This paper examines how storylines shaped policy responses to environmental imperatives in an Australian regional planning system between 1991 and 2017. It builds upon existing literature that utilizes the ‘storylines’ conceptual model to distil and critically examine how discursive framing can shape environmental policy responses. This paper empirically establishes storylines within the regional planning system of South East Queensland, Australia that discursively shaped policy responses to three specific environmental imperatives: protecting regional biophysical features, sustainability, and climate change. It critically discusses how storylines associated with each imperative discursively framed and influenced planning policy responses at the regional scale. It reports how planning policies evolved as each environmental imperative was institutionally detected, discursively framed through storylines and responded to through regional-scale policy frameworks.