8 August 2014

Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia
8 August 2014 ustralia is enduring great structural adjustment. Therefore wise decisions made today will determine like never before, our well being tomorrow.
Government economic and fiscal guidance during the Global Financial Crisis saved
Australia from much of its direct impact. Whilst we have much to be thankful for along with the fruits of a coincident surge in resource commodity development and exports, the hardship suffered by much of the rest of the world has transformed global commerce where, not only productivity substantially outstrips Australia’s, but new and vastly more efficient ways of doing things have left this country with a most precarious future. In other words, we have some very difficult decisions to make and uncomfortable adjustments to grasp before this country can secure its position in SE Asia’s dynamic power plays and burgeoning economies.
The Federal Government is to be grandly applauded for this initiative focussing on the development of
Northern Australia. We are pleased to have an opportunity to make a submission proposing an additional policy point strategically addressing what is often forgotten or glossed over in Australian policymaking.
This policy point is vital and focuses on how the people of Northern Australia and the way they can live their lives in the wide ranging and various communities spanning the Top End will be so important and will make the difference.
The Green Paper is correct in highlighting how
The author has extensive experience living and working in and developing some of the oldest communities globally.
This has been enlightening and has shaped his approach to thinking about progressiveness from a far more humanistic approach to community and urban development.
It is more than a viewpoint about pipes, wires, highways, ports and aerodromes. Whilst these are all important elements, the full compliment of necessary considerations as discussed later, is vastly more about the non-physical and the way progress is innovatively structured and driven than a conversation mostly about infrastructure.
Furthermore, Australia has long fallen victim to reliance on
Governments to take the lead and fund what’s necessary.
We will never prosper in this way when all around, the vast pool of global capital, many times the quantum of
Australian government coffers, exerts itself to drive development elsewhere at almost lightning speed and at a fraction of the cost by comparison to what happens here. government must facilitate rather than to drive the future of Australia’s north. However, what is missing is the recognition by way of discrete policy, how people and community are the vital determinant of success and how their development will critically depend on structural arrangements devised from a much broader range of considerations.
Figure 1: A diverse group of four strategically important northern regions.
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Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia
8 August 2014
Because of the diversity of Australia’s North, success will The author grew up on a family farm in Australia and has comprise multi-layered and individual solutions; all based upon well-reasoned community building and people-based considerations. a deep understanding of regional life and its retained values. His perspective is enhanced by an analysis of Port
Hedland’s urban development issues detailed in an attached report titled “A Crisis in Urban Development –
Improving the Pilbara” dated 29 February 2012. Well meaning governments have sometimes made na ï ve and ill-considered strategic decisions in attempting to shape development in Northern Australia. The private sector too has made short-term commercially driven development decisions to their ultimate long-term disadvantage. The result is, what is now the “norm” in many parts of Australia’s North is highly distorted, damaging to communities and their people, and anything but normal.
Successful, resilient, stable and modern communities each require a unique balance of key characteristics that the author defines as Cornerstone foundations of great communities:
Remote worker labour agreements from recent and ongoing large-scale resource sector projects and production lines often have employment packages three to four times the cost of their capital city work mates.
1.
Urban Fabric: that is, the physical elements.
2.
Urban Context: unique community building contributors that make Life better.
3.
Urban Capital: the wealth drivers of thriving communities.
Worse still, non-resident workforces employed to undertake project developments in Northern Australia take their skill, their social capital and inflated pay packets home to other parts of developed Australia every time they board their flyin-flyout flights. The result is a highly unproductive and increasingly institutionalised approach to labour resourcing the North. It also vastly disadvantages the human, social and financial capital of important
Northern communities.
In just the same way Australia’s leaders decided at
Federation more than a hundred years ago, that a national capital and community was necessary; it took almost a century of urban development before Canberra evolved into the successful and fully rounded community it now is.
A vastly different viewpoint and longer development program is necessary than proposed in the Green Paper.
There is absolutely no doubt that life in Northern Australia offers no greater hardship or challenge than any other if correctly shaped. Further more, the North offers vast attractions for those Australian’s preferring regional life.
This submission proposes a policy related to alignment of these vital attributes.
Therefore, policy must be framed to a longer horizon than typical of Australian politics if we are to envision and build what our Northern communities, big and small, must become.
The graphic in Figure 2 below captures the many ingredients necessary for sound policy in developing
Australia’s North.
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Figure 2: Successful and thriving communities require a balance of three key urban development cornerstones
The Green paper proposes six main policy areas as shown in Figure 3:
If Government is to succeed in shaping its future role along with the private sector, it will only arise by way of deliberate policy settings.
The six possible ways to develop
Northern Australia as framed adjacent, are more tactical than strategic in terms of policy.
We submit that the forthcoming White
Paper brings focus in strict policy terms, how the development of
Northern Australia is structured within a framework of private sector ingenuity and capital in all its forms;
Human, Social and Financial.
Figure 3: Existing Green Paper policy direction defining 6 ways to develop Northern Australia.

Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia
8 August 2014
John A Summers
Managing Director
Oldbury Pty Ltd trading as
Summers & Associates xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx 2850 m: e:
©
Copyright Oldbury Pty Ltd 2012
Additional Reports available:
Report:
Biography:
“A Crisis in Urban Development – Improving The Pilbara” dated 29 February 2012,
John A Summers
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