Five ways to keep the young on the Sunshine Coast

5 – Help 'start-up' businesses from Sunshine Coast Innovation Centre to develop new businesses.

The Sunshine Coast has 35,000 small to medium-sized businesses each with between 3 and 5 employees.

Longman MP Wyatt Roy – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's new Innovation Minister – agreed with the suggestion from the Sunshine Coast Innovation Centre that smart-up businesses needed a higher-profile.

He said would investigate ways to take winning start-ups on trade tours. Mr Roy leaves for a one-week start-up trade tour to Israel on October 29.

Mr Roy predicted BioCube from Elimbah, near Caboolture, would soon be a world-leading organisation.

"You can fly it into the Solomon Islands and you can use coconut shells to produce biodiesel," Mr Roy said.

"It is just incredible technology," he said.

"It is just high-level technology coming out of this unit. I have no doubt that this will be a global company with huge success one day and it has just started in Elimbah."

Mr Roy said 20 young entrepreneurs from Queensland about to go on a study tour to Silicon Valley under a Start-Up program, partly funded by Brisbane's River City Labs.

That start-up program is called "Startup Catalyst" and backed by Steve Baxter, founder of River City Labs.

"The point is, I want to see bright young entrepreneurs from our region heading to these exciting capitals around the world," Mr Roy said.

"Whether it is Tel Aviv, or Boston, or San Francisco because that is where can develop these skill sets and bring them back to grow our economic systems here in Australia," he said.

"There is something unique about young, smart, talented young people wanting to lie on the Coast and start businesses that have a global reach," he said.

"You can do that in Boston, you can do that in San Francisco and you can do that in Tel Aviv, but no-where can you go and sit on the beach at Mooloolaba and Noosa and do it."

"And I think – particularly for young, bright entrepreneurs - there is an element of adopting that success here."

Maroochydore's Joe Riba, president of the Maroochydore Chamber of Commerce agreed there was a problem in keeping smart young people on the Sunshine Coast.

He said Sunshine Coast high school students had needed a university.

"They have a university here now, so that's good," Mr Riba said.

"But people who are particularly gifted I suppose want to branch out and go somewhere where they are more opportunities than in their home town where they grew up," he said.

"And I don't think you can ever completely stem that tide."

"I think the best you can do with people who go away to be educated and to tip their toe in the water of world opportunities is to try to make sure that there are opportunities that they can come back to."

Mr Riba said the Maroochydore Chamber of Commerce believed building a new Maroochydore CBD from scratch was a project of sufficient scale to lure big business to the Sunshine Coast.

"That will attract the bigger, quality businesses and they (younger people) will feel that they are still players in the bigger sorts of commercial opportunities."

The University of the Sunshine Coast has campuses at Sippy Downs, Caboolture, Noosa, North Lakes and – in 2016 – the Fraser Coast.

However Drew Westbrook from the Caloundra's Chamber of Commerce – the older established area of the Sunshine Coast – said Caloundra now needed secondary education facilities.

Caloundra was definitely losing young people, he said.

"Yes, it is a problem for Caloundra and limited job opportunities and a lack of education are the issues," Mr Westbrook said.

"There are educational institutes and establishments on other parts of the Sunshine Coast which are attracting younger people," he said.

Mr Westbrook said he was aware 'anecdotally and personally' of younger families moving into Caloundra in the past two years.

However he said education was needed to lure people permanently.

"I would like to see more substantial education and training in Caloundra as a reason for coming to Caloundra," he said.

"From personal experience, if you don't have a job lined up, the next thing is to go where you can be trained."

Unemployment and the Sunshine Coast (June 2015)

Sunshine Coast unemployment is 6.1 per cent; higher than Brisbane's inner-city 5.5 per cent; Toowoomba 5.5 per cent; Gold Coast 5.7 per cent and Moreton Bay 5.7 per cent.

Youth unemployment is 14.2 per cent.

Regi Dittrich, Business and Project Management teacher at TAFE Queensland East Coast said both the University of Sunshine Coast and the Sunshine Coast's TAFE East Coast recognised they needed to offer a broader range of courses to keep young people on the coast.

Ms Dittich said Sunshine Coast businesses she had interviewed as a judge on the Sunshine Coast Business Excellence Award told her they needed to build "intellectual property" on the coast.

"I would ask them 'What is it you need to grow?" Ms Dittrich said.

"And they all said 'We need the intellect – we need the intellectual property- to grow," she said.

"We need the young, fresh minds."

Ms Dittrich said the recognised problem for the Sunshine Coast – identified in late 2012 - was still Brisbane's stronger education opportunities.

"Graduates finish their uni in Brisbane and then remained there for employment," she said.

"And we find that on the Sunshine Coast we are - or were - losing our intellects."

Ms Dittrich said her most recent work as course co-ordinator at TAFE Queensland was to try to correct that swing to Brisbane.

"The course offerings at that time – were not available at the university – but they are now."