The Good Oil by Rod Brown*
Lyndsay Neilson, former Canberra and Victorian mandarin, recently provided our Cockatoo Network with some excellent insights on urban and regional infrastructure. He was the key architect of the very successful Better Cities Program in the 1990s, so his views are really worth noting.
First, he says that even without the resources boom, Australia at 36 million may well see a Geelong of 700,000 people, a Ballarat and a Bendigo of 300,000 to 400,000 each, and so on.
“Planning for these changes still demands a national approach, but there is no sign of this happening – not through Infrastructure Australia, not through the Major Cities Unit, not through any regional development organisation that I’m aware of,” he said.
His second observation is that the funding provided through Infrastructure Australia doesn’t capture multiplier effects, because no partnership investment in associated urban and regional development is sought.
Lyndsay argues that it’s a fundamental weakness of the infrastructure investment sector in Australia. This is because we are too captured by the engineering mentality that addresses individual projects, and the accounting mentality that demands project based cost benefit analysis.
The result is that we don’t produce a ‘development package’ as was done under the Better Cities Program, which drew in private sector investment in a big way. Better Cities dollars
($816 million) drew in over
$5 billion of related State, Local and private sector investment into the precincts that were funded. He said, “It’s still happening, if you regard, for example, the ongoing work of the East Perth Redevelopment Authority as an outcome.”
Thirdly, Lyndsay’s recent membership of the panel conducting the inquiry into the Need for a Population Policy for Queensland (on behalf of the Local Government Association of Queensland) has been very interesting. He notes that while there is strong metropolitan opposition to rapid population growth, especially in lifestyle areas, there is still strong support from regional Australia for more jobs and more people.
The reality is that the labour demand from the resources boom in Western Australia and Queensland will result in continued high levels of immigration to Australia from overseas, because our capacity to meet labour demand from local population growth and internal migration is quite limited.
The structure of the resources sector, with contracting out of mine construction and operations, labour supply and worker accommodation and support, means that the direct and indirect industry impacts are not all regionally located – workers fly in, fly out from Perth and southeast Queensland, equipment is supplied from Melbourne, repair and maintenance services may be in nearby cities such as Mackay or Rockhampton in Queensland, while certainly the port cities, notably Gladstone, are booming. The boom has metropolitan as well as regional multiplier effects.
Lyndsay concludes by reflecting on the huge challenges in all of this and the fact that they’re not on the policy horizon in any meaningful way (lyndsay.neilson@gmail.com).
‘Hurtling to 36 million population’
Well it was a nice little phrase that our new PM used last month in announcing cuts to migration rates from the current 244,000 a year to 180,000 a year by 2012.
She was obviously bowing to populist pressure, and while that might be politically smart in the short term it could be very dangerous in the longer term.
The simple reason is that we are not far off full employment, with significant skill shortages emerging in remote regions. And we have a great opportunity to attract highly trained migrants from economies currently in recession. The problem, however, is that this argument will also be lost on the Conservatives, and we could be locked into a Fortress Australia mentality if we are not careful.
How about a real parliamentary inquiry or a well managed summit to get a debate going?
The debate should also include the prospect of incentives for a more decentralised population. Perhaps they might draw on Lyndsay Neilson’s experience, as above.
US food hubs
The Obama Administration is looking to rebuild the US rural economy by creating a parallel universe of local and regional markets and ‘food hub’ distribution centres to help farmers market their production closer to home.
The US Department of Agriculture has released a ‘gap analysis’ that maps the locations of small livestock producers by county and compares production to the availability of small slaughter processing facilities and rendering plants.
The study is part of the US Department of Agriculture’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative.
Food hubs are aggregation points – similar to cooperatives – where farmers can bring goods that are inspected and graded for resale to wholesalers.
The hubs provide storage and logistics services for buyers and sellers, and have been hugely successful in some areas of the country.
The food hubs are often hybrids of a traditional wholesale market and a retail farmers market.
US members of the Cockatoo Network are tracking developments. We reckon there is real value in local councils watching this space. The angle is that coordinating public and private infrastructure – for example, water treatment, roads, refrigeration, auctioneering software systems, and related spending, such as training and marketing – around such food hubs is the way to go.
This is the lesson from the Dutch (Food Valley), and we propose developing a buddy system between the US food hubs and places like Shepparton, Virginia, Griffith, Bundaberg, Atherton Tablelands and the Swan Valley, to name a few.
Rudd wasn’t a conductor of the orchestra
His demise came quickly, but it had been brewing for many months. Rudd’s workaholic ways and his staff’s dismissive approach to Caucus members and his Ministers were the core problem.
It was at a Community Cabinet meeting in Adelaide when it struck me. Here was Rudd taking 40 minutes to answer four questions – he was drawing statistics from the recesses of his brain like a latter day Barry Jones. And 20 Cabinet Ministers were sitting back stifling yawns and looking at the ceiling.
Senior hardnut Ministers like Carr, Crean, Ferguson and Smith weren’t asked a question the whole evening. They must have been seething inside. And then back in Canberra, Rudd continued to take the limelight.
In the old vernacular, Rudd was a tryhard. Although his intentions were totally honourable, he was basically depriving his parliamentary colleagues of oxygen.
And therein lies the lesson for all of us. Good managers manage. They conduct the orchestra and get the harmonies right. Bob Hawke understood this – he devolved responsibility and encouraged his Ministers.
PM Gillard has similar instincts to Hawke. This opens up some real opportunities for Local Government in its dealings with the Federal Government, namely to identify where you can take over some of the Federal workload, and naturally with funding adjustments.
As I’ve been saying ad nauseum, don’t be timid folks.
*Rod Brown is a Canberra-based consultant specialising in industry/regional development, investment attraction, clusters and accessing Federal grants. He also runs the Cockatoo Network. He can be contacted at apdcockatoo@iprimus.com.au or phone
(02) 6231 7261.
Go to the blog at www.investmentinnovation.wordpress.com for 550+ articles on issues relevant to Local Government.
