Executive Summary Australia has the opportunity to become the first 100% renewable, 100% reliable, lowest cost energy, and zero emissions country in the world. Prof Ross Garnaut’s concepts are affirmed and extended. Australia has vast areas of cheap outback land with intense sunlight for solar renewable electricity. PNG has enormous reliable hydroelectric potential and NZ […]
Bushfire Policy
The 2019/2020 bushfires have clearly risen to new ferocity. They have happened once. They could happen again, or worse. The cost of the bushfires is horrendous in loss of human life, livestock and wildlife as well as property. Preparation must be made to protect them from future bushfire events, possibly as early as the 2020/2021 […]
Critical Influences November 2019
Vigorous immigration is a necessary policy in Australia for many years to come. It would continue to contribute 1%pa to population. Immigration, together with 1%pa births, would increase the population by 25m to 50m in 5 decades. A population growing to this size would have greater economic depth, breadth and resilience. It would be able […]
Submission to Infrastructure Australia, August 2019
1 Extract 2 Executive Summary 3 Settlement Strategy 1 Extract The proposed Settlement Strategy addresses key issues for Australia’s future: Where and how Australians live in the next few decades How to connect them most effectively How to raise Australian innovation, international competitiveness and prosperity How to invest the next trillions of dollars, including infrastructure, […]
The Australian East Coast Mega-region
The purpose of the Australian east coast mega-region is to lift economic growth back to the pre-GFC level and make Australia more internationally competitive and prosperous. It aims to end present slow growth and perpetuate higher growth. In the process, it would distribute more of the rapid population increase to the regions and save Melbourne […]
Australian Major Cities in Perspective
Summary London and New York, with populations of 8m today, are not good models for Sydney and Melbourne populations planned to grow to +8m. There are great costs attached to Sydney and Melbourne growing to 8m. It means higher densification of middle suburbs replacing single family homes and loss of lifestyle and spatial liveability; more […]
Innovation in Mega-regions
Introduction The quite remarkable insights into innovation in mega-regions recently in Shanghai has led to new innovative strategies to increase innovation in China. It is recognised there that innovation is the foundation for progress to prosperity. Innovation, of course, has taken us from the caves. Three large new high-rise office towers were built in Shanghai […]
High Speed Rail Corridor in Australia
Purpose High Speed Rail (HSR) between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane is an interstate railway, but this is not its primary purpose. It is to facilitate population distribution from the major cities to new cities in the regions around them and to connect all the cites rapidly and cheaply. As the Australian population is projected to […]
Executive Summary
Clearly, the Australian regions need more population growth and the major cities less. An Australian mega-region provides this, together with superior economic performance and lower cost of infrastructure. One definition of mega-region is a spatial and structural outcome of urban expansion, exploitation of comparative advantage and increasing international interaction. Another is a large network of […]
Settlement Strategy
Introduction Clearly, Australia has been built by immigration. It has grown to a population of 25m. The prospects are for another 25m people in the next 50 years and possibly a further 25m thereafter. While a population policy about how many immigrants is controversial, a settlement strategy about where and how people live is less […]