By ANDREW SCOBIE*

OUR future way of life will stand on the hard work of Tasmanians revealing the value of this island’s unique attributes.  Tasmania’s future could be secure and happy, and deeply rooted in a major contribution to the world and its future.  With a falling participatory workforce, that future must be secured by significantly increasing the value of what we contribute to the nation.  It must be founded in what the world really needs.  Tasmania is blessed with the ability to do that if we choose.

It is self evident that energy, water, food, and peace of mind will become ever more precious in the future.  With care, intelligence and hard work, Tasmania can share these with the world.  Tasmanians can support the services our community needs and look after our families long into the future if we act now to unlock these precious assets.  However we need a plan.  Our community needs to openly consider our future and how to address the enormous challenges we face.

We need to stop blindly stumbling into a future we don’t understand.  We need community leadership able and willing to address these challenges.  Tasmania was never able to afford the distraction of the pork barrel, the cheap shot, and the short term.  And today we face a stark choice.  We can ask our children to pay a terrible price for our wilful ignorance of the future, or we can act together and beyond partisan self-interest, in the pursuit of a future in which all our children have the chance to prosper and enjoy our way of life.

We have two courses of action to pursue at the same time.  We know this, and to pretend otherwise would be an act of moral abrogation.  Tasmania, through its democratically elected representatives, must act to ensure we have the most effective and efficient government services in the nation.  We don’t have this now, but particularly, we must ensure the best and most cost effective health and education systems.

Simultaneously, we need to unlock the full potential of all Tasmanians.  We haven’t done this as yet, but we must educate and skill Tasmanians for our future way of life.  We must act now to sustain our future by stimulating investment in the infrastructure, built environment, and plant and equipment of a prosperous and happy Tasmania.  Key priorities for a Tasmanian renaissance are:

• Acting to make Tasmania the most competitive place to invest.
• Stimulating investment in our renewable energy future.
• Intelligently value adding our abundant water resources.
• Ensuring government that delivers budget sustainability.
• Planning reform to unlock $500 million in additional Gross State Product.
• Road, rail and port infrastructure to remove the speed bumps in our economy.
• Ensuring government services are as effective and efficient as possible.
• Nurturing and investing in our education and skills by allocating funds to the right priorities.
• Attracting young families with a world-class education system.
• Addressing population health by tackling obesity, smoking, and preventable disease.

Of course this plan is challenging.  Our future can be difficult but it can also be very rewarding.  However to suggest this is impossible, or to claim we don’t know how to carry it out would be to accept that the sum total of human knowledge and experience were crystallised only in the leadership of our community.  All of these issues have been successfully addressed elsewhere.  We know how to meet these challenges.  Ask today what is our plan, where is the evidence, and what are we going to do about it now?

The Tasmanian Treasurer established a Demographic Change Advisory Council which has delivered the community a clear analysis of population trends Tasmania faces.  We now require an independent Demographic Change Taskforce to begin to plan for the great challenges and opportunities that face our children and generations to follow.

*Andrew Scobie is the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s managing director