Apple Isle - Again

TASMANIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Thursday September 20

I am here tonight to put to you a very simple proposition -

Australia is “the best place in the world for business, culture and living”.

And I am going one step further –

Tasmania is at the premium end of this proposition and about to take the lead with the remarkable opportunity of first mover advantage with the roll out of the National Broad Band Network.

Australia is the best place in the world to live and work because of our community and our geography – our people and our place.

Our people are our greatest asset in this incredible country - you can start at the bottom and finish at the top. And that is going to continue to make us as good, if not better, than country in the world. This is the Australian way, this is the people that we are - trusting and helping of each other and determined to succeed for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Wave after wave of migration has filled this country with people who have very powerful motivations to make their life, and more importantly their children’s lives, better than it was before. We are a combination of people from over 200 countries and still less than 250 years old by one measure and 60,000 by another. We are one nation – and that is a huge advantage in a world where so often, what passes for a nation, is a deeply divided, unjust and corrupt society.

And our sense of justice is at the heart of our cultural make up. The idea of a “fair go” has imbued and inspired generation after generation and given enormous strength to our most defining and unifying characteristic – our rare and priceless democracy.

No matter how self critical we might be, no matter how much we might be, from time to time, the “knockers” of our own self generated folk lore, no matter how many tall poppies we might have a go at, in the end we are an informal and fair-minded people by world standards with few serious divisions and a real belief the democracy and rule of law.

In addition to our people, our geography is also one of our great assets.

We are in the 6 hour Asian time zone which will be the engine room of economic and cultural development for the next 50 years.

This region will become a much bigger economy that the US within our children’s life time.

Add to this the fact that we have vast open regional areas that are environmentally clean by world standards.

So to put it simply – any place where you can drink the water, not get mugged going to work and don’t have to bribe people to get what is rightfully yours is light years ahead of most of the rest of the world.

But we do face real challenges.

In 2003 I gave the Andrew Ollie lecture in Sydney. In that lecture I said that we were about to leave our children five very great burdens if we don’t act decisively and imaginatively.

1. Poorer employment prospects

2. A poorer education system.

3. A housing and land crisis in the major cities

4. Major water and environmental problems

5. and a collapsing health system

We simply can’t go on having 70 % of our population crowding into a handful of eastern seaboard cities.

We can’t just rely on digging up raw natural resources and shipping them to other parts of the world. And, as well all know, the days of “riding on the sheep’s back” are over for ever.

But all challenges exist to be overcome.

True progress that can realise and sustain the hopes and dreams we have for the future must use our natural advantages to solve the challenges that present themselves

Let me bring this together now – first for Australia and secondly for Tasmania.

Transport and communications was what opened up Australia to enable our economy become what it is today. The road and rail network, and the early telegraph lines and telephone system of the old PMG made our economy possible. Remember – it was the railway that created the US

Broadband is the new road, rail and phone system in one tiny cable.

I come from the world of advertising and marketing. Let me tell you a few things about my world which is going to affect yours in a very big way.

From the beginning of my career, TV has been the major force in the advertising industry but that is now changing rapidly.

We spend 8 hours asleep, 8 hours working and 8 hours with the media.

For the past 40 years, our 8 hours with the media was dominated by TV which changed everything about our lives – our tastes, our news, our products, our sense of our selves and our economic, social and cultural opportunities.

Now, as we enter the digital age, this 8 hour contact time with the media is going to change again and range radically. It will produce change and opportunity that we can’t fully imagine today.

If we are not smart in this instantly global environment we will have no chance of building a better future for our kids and their kids – we will have no chance of meeting the challenges I listed in the Andrew Ollie lecture six years ago.

The digital world is no sci fi dream or romance. It is here now.

Right now, 14% of advertising is on-line – bigger than magazines and radio. Within just 8 years it will grow to 25% and that will come from TV and Newspapers. Already the classifieds have gone to the internet.

As I said to a publishing group earlier this week, if you don’t get the digital age then leave the building, leave the city, leave the planet.

We are fortunate that the Federal Government has seen the potential and the necessity for Australia to rapidly improve its capacity in the new digital world.

This brand new era for Australian is about to have its dawn right here in Tasmania – Tasmania has been delivered first mover advantage in the biggest economic, social and cultural revolution to hit Australia since the first bullock track from Melbourne to Sydney became a dirt road and the first Morse messages were tapped out from Adelaide to Darwin.

I am sure that the powers that be in all sectors in Tasmania are hard at work making plans to turn this advantage into real long term benefits for the people of this lucky State.

You are about to become the high tech hotspot of the South Pacific and your well honed sense of isolation is about to be blown away.

You are about to become a magnet for people and businesses wanting to deal with the world via the internet – and who doesn’t – only the neo dinosaurs and neo luddites whose inevitable extinction is much closer than they realise.

History has shown us that when the conditions that inspire opportunity exist, entrepreneurial people flock to particular cities and regions and transform them.

J S Bach’s musical genius transformed the tiny city of Lietzberg into the world capital of western music, Montpellier in France became world leader in medicine in the 19^th century and at the turn of this millennium Ireland became an international capital in the emerging hi tech world.

In the 13 century Angkor in Cambodia grew to be city of 100,000 people while London was a back water with 30,000 due to its intellectual leadership in the great religion of Buddhism.

In the 21^st century, this new digital world that we are inextricably part of, breaks down the barriers of time and space – “the old tyranny of distance” if you like, that we have been so fond of using as an excuse for not engaging with the rest of the world.

Regional areas all over the world have the potential to come into their own in the digital age. Look what has happened in the US on its north east seaboard around Seattle and San Francisco – Google, Microsoft and Apple. These are the global products and innovations of one small region on the planet that was once regarded as a backwater.

And you in Tasmania are already underway – you had the first digital only commercial TV network in the country and you have the very best example in Australia of creative young minds using the internet and ploughing both their revenue and their intellectual capital into this community - its Mona - David Walsh’s multi million dollar Museum of Old and New Art – Australia’s largest privately owned and funded museum. And this is just the beginning.

It’s important to remember that this revolution, which will begin here, is not just about “business” in that far too limited sense of the word. It will stimulate all sectors of Tasmania society directly and indirectly. It will revolutionise the capacity of schools to deliver truly relevant education. It will enable hospitals to provide world leading innovations for your health care and it will encourage creative people of all kinds to develop their products right here for global consumption.

As American economist Richard Florida says “in today's idea-driven economy, it's time costs that really matter. With the constant pressure to be more efficient and to innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So the most efficient and productive regions are the ones in which people are thinking and working – not sitting in traffic."

He goes on to say

“Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steelmaking.”

This is your future – make the most of it – for your children’s sake – and their children’s sake.

And while we are thinking about our children and our grandchildren and their capacity to be creative and prosperous into the future, listen carefully to this quote and see if you can tell me who said it

As tools for learning, the arts and humanities have a positive impact on our children's cognitive development, their confidence, and their motivation. As we face the challenges of a new era, the arts and humanities will be vital to a future of innovation, opportunity and hope.

--George W. Bush, President of the United States

The most conservative American President in living memory was not a natural ally of the so called “soft” education options and the touchy feelies of the arts world.

What hard headed conservative George Bush knew and was that innovation from information and communications technology is the biggest single driver of business productivity.

It has been estimated that it drives around 80% of productivity gains in the service and manufacturing sectors.

George also knew that American civilization depends on the civilising forces of creativity and the arts and humanities just as much as the sciences and our abilities to effectively and productively organise ourselves.

The same is true for the entire world – including Tasmania – the old “apple isle”.

I can see some of you flinch.

But who would have thought that this old rejected slogan and image would be reborn as one of the most potent brand names in this brand new world.

So nurture this new specie of apples and it will become it will become one of the powerful brain foods on earth. It will make everything in Tasmania healthy – including your wallets.

Good luck to you first movers – make the most of it.