Gavin King MP
Member for Cairns
Speech to the Cairns Chamber of Commerce luncheon
April 22, 2014
Can I acknowledge and thank the Cairns Chamber of Commerce for the
opportunity to speak here today and also thank James Cook University for
their sponsorship of today’s luncheon.
Today I’m going to talk about the future of Cairns as I see it, about how we
can become the world’s most liveable tropical city by balancing a strong
economy while maintaining our magical lifestyle.
I’ll cover the need to attract bright minds to Cairns and I’ll outline the
growth sectors we can target for a strong regional economy long into the
future.
Being the world’s most liveable tropical city means different things to
different people, but for me it means doing things differently from other
cities. It means our art and culture, our buildings and architecture, our
economic focus, our CBD, just about everything we do reflects that goal of
being the world’s most liveable tropical city. It’s also a marketing and
branding message we can send to the world.
To explain all of that I’m going to reference a variety of economic
forecasts, industry research papers, books, reports and government
policies.
But first I’m going to talk about Game of Thrones.
Specifically I’ll talk about Robert Baratheon. For the three people in the
audience who haven’t seen Game of Thrones, let me explain.
Robert was Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and when he seized the throne
by force, he was a great warrior. He was lean, fit and keen. But over time
as he sat on the iron throne he got lazy. He got fat and complacent and too
comfortable for his own good. And by the end of the first series he was
killed and replaced as ruler.
Anyone who has watched Game of Thrones knows it’s not just a TV series
about dragons, knights and ruthless rulers. It’s about life, politics, family,
power. And the lesson we can all take from Robert Baratheon’s rise and
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fall is this: adapt or die.
As other families and tribes were sharpening their swords and plotting to
overthrow him, Robert sat back, drank wine and did other unsavoury
things not fit to discuss at a lunchtime speech. He did not adapt to
changing circumstances in the Seven Kingdoms, and did not adapt to
meet the ever emerging threats presented by younger and hungrier
competitors.
Now, Cairns is a long way from dying a cruel lonely death like Robert
Baratheon, so perhaps a better adage for us here is “adapt or stagnate”.
It is my belief that Cairns is at a crossroads, and we can either be a steady
as she goes, middle of the road, regional town, or we can be a big, bold,
great tropical city of the world.
Personally I believe we can and should become the latter. A big, bold,
great tropical city of the world that balances a strong economy with a
magnificent lifestyle.
And I believe 2014 is our breakthrough year. With global events such as
ATE and G20, with private sector projects such as Aquis and a range of
other factors, you can start to put together an equation for Cairns that
shows the great opportunity ahead of us. Indeed, in 2014, the stars are
aligning over Cairns.
But to capitalise on those aligning stars, we need to remember Robert
Baratheon. We need to adapt, and adapt quickly, we need to steer the
good ship Cairns in the right direction before we miss the rising tide of
economic confidence and growth.
In short, we need to take our rightful place as the world’s most liveable
tropical city. How do we do that? In my view, we need to focus on two key
issues.
First, we need to attract bright young minds to live in Cairns and, second,
we need to shift our focus towards catching the next waves of economic
growth.
The first issue, attracting bright young minds, is a tough one. There has
been a disturbing flight of people aged 20 to 34 from Cairns over the past
ten years. According to Census statistics, that age bracket made up 24%
of the Cairns population in 2001. Fast forward to the latest Census in
2011, and the figure dropped to 19.6%.
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That’s a 4.4% decline over the decade. Over the same period cities such
as Townsville, Darwin, Newcastle in NSW and Geelong in Victoria all had
lower exit rates of under 34s, and some even had growth in this
demographic. In some cases, the Cairns exit rate was double that of other
comparable cities across Australia.
To reverse this Millennial flight out of Cairns we need to adapt and shift
gears. We need to work relentlessly to attract them here. New projects
such as Aquis will help, but there are fundamental elements of a city that
need to be in place in order to attract this type of younger demographic.
Lots of cities around the world are focused on attracting that under 34
demographic, and they don’t have an Aquis on the horizon to help them
do it.
The latest research on this demographic sector shows while job prospects
in any given city is, naturally, an important element, for the under 34s it is
becoming less of a factor in their decision to move. A recent survey of
1500 Millennials – the generation aged between 20 and 35 - found only
41% want to live in a capital city. So that means more than 60% preferred
to live in a smaller city or larger town.
There are a range of reasons for this, but I’ll focus today on one of the key
factors.
One of the best ways a city can attract Millennials is to dramatically
increase residential living in the CBD. The under 35s increasingly want to
live where the action is. They want to live where there’s a buzz, an
atmosphere, a café scene, small trendy bars and a nightlife. For Cairns,
the almost total lack of CBD residential living is probably our greatest
barrier to attracting millennials.
At the moment we don’t have a clear strategy and targeted marketing to
boost residential living in the CBD. I believe we should set a target of how
many residents we want living in our CBD, perhaps as high as an extra
10,000 people living within a 2 kilometre radius of the Esplanade over the
next 10 to 20 years. Without a clear strategy, planning reform, marketing
and political will, we won’t get there, and in turn we won’t attract our
healthy share of Millennials.
We have a major ace up our sleeve when it comes to residential living in
the CBD and that is our local expertise in tropical building and design. The
work of the Tropical Green Building Network here in Cairns doesn’t get the
attention it deserves but it is precisely that Network’s expertise that could
retrofit and build exciting new residential spaces in our city heart.
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I would also add that we need JCU to establish a Tropical Building and
Design School in Cairns, and what better place to do that than at a CBD
campus?
Focusing on attracting Millennials and residential living in the CBD would
require a fairly radical shift in the way we think about economic
development.
The traditional approach on creating a strong economy has focused on
attracting investment, trade missions and trying to build up industry
clusters.
But the latest thinking and research flips the typical approach to economic
development on its head. One of my new favourite books is “Walkable
City” by American urban designer and planner Jeff Speck.
In the book, he puts it this way: “The conventional wisdom used to be that
creating a strong economy came first, and that increased population and
a higher quality of life would follow. The converse now seems more likely:
creating a higher quality of life is the first step to attracting new residents
and jobs. This is why world renowned land use strategist, author and
professor Chris Leinberger believes that “all the fancy economic
development strategies, such as developing a biomedical cluster, an
aerospace cluster, or whatever the current economic development
‘flavour of the month’ might be, do not hold a candle to the power of a
great walkable urban place.”
Now if you think about economic development in this new way, if we think
about liveability particularly in our CBD, than the idea of Cairns becoming
the world’s most liveable tropical city takes on a truly tangible and
practical meaning.
If we can tackle this demographic challenge head on, if we adapt and
have clear strategies and actions in place to attract bright minds, it is my
view that our economy and the broader community will reap the benefits.
Let me turn now to the second issue I want to cover today and that is the
need for Cairns to adapt to the next wave of economic prosperity and
growth. Here I will draw on a range of economic forecasts, trends and
predictions, but focus mainly on the brand new Deloitte report “Positioning
for Posterity”, released just a couple of weeks ago.
The Deloitte report identifies 25 sectoral hotspots with the greatest
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potential for growth over the next 20 years, including what they have
labelled the top growth sectors as the “Fantastic 5”.
I was absolutely enthralled by the Fantastic 5 because Cairns is already
home to three of them, and those three are agribusiness, tourism and
international education.
The huge and common driver for these growth sectors is of course Asia
and as the Cairns Chamber of Commerce recent branding campaign
correctly states: Cairns is perfectly positioned to capitalise in so many
ways.
First, to agribusiness. The report describes Agribusiness as “Australia’s
forgotten hero” with massive growth potential into the future. While there
are many challenges to meeting the global demand for food and making
the Far North part of the long talked about “food bowl for Asia”, we must
address those challenges and grow our agricultural sector. The Federal
Government’s Northern Australia policy will hopefully go a long way in
addressing those challenges.
Just as Aquis will transform tourism, one project that will transform our
region in terms of agribusiness is the $2 billion Integrated Food and
Energy Developments project in the Gilbert River catchment,
spearheaded by former Queensland Treasurer and Member for Cairns
Keith De Lacy. In order to meet the future global demand and capitalise
on the growth in agribusiness, we need to see projects such as this
developed.
The second relevant sector of the Fantastic 5 for us is tourism. Most of
you know about the growth prospects, particularly out of China. The
Deloitte report actually mentions Aquis as an example of the type of
investment in new tourism infrastructure that is needed to capture and
capitalise the growth in global tourism. We need to grow tourism, and
grow it we can. We’ve got good results over the past two years or so, and
the upcoming ATE event here next month will be absolutely massive for
us. But we can only achieve significant growth over the mid to long term
with projects such as Aquis. That’s why as local MPs we’ve been
harassing the Premier and cabinet about the project ever since it was
publicly announced about nine months ago.
Riding in behind agribusiness and tourism in the Fantastic 5 is
international education. Cairns continues to grow this sector, largely
through the great work of Study Cairns. But we can grow it even more.
The Queensland Government is currently undertaking a major review of
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the international education and training sector and the first report will be
delivered to Education Minister JP Langbroek in the next couple of
months.
Aside from this formal review, I believe we need to address two priorities
locally to grow international education and training. We need to better
support and bolster the work of Study Cairns, in the same way that we
need to better support and bolster the Tropical Green Building Network. In
terms of growing international education, we also need a university
campus in the CBD. On this latter point, I’m not afraid to say I am
absolutely desperate to get a uni campus in the CBD. Given the massive
financial and budgetary challenges faced by the Federal Government, we
can’t sit around and wait for the Feds to fund a new uni campus in Cairns.
We’ve got to find innovative ways to deliver it. To that end, I’ve been
working and linking private sector developers with universities in a bid to
make this happen. It’s also interesting to hark back to my initial comments
about the stars aligning over Cairns. A uni campus in the CBD would not
only do wonders for our international education sector and our economy,
it would also be a massive contributor to the revitalisation of our CBD and
a beacon to help attract those bright minds we need to move here.
To round off discussion of the Deloitte report, Cairns is also home to at
least five additional waves of growth on top of agribusiness, tourism and
international education.
I’ll touch on just two of them: disaster management and preparedness and
medical research.
In terms of disaster management, on the eve of Cyclone Ita we
announced funding in Cairns for the Regional College of Disaster
Management in partnership with the Federal Government.
When it comes to medical research, we need to look no further than the
sponsors of today’s luncheon James Cook University. JCU’s Australian
Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine is going ahead with our
government committing $42 million to build the Institute, and late last year
we welcomed a matching funding commitment from the Federal
Government.
The Institute will put North Queensland at the very forefront of global
research in issues impacting the tropics. Once again, remember those
stars aligning? Apart from the economic benefits, the building of the
Institute will also help us achieve that goal of attracting bright minds, just
as a uni campus in the CBD has multiple layers of benefits. Some people
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would call that synergy, but I’m sticking with the stars aligning.
To conclude the issue of growing our economy, there are some old
chestnuts that have been talked about for years that we must keep
pursuing.
We need to decentralise and relocate parts of government departments to
Cairns. We need to boost trade with Papua New Guinea by addressing
customs, quarantine and red tape issues at our ports and supporting the
great work of Tradelinked. We need to grow and refocus our attention on
Sister City relations in China. We need to expand HMAS Cairns, dredge
Trinity Inlet and continue to fix the Bruce Highway, and potentially build
the Hann Highway as an alternate inland route.
Just imagine what Cairns could become if we achieved a mix of these new
and old growth opportunities.
I want to finish my presentation today on one of the biggest and most
significant moments in the history of Cairns, second perhaps to the
opening of our international airport way back in 1984.
This one big thing links and brings together everything I’ve been talking
about today. That one big thing in 2014, some 30 years after the opening
of our airport, is the G20. Alongside next month’s ATE tourism
conference, this is the year the global spotlight is truly shining on Cairns.
It wasn’t until very recently when I received a briefing from the G20 team
that I truly comprehended the magnitude of what the G20 Finance
Minister’s Meeting in September will mean for Cairns.
The media attention it will shine on Cairns is the likes of which, if we had to
pay for it, we simply could not afford.
We saw it in Pittsburgh, again in Seoul and with good management of our
media opportunities in coming months and hospitality when the media
arrive, we’ll see this also in Cairns.
The G20 spotlight on Queensland and Cairns will also enable us to focus
on our airport developments, port enhancements and freight and logistics
hubs in the north and south of the State to support future trade with G20
nations.
In international media publicity, the Queensland Government will very
directly highlight the strengths of Cairns and the Far North in areas such
as tropical agriculture, tourism, health and medicine, building design and
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construction, remote service delivery and other sectors. As I’ve covered in
today’s talk, all of those sectors present huge growth prospects for Cairns.
The G20 Finance Ministers summit will put us and our capabilities on the
global stage.
Hosting a G20 event is also about the message it sends to the world at
large. It sends a message that we are open for business. It sends a
message that Cairns is an international city. It perfectly positions us as
Australia’s gateway to the Asia Pacific region, a hub of trade, investment,
agribusiness, education, tourism and other growth sectors.
We must embrace the G20 event with every last sinew of energy we can
muster and work tirelessly over the next five months to put on the greatest
display our city has ever staged before. It is that important.
To wrap everything up... Cairns can achieve a balance of economic
growth while maintaining our magnificent lifestyle. The stars are truly
aligning over Cairns.
But it won’t be a case of sitting back and hoping it will happen.
It won’t be easy. We will have to work tirelessly and with unwavering
determination to ensure those stars do align and shine on Cairns. We will
have to push and manoeuvre and nudge those stars so they align just
where we want them to be. It’s a matter of how quickly we can adapt to
avoid stagnation.
If we can adapt and attract bright minds, if we can pursue the Fantastic 5
and other waves of growth at the same time that we keep boosting our
existing strengths, then we can become a prosperous place with an
economy and lifestyle that is the envy of every other regional city in
Australia and the world. That’s the Cairns I want to live in, and the Cairns
I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in.
We can become the world’s most liveable tropical city but we need to ask
ourselves, as businesses, government representatives and as a
community, if that is the future we want for Cairns.
If the collective answer is yes, then let’s find the ways to make it happen.
Thank you.
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