two years of its approval. Lakesview's own passage, from declaration in September 2024 to approval in June 2026, took a little over 20 months, a period that included a change of government and a redesign of the proposal.
Related readQueensland counts a record 50,000 homes under constructionThe criteria were rewritten in March 2026. The Planning (State Facilitated Development) Amendment Regulation 2026 took effect on 20 March, according to a Queensland Government statement of that date and a summary published by the Queensland Law Society's journal, Proctor. A project must now be predominantly residential. It must sit in a residential zone, or outside environmental and limited development zones on land where the minister is satisfied infrastructure is available. And the local council must give its written support before the minister can declare it.
The Local Government Association of Queensland welcomed that last condition in the March statement, saying it gave councils meaningful participation and matched the Equal Partners in Government Agreement between the State and local government.
Lakesview was declared long before that change, so it arrives as something of a bridge between the two versions of the pathway: named as a pilot under the first set of rules, approved under the second.
Robina and the Gold Coast's housing task
The scale of the approval is easier to judge against the city's planning numbers. Walker Corporation's 2024 statement cites the South East Queensland Regional Plan as identifying a need for 161,700 additional homes on the Gold Coast over 25 years, or about 6,500 a year, with 60 per cent expected to come from infill sites.
On those figures Lakesview's 2,500 homes equal a little under five months of the city's annual requirement, delivered over however many years the project takes. They also sit in the infill column, on land beside a heavy rail station, which is the kind of site the regional plan leans on.
The comparison has limits. A regional plan figure is a planning benchmark, and the developer chose which benchmark to quote. It does show why a single site of this size, close to existing transport and services, drew the attention of two successive governments.
What comes next
A planning approval at this scale is the start of a long sequence. Detailed design, operational works and building approvals follow, usually stage by stage, and each stage of homes is brought to market separately. On a project with 15 hectares of lakes and wetlands, earthworks and water management are likely to be a large part of the early effort, though the statement gives no detail on sequencing.
The pathway has one application still under assessment, the statement says, and the March 2026 criteria now govern any new declaration. Future projects will arrive with their council's written support already in hand, which Lakesview, as a pilot, did not need.
For the Robina area, the approval confirms that one of the last large undeveloped sites close to the railway station and the town centre is set to become housing. How quickly depends on decisions the developer has yet to announce.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
