Australians are city-dwellers.
Three out of four Australians live in major cities, which generate around 80 per cent of our economic growth and are home to more than 75 per cent of jobs.
The beating heart of our cities is its people. They run businesses, raise families and regard cities as a promise to help shape fulfilling lives and realise aspirations.
How are our cities living up to this promise? What makes them liveable and economically prosperous and where is the room for improvement?
Who better to ask than the people themselves?
Read the full commentary below on the survey:
The Property Council of Australia commissioned Auspoll to survey more than 4,000 Australians in all eight capital cities. The poll captures the voice of citizens, not experts, interest groups or politicians.
The verdict of the people is that our governments are failing to plan for and manage liveability.
‘Liveability’ summarises the complex factors that determine individual and collective opportunity, such as access to jobs, education, health care and affordable housing as well as our public and private transport systems – our ability to connect with others.
‘Liveability’ also covers the experiences offered by cities – clean and pollution free environments, safety and security, culture, recreation and the design quality of our neighbourhoods.
In other words, cities comprise infrastructure hardware and community services software that foster greater prosperity and liveability.
Adelaide ranks as Australia’s most “liveable” city, followed by Canberra, with Melbourne third. Sydney’s residents rated their city as the nation’s worst.
Overall, Australians give cities the thumbs up for their recreational and outdoor areas (79% average city approval); natural environments (76% approval); culture and entertainment (74% city approval); and school and educational facilities (69% city approval).
Australians were scathing about government performance in areas such as healthcare (50% approval); roads and traffic congestion (39% approval); public transport (36% approval); environmental sustainability and climate change (33% approval) and access to affordable housing (31% approval).
Only 51 percent of people thought their state and territory governments were doing an excellent, good or fair job.
If cities are a promise to deliver opportunity, most politicians hold themselves out to make the promise a reality.
At its simplest, Australia’s political parties promise they will forge a more liveable and economically productive nation.
The clear verdict of Australia’s citizens is that our politicians are not delivering. This judgment has huge implications for all levels of government.
Many experts thought the previous Victorian Labor Government was doing a decent job and yet they were still sacked by the people.
The NSW and Queensland Labor Governments’ insipid popularity poll ratings reflect disenchantment with the management of key liveability drivers – the efficient delivery of community services and enabling infrastructure.
The Howard Government lost to Labor in 2007 as much because of frustration over housing affordability and city ‘software’ issues as the lightning rod of Workchoices.
Last year’s hung Federal Parliament occurred partly because voters searched for political leadership, vision and nation building programs. Voters hedged their bets when they perceived spin and focus group sound bites.
Our cities struggle because politicians are failing to effectively plan for and manage urban growth.
For some Australians, the answer is to stop population growth altogether.
71% Australians will only support a plan to grow the population if it is managed appropriately.
However, we need a growing population to fuel the economic development that funds the infrastructure and builds a skilled workforce that will deliver liveability in a sustainable manner.
The Property Council argues that all our cities need 30-year plans to manage growth. Not Soviet-style dictums, but plans that can be adapted to evolving circumstances.
The starting point is to set performance targets for community service delivery across the nation.
These targets relate to all the drivers of liveability valued by citizens – access to education, health, child care, decent transport options, low congestion, neighbourhood safety, energy, water and much more. Only South Australia does this at present.
Independent auditors should report on performance against these targets annually.
We need 30-50 year infrastructure delivery programs that are synchronised to our growing population.
We need to design our cities so that jobs, homes and community services are close to each other.
We need to join up government efforts to manage growth. At present, government departments and different levels of government spend more time trumping each others’ programs than collaborating.
We need to get serious about the relationship between the built and natural environments. We need to better calibrate our approach to biodiversity, and better manage the interdependent relationship between regional and urban communities.
Australia’s recent horrific trials by flood and fire should hasten the development of plans to improve the resilience of our cities against natural disasters.
We need to streamline and speed up government decisions, cut the red-tape that stifles business innovation and look to more credible ways of bringing citizens into planning their cities up front, rather than when development occurs.
We also need to be more innovative about infrastructure funding. As well as using the government bonds that so effectively paid for nation-building projects over the past 200 years, we should better utilise public-private partnerships and devise a sovereign wealth nation-building kitty to complement the Future Fund.
We need to get over the political obsession with reducing public debt to zero as capital investment builds social and economic capital for future generations.
The Federal Government has recently released separate discussion papers on population and cities. 69 percent of those surveyed by Auspoll want the Federal Government to take a much greater role in planning and investing in Australia’s cities.
The Federal Government can start by joining up its own disparate policy approaches to cities, the environment, growth and skills development by setting its own community service delivery targets and by providing more resources to COAG and Infrastructure Australia.
None of this is easy, but it can be done if we make the liveability of our cities a national priority and if governments heed the voice of the people.
Peter Verwer is the CEO of the Property Council of Australia.
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Peter Verwer |
Tuesday, 25 January 2011 1:00 AM |
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