The VECCI Blog

VECCI Ideas Forum: keeping Victoria competitive with new thinking, new ideas

Welcome to the VECCI Ideas Forum, a collaboration between business, government and the community designed to generate new ideas to keep Victoria competitive.

The Forum was held at Victoria’s Parliament House on Thursday 17 November 2011 and explored and developed new ideas to transform Victoria’s greatest assets, generating new opportunities for employment, investment and trade. 

For further information, visit www.veccinewideas.org.au.

Click here to read the live blog from the VECCI Ideas Forum

Ideas – Business Futures

• Enhancing expenditure efficiency: Conduct a review of Government expenditure that assesses opportunities for privatisation, PPPs outsourcing and the reduction of duplication of functions between the State and Commonwealth Government.
• Enhancing freight distribution efficiency: Build a second East-West link for Melbourne.  Shift to a 24 hour distribution of freight to avoid congested commuter peaks. 
• Measuring reform progress: Audit and report on the Government’s take-up and progress in implementing key recommendations contained in major VCEC inquiry reports over the past 12 months.
• Encouraging competition to lower government-business costs: Prepare an annual Victorian Government Competitiveness Statement that benchmarks government based costs to business (including fees/service charges and compliance costs).  Incorporate a forward plan for improvement.
• Explore a new model of local government funding: Review the way local government is funded by State and Federal governments and develop a new methodology that reflects trends in cost-shifting, population growth and service demand. Secure a better deal for local government and make their funding bases more predictable and sustainable.
• Linking transport modes, reducing congestion, raising liveability: Examine the feasibility of a new elevated ‘skyway’ to carry city cyclists across the CBD – a city shaping project to enhance road safety and reduce congestion.
• Exploring Bay development opportunities: Analyse and assess major development opportunities in Port Phillip Bay to include mutually coexisting tourism, commercial, recreation and environmental projects.
• Meeting our future air transport needs: Make Tullamarine Australia’s premier international gateway. Confirm the international status of Avalon airport and begin a cost/benefit analysis of a third jet airport for Melbourne south east of the City.  
• Promoting sea freight competition: Confirm support for a third stevedore for Melbourne at Webb Dock in order to enhance competition and capacity.
• Advance new construction technology applications: Examine new, more cost-effective building construction methods to improve Victoria’s cost position in this sector eg. pre-fabricated buildings.

Ideas – People Futures

• Aligning workplace laws to workplace needs: Push for wider reform of the Fair Work Act minimum hours provisions and examine the scope to provide payroll tax reductions as an incentive to alleviate pressures on work-life balance and our public transport system.
• Promoting health as a key export: Build health care capacity by exporting health services to overseas customers who can visit Victorian hospitals for paid procedures (a similar concept to overseas education).
• Attracting entrepreneurs: Establish a new Australian Entrepreneur Visa category for people with great business ideas and the finance to back these ideas – here! Adopt the slogan: ‘The Decade of the Entrepreneur’ and establish the means to support its enacting.
• Retaining our best and brightest: Examine how we might attract and retain more skilled workers and university graduates from our skilled worker visa program and our foreign student education program. Build on the State Government’s International Student Information Day.
• Extending education reform: Examine extending the market-based reforms of TAFE to the primary and secondary school systems so that `market forces’ stimulate improvements in the quality of education. 
• Realising minerals boom opportunities for Victorian VET: Examine the commercial opportunities for the VET sector associated with the Australian resources boom and prepare a plan to maximize the return to the state.
• Disseminating knowledge: Develop strategic knowledge clusters in areas of current or developing economic strength eg. Aviation Academy. 
• Getting the best from our youth: Better utilise existing work experience arrangements to facilitate career path exploration in industry that may link to school-based apprenticeships or VET in-school arrangements.

Ideas – Regional Futures

• Leveraging technology to significantly shift the way we live and work: Ascertain the extent to which the NBN will facilitate a paradigm shift in working remotely – whether as an employee or business owner. Remove OHS barriers to realising these opportunities.
• Making our regions more ‘investment ready’: Develop a Regional Victoria Investment Development Profile that highlights the top 10 regional and rural ‘investment ready’ infrastructure projects. 
• Strengthening regional project approvals: Implement a Major Projects Act that streamlines and fast-tracks planning approvals for major regional projects along the lines of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act.
• Understanding regional cost advantages: Undertake a cost-benchmarking study to determine the comparative cost of doing business in different parts of regional Victoria in order to facilitate efficient investment and locational decision-making.
• Promote regional natural assets and their opportunities: Support the implementation of Natural Icon Infrastructure Projects in regional Victoria as identified by the State Government and enhance the promotion of regional Victoria as a destination rich in nature-based experiences.
• Regional event attraction: Assist our regions to capitalise on a number of major events that occur nationally or in our part of the world, showcasing Victoria’s regional attractions and investment opportunities.
• Growth through government decentralisation: Implement a timetable to action the ongoing regionalisation of Federal and State Government departments and agencies to support regional employment opportunities.
• Resolving regional land-use tensions: Resolve, as a matter of priority, emerging land use tensions in regional Victoria associated with zoning issues and complications arising from alternative land use interests among different regional stakeholders. 
• Overcoming regional barriers to post-compulsory education: Address barriers to higher educational participation in rural and regional towns by promoting the benefits of education; widening the range of educational programs available locally; and expanding local access to educational technologies, academic support and learning resources.

For information on VECCI’s previous advocacy campaigns, including the 2011 Victorian Budget, click here.