Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to note the report from the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities. At the outset, I would note that this is government business but it appears as though the only people contributing to the noting of this report are those from the opposition. I wonder what that says in terms of the government's commitment to this area of policy?

Recommendation 29 of the report deals with the City Deals program. It talks specifically in terms of:

… developing more sophisticated interactions between the various levels of government and the private sector …

in coming up with a City Deal. That more sophisticated interaction between levels of government and the private sector, from my experience in Geelong, is exactly what has not occurred with the government's City Deals program.

There has been a high degree of dysfunction in terms of the ambitions or aspirations expressed by the federal government in relation to Geelong, compared to marrying them up with what is being pursued by the region more generally—and, indeed, by the state government. If the City Deal is to mean anything then it has to be about a better working relationship, where there is a commitment across not only the two tiers of government but stakeholders as well, including local government, about the overall program for a city. Coming from Geelong, the premium on having coordination of that kind is great.

There are, naturally, a range of competing aspirations expressed by people within our city about how they would like to see it developed, but being able to come to a place of a coordinated single voice, to come to a place of a plan which is also supported by state and federal government, will enable some progress to occur—and the better the process which gives rise to that plan the better the development in the context of the city. That's not occurring right now, and that's why Labor has talked about a City Partnerships program, because city partnerships are about trying to empower the stakeholders in the regions, the local governments, and, in the case of Geelong, organisations like G21 and the Committee for Geelong, along with the chamber and the Geelong Trades Hall, to make sure that there is input at a grassroots level about what the aspirations for our city are.

This is really important, because it's absolutely essential that, going forward in this century, we start building regional Australia. I think it is fair to say in the first century of Federation there have been some magnificent cities built in this country, but if we are to meet our destiny as a nation then cities like Newcastle, Wollongong and Geelong have to be as much a part of the national story going forward as Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. It's not going to happen unless there is this kind of coordinated, ground-up, grassroots development of plans in places like Geelong.

In Geelong, there are a couple of aspirations that have been spoken about and that are sought to be pursued by a number of stakeholders such as the Committee for Geelong, G21 and the council. I want to mention two of them today. These are the sorts of things—and it would be great, if there were ultimately government support—that we as a community would like to see come to fruition. The first is the building of a convention centre in Geelong. Already, Geelong is a fantastic place to have a convention, up to a certain number of people. It's a place which is close to major airports—Avalon, obviously, but also Tullamarine. But there's also a discreteness about having a convention in Geelong, where, when the convention finishes at 5 o'clock in the evening, you don't lose all the delegates. There are restaurants that people can go to. There is a kind of a storyline of the convention that extends beyond the working hours of nine to five.

Regional centres are actually really well placed to hold conventions. That's why Geelong's business visitor economy is already very large—in the year 2017-18 some 363,000 delegates visited Geelong—which represented almost $222 million in direct economic expenditure within our region. But our problem is that we don't have a large space that can seat, for example, a thousand people in classroom style, and, because of that, we miss out on really big conferences, national conferences of national organisations. If we had a convention centre, the natural benefits of having a convention in a place like Geelong would all be there, but we'd have a venue in which we could do it. It would represent a huge economic opportunity for a place like Geelong. Getting a convention centre in Geelong has been an aspiration of our community for as long as I've been involved in public life in Geelong. It would be precisely the kind of project which would be worthy of a partnership between governments at all levels to try and bring, ultimately, to fruition.

The second project I'd like to mention is the Geelong Waterfront Safe Harbour Precinct development project, which has been particularly championed by the Royal Geelong Yacht Club. Geelong is where it is because of Corio Bay. Our relationship with the water is innate with who we are as a city. It's why Geelong was created when it was, and the Port of Geelong is the oldest industry in our town. But there has not just been a commercial relationship with the water; there's been a lifestyle relationship with it as well—a place of recreation. Indeed, the Geelong Yacht Club was created in 1859. It was one of the first organisations in Geelong. Predating that was the first running of the Passage Race, a yacht race from Melbourne to Geelong, which is the antecedent of what is now the Festival of Sails, which happens across the Australia Day weekend and is one of the largest events in Geelong today. This boasts a sporting image that predates the Ashes and predates the Melbourne Cup. It is one of the oldest sporting events in Australia.

The Geelong Yacht Club and its environs are at the heart of Geelong's connection with the water. As the city has been redeveloped over the last couple of decades, Geelong's lifestyle qualities have become part of our economy. People who are living within the greater Port Phillip Bay metropolis are choosing to be based in Geelong and this is a huge economic opportunity for Geelong. But our connection with the water is very central to that lifestyle. The Geelong Waterfront Safe Harbour Precinct development project is about providing a centrepiece along the Geelong waterfront, at the Geelong Yacht Club, that would be at the heart of the Festival of Sails and would be the focal point of our connection as a town with Corio Bay, our connection as a town with the water.

Specifically, it would involve a new wave-attenuator, a new public pier and visitor berths, a redevelopment of Victorian Sailing School, which is a campus of the Newcomb Secondary College, a facility that provides, for 1,000 students across 59 Victorian government schools, an opportunity to engage in water safety and boating education. It would be a redevelopment of that and, through that, there would be an enhancement of the yacht club's Sailability program, which operates for people with a disability, in partnership with 12 community organisations and schools—a great, great program.

It would also improve the public realm. Right now, when you walk along the waterfront, the yacht club is kind of in the way. You can't walk through it. This would connect the waterfront and the Geelong Yacht Club together so that people walking along the waterfront can go the whole way and there would be seamless access as a result of it. It really would be a fantastic development that would help to define the lifestyle city that Geelong is increasingly becoming.

Those two projects are examples of the kind of projects that should find their way, through a collaborative approach, into some partnership between governments of all levels. Were projects of that kind to be done, it would really help in the development of our city, which is an important part of the development of regional Australia.

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