...
because we humans can only work for a future we can imagine.
THE NEED FOR CHANGE IS OUR GREATEST OPPORTUNITY
John Hennessy
Executive Director
Western Melbourne Regional Economic Development Corporation
As told to Merrill
Findlay, Footscray, 27 May 1996, as
part of Painting the future real
I worked
in business planning and analysis for about a decade after I completed
my commerce degree at Melbourne University, and during that time, I had
an opportunity to look at the future of telecommunications with the Telecom
2000 Unit. That was in the 1970s. Soon after, I was seconded to a parliamentary
committee to look at the future of energy conservation in Victoria. So
you might say I've had a long interest in futures issues. I made a bit
of a shift when I went to work for the Victorian Football League as their
corporate planner, and then for a couple of years was a private consultant
in business, finance and marketing. In 1986/7, I joined Toyota as the
corporate planning manager and from there, moved to my current position
at the WREDO (Western Regional Economic Development Organisation).
I became involved with the WREDO while I was still at Toyota. At the end
of 1993/early 94 a group of people got together to establish a new regional
body in the West. At the time, they were concerned that the region was
going backwards, in part because there wasn't enough private sector involvement
in development. They invited Toyota to nominate a representative to join
their Working Group and my name was put forward. Toyota was constructing
a new plant at Altona at the time, and so had a vested interest in the
region's future.
Digital
composite based on the Painting
the future real interviews and created by Csaba Szamosy
from images contributed by project partners, Imagine The Future Inc, 1996.
One of the skins in ITF's re-interpreted possum
skin cloak.
At about the same time, the
federal government received the McKinsey & Co Report 'Think Global:
Lead Local' which stated that Australia as a whole was missing out economically
because we weren't focusing sufficient attention on regional development.
The Report argued that the economic hot spots of the world were emerging
less within defined state or national boundaries, and more within regions
which had certain identifiable characteristics. McKinsey & Co recommended
that Australia foster those same characteristics.
The Kelty Fox Task Force also concluded that a regional approach was the
way to go. Lindsay Fox and Bill Kelty stated in their Report to the Federal
Government that one of the main reasons Australia's potential was not
being realised was that local communities were not involved in finding
solutions to local problems.
So here were two messages feeding into the Federal Government saying that
as a nation, we could no longer leave the old structures of local, state
and federal government to do all the work, that we had to approach things
more regionally. Significant funds were allocated to support regional
initiatives and we launched the Western Melbourne Regional Economic Development
Organisation in late 1994 with some of that Federal funding, and a significant
amount of local support.
By that time, I was already very committed to the cause of re-invigorating
Melbourne's West and was part of the group responsible for finding an
executive director for our new organisation. For one reason or another,
each of the people we offered the job to decided they couldn't accept,
so I guess in the end I got so frustrated I decided to do it myself! That
was about the middle of '95. In the twelve months since then, we've mainly
concentrated on developing a regional strategy and identifying about a
dozen or so projects which we're now putting into practice. Our vision
is 'to resurrect the West as a modern economic power house of the nation
by operating and being perceived as The Best Practice Region which is
dynamic, outward-looking, cohesive and cooperative, and which generates
a growing share of Australia's output and employment.' For us, the term
'Best Practice; applies to any field of endeavour, including urban design
for example, and as our leaflet says, 'is indicative of a learning region
committed to quality processes and outcomes'.
ISSUES THAT CONCERN ME MOST
In my view, this region has unlimited potential. It is very close to Melbourne's
Central Business District, it has Australia's largest seaport facility
and its only 24 hour airport, and the national rail link and major national
roads pass through it. In terms of goods and services coming into Australia
and being generated here, it could be the country's Central Activities
Area and transport hub. It also has the potential to be a very desirable
place to live in and a very interesting place for tourists to visit .
We have some of the country's most significant wetlands, for example,
plus some very important historic sites. But at the moment, the major
thing that is holding us back, I believe, is the region's image . Look
through the newspapers from the last five years or so and every three
or six months there's a front page story that continues on for two or
three weeks about how bad 'the western suburbs' is. They even call it
that: 'the western suburbs'. And none of this negative news about the
West, be it drugs or unemployment or crime or chemical explosions, is
ever countered by positive stories .
The poor image problem affects locals in many different ways, especially
in terms of low personal self-esteem. Last year we did a survey of young
people here to find out what they thought about the western region of
Melbourne and the response was absolutely disastrous. They want to escape
the West as soon as possible!
People in the rest of Melbourne perceive the West as an area that is not
to be visited, not to be worked in, and not to be invested in. To many
people from other parts of Australia, especially captains of industry,
the West is at the centre of industrial relations backwardness. People
overseas are less affected by the poor image but they are being held back
because their advisers keep saying 'be careful'. I have even encountered
this negative perception myself. While I was at Toyota, we were deciding
whether to build the new car plant at Altona or Dandenong, and the Japanese
expressed concern that the western region of Melbourne was beset by union
problems and that sort of thing. Such perceptions are, I think, widespread
amongst potential stakeholders who could make a significant contribution
to the future of the region.
These barriers only exist in people's minds and, for the WREDO, addressing
them is a priority issue. I think we have to be much more aggressive if
we are going to change people's perceptions. We need to go out and show
people the unparalleled advantages the region has to offer, and plant
the seeds in visitor's minds that they might even consider living and
working and investing here. But most importantly, we need to make people
within the region start feeling better about themselves. So in a few months,
we'll be launching a major marketing campaign to promote the region in
a more positive light.
Another issue that concerns me is the global decline of manufacturing
as a percentage of national economies, especially of Australia's economy.
This decline means that if the western region is to revitalise itself
-- and it must for all sorts of social reasons -- it will have to do so
in ways that are going to make it a relevant part of the world of tomorrow.
We can't just look to our past and present strength in manufacturing and
assume that this sector will continue to provide jobs for people in the
future.
As we all know, the world is heading down an information path, but in
the western region there's a fairly large technology gap, because compared
to the rest of Melbourne, a far lower percentage of our secondary students
are going on to tertiary education. It's critical that we build up the
knowledge and the skills of our tertiary students and younger people so
that they can be part of this information rich future that we all predict.
Unless we can start to close that technology gap, in say 20-30 years time,
this region will be home to a permanent under class. Already the unemployment
rate here is forecast to be much higher in the future because the predicted
population growth will exceed the rate at which new jobs are being created.
The forecast rate of new job creation is only about 20% of the population
growth. So in 10, 15, 20 years time, we'll have far higher rate of unemployment
unless something significant changes in the equation very soon.
I think we have to take a fairly holistic view of people's lives if we
are to find ways of helping people, particularly secondary school students,
become more aware of the work options that will be available to them in
the world of tomorrow. I think at the moment many students are coming
out of the school system without any link at all to the work place of
the future. If their parents are currently unemployed they are likely
to see themselves as being unemployed too, or if they don't expect to
be unemployed, they think they will find a job with some large company
or organisation. Well, that was a valid expectation in the 1960s and 70s
but in the future they're more likely to find work in small businesses.
We need therefore to ensure that students have the range of skills that
small businesses require and can perhaps even visualise themselves setting
up their own small business .
To me, this issue is urgent because unless we can create more job opportunities
for our population in the western region, we are going to have to face
more and more social and other problems in the next 20-30 years, as I've
already indicated. And I've already said, we can not depend on the manufacturing
industries to provide jobs. The proportion of the workforce in manufacturing
will continue to decline because of productivity improvements. When I
left Toyota, for example, we were making twice as many cars with less
workers than we employed five years ago.
At the moment, there's a dramatic deficiency in business and household
services in the western region. If you look in the phone book under any
of any business and household services that are in demand, you'll find
90% of the providers will come from the south east of Melbourne. So there
are many opportunities there. And tourism is another industry that comes
readily to mind. Tourism in Victoria employs something like 130,000 people,
but in the western region there only a couple of hundred people employed
in this industry, despite the fact that many of Victoria's major tourism
attractions are in the West, including underdeveloped ecotourism attractions
like the Altona wetlands and the Point Cook wetlands. According to bird
watchers and other people who are attracted to wetlands, these places
are unique even by national standards, but they've never really been promoted
or focussed on. If the western region could achieve, say, 5 % of Victoria's
tourism employment over the next ten years, that would mean several thousand
jobs. And that in itself, would make a great difference to the region's
economy.
So I think people who are saying that in the western region of Melbourne
we should be looking at our manufacturing strengths aren't really on the
right channel! I think we should be inculcating in our younger generation
an image of what the world of tomorrow will look like, especially in relation
to the workplace, and give them the skills and experience and role models
to be a lot more self-sufficient and very good at problem solving
WHAT WREDO IS DOING
As I mentioned before, the WREDO has identified about a dozen priority
projects to move us along this path to the world of tomorrow. We have
established a Best Practice Network which now has about 1,100 members,
to address this negative self image that the business sector of the region
has. We hold a breakfast meeting once a month and invite keynote speakers
from leading businesses to speak about Best Practice techniques, and have
smaller networks that focus on specific issues. We're also developing
business incubators throughout the region to support people who are just
starting out in business, because despite the fact that the future of
work will be in small businesses, at the moment about 85% of small businesses
fail in the first five years. The main reasons for this are that most
people in small business are very isolated, and they are so stretched
and strung out trying to run their business that they don't tend to seek
or benefit from expert advice or mentoring. In business incubators on
the other hand, the global experience is that about 90% succeed in the
first five years, so there's quite a remarkable difference. If you have
15-20 businesses all starting out at the same time, and all supported
within a business incubator, they tend to learn from each other fairly
quickly. So it's an exciting prospect.
We're also working with the 60 secondary schools in the region and with
the DSE (Department of School Education) to develop a scheme to enable
all the students in these schools to have a lot more interaction with
small businesses as part of their curriculum, and to develop their problem
solving skills within a small business context.
We're also looking at new industries. We are in the process of establishing
Melbourne's first product buy-back and repair centre at Werribee, for
example. The recycling industry has enormous potential. In the USA there
are a number of large industrial recycling parks where you have several
thousand people employed in recycling household and other goods, even
cars, because car parts are increasingly being designed for recycling
now. The Werribee buy-back and repair centre will employ 6 or 8 people
in the first 6 months, but if it is marketed properly and if we can develop
a community focus on the need to recycle products and put them back into
the community, many more jobs could be generated.
MY VISION OF THE FUTURE
In my vision of the future, this region is leading the way in the transition
from the world of today to the world of tomorrow. This future world will
probably be a lot more focussed on home based activities, a lot more focussed
on small enterprises and people will have a much more global perspective.
There will be no reason why people who are developing products and services
in the West can't market them all over the world with the telecommunications
technologies that are coming on stream right now.
In a physical sense, the West of Melbourne will be the gateway to Australia.
With Australia's biggest port, a 24 hour airport, and the national road
and rail infrastructure here, there won't be another place in the country
where people will choose to bring goods and services in if the facilities
are efficient and well managed. If
you superimpose all this onto the home based, small business enterprise
culture we are fostering, then you can really begin to visualise a revitalised
and regenerated region.
You can already catch glimpses of this future. At Melton, for example,
a pilot project based on the employment node principles outlined in WREDO's
strategy document is being developed on about 500 hectares of land. Employment
nodes are about creating self-sufficient local communities where people
can work, recreate, educate and live in the one area rather than having
to commute to and from Melbourne each day as 90% of the workforce in outlying
growth areas like Melton, Werribee, Sunbury and Craigieburn does at the
moment. So you might have light industry adjacent to household living
and socialising areas next door to some sort of tertiary education facility
and all set in parklands with a lake.
In Melton where there is already an important horse industry, you might
also have a trotting track surrounded by a hundred small blocks of land
so horse trainers and breeders can all use the same facilities. At present
you have a hundred separate tracks on a hundred separate ten acres blocks
all around the town.
I think it's harder to visualise what telecommunications will mean to
the way we live and design our urban spaces in the future though. People
can already study, shop, bank and be entertained from home but we probably
haven't thought enough about the social implications of this yet. It might
not take a great deal of community investment, however, to redesign amenities
so people don't feel isolated working from home though. I live at Gisborne
and I could happily work at home the whole time but the main thing I'd
need is a good video camera as part of my telecommunication system so
I could see who I was speaking to!
In the West, the need for change is far greater than in the rest of Melbourne
so by definition, that's a great opportunity for us. And I'm often inspired
by the way Japan revived itself after the Second World War. That country
was decimated and had no natural resources at all except what was inside
the brains of the Japanese people. Yet within several generations, they
got to the situation where in many ways, they virtually controlled the
world! And that was achieved in the workplace, by continuous improvement
processes.
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[Page history: created and first published on www.ecoversity.org.au as part o f Painting the future real (1995-97), the prototype for Redreaming the plain (1998-2002); taken off-line in 1998 and re-posted in its original form in July 2004 as a web archive. For more information contact redreaming@rmit.edu.au.]