AUSTRALIA'S fastest growing region, Queensland's southeast corner, will need an extra 754,000 homes to cater for population growth, a new report shows.

Planning Minister Stirling Hinchliffe on Tuesday released the updated South East Queensland Regional Plan in Brisbane, which will govern how the region is managed from this year to 2031.

Mr Hinchliffe told reporters the region's population would grow from 2.8 million to 4.4 million by 2031 and require 754,000 extra dwellings.

He said the regional plan would encourage development away from the coast and towards a corridor west of Brisbane.

The plan is expected to protect more than 85 per cent of the region from urban development by restricting development outside an area known as the "urban footprint" and identifying areas within the urban footprint for future urban growth.

Mr Hinchliffe said the plan set an urban dwelling target of 15 homes per hectare.

"That is a style of housing and a style of residential accommodation that people in southeast Queensland know very well if they know suburbs like New Farm, like Coorparoo," he said.

Mr Hinchliffe said he was committed to protecting "the great backyard" as a housing option.

"But we can't have that across the whole of the region without breaking out and creating that sprawl that we don't want to have, without damaging the 85 per cent of the southeast that's being protected," he said.

The plan also contains a strategy to protect koalas, whose habitat is gradually being developed.

The region covers an area of 22,890 square kilometres, stretching 240km from Noosa in the north to the Queensland-NSW border in the south, and 160km west to Toowoomba.