Canberra Leaders Forum – refreshing!

 A number of Cockatoo members attended a very interesting Leaders Forum on 17 May to advance the RDA ACT Regional Plan. Main points (at least in our eyes):

• Speakers’ times limited to 8 minutes – even the ACT Chief Ministers and other MPs kept it brief (gee it worked well). James O’Loghlin (ABC New Inventors) was the MC and knew his stuff, having grown up inCanberra.
• The 80 or so attendees were pretty senior and only 10% were born inCanberra- remarkable.
• The consensus was that Canberra doesn’t play to its strengths and needs to build points of difference other than the seat of government. The bad political news coming fromCanberra and the constant criticism from shock jocks needs to be countered.
• New federal MP Andrew Leigh emphasised Canberra’s strong social capital – which is not appreciated outside Canberra. He did his Ph D thesis on this? Senator Kate Lundy (parl. sec. to PM) also a strong champion – long RD history via ACRDC, Canberra Development Board!
•  Light Rail could possibly work if initially confined to the low hanging fruit i.e. corridor comprising Kingston-Manuka-Parliamentary Triangle-Civic-Dickson with its mix of medium density housing, hotels and office accommodation.
• Neil Savery (CEO, ACT Planning) stuck his neck out and said urban consolidation is on the way, and pollies must not cave in to lobby groups. Minister Corbell reacted in press the next day.
• The Parliamentary Triangle is seen as a real jewel – but arguably needs ‘something’ to connect the individually outstanding facilities, to create a BUZZ factor. We are following up.

If the ACT wanted to be proactive re industry development, there are standouts:

– education (Australia’s best university & secondary schools

– environmental management (establish Centre of Excellence;  measure ecological footprint; set some cost-effective targets)

– creative industries (leverage educated population; shed staid image)

– sports medicine (AIS, JohnCurtin Medical School, ICT)