Login
Print FriendlyInstitute Director Stuart Coppock was a delegate to The Regional Summit held at Parliament House, Canberra, October 27 to 29, 1999. (www.dotrs.gov.au/regional/summit) He left Canberra with the following impressions:
The Summit provided a unique opportunity for people from, or associated with, regional Australia to meet and discuss issues in a structured manner. This was invaluable. Many people sharing the same ideas have been working independently of each other in their own communities. The Summit showed us that by sharing our experiences we would probably have saved a lot of time and effort in developing local solutions to issues.
The experience of 'shared agendas' provided an understanding of the need to accommodate the viewpoints of others. This is important, particularly as we need to maximise the outputs of a finite resource base.
Many of the issues could not be solved by technical fixes but crossed many policy areas. This reinforced the need for a holistic or “whole of government” approach to national, regional or local development.
The Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, identified the enormous changes about to impact on the whole community through the availability of technology. It was clear that he was looking for solutions and had an extremely open mind. As a personal observation the Minister presented a face of government and an approach to government that was refreshing. Ideas were the currency for the Summit; there was no fixed position from government or its advisers.
The need to increase an understanding of the structure and operation of the governance of Australia was apparent. The relationships between the Commonwealth, which collects taxes and sets the broad regulatory framework, and State and Local Governments, which deliver services, make it challenging to structure recommendations to government.