19th July 2012
Geelong: identifying new economic opportunities
Traditional manufacturing centres in Australia and Britain continue to evolve as global supply chains are transformed. Geelong, Victoria’s second city, is responding to challenges which would be familiar in many British cities. Employment has been declining in its historical large manufacturing sectors like car-making and aluminium-smelting, not helped by the strong Australian dollar. Ford announced some further cuts this week. Geelong’s go-ahead city council briefed me on their plans to stimulate the growth sectors of the future, including a new convention centre, a cultural precinct and a pier to attract cruise ships. Their success in revitalising the attractive foreshore augurs well for their efforts .
I had a very interesting round table discussion with the Mayor John Mitchell, local officials, business leaders and the Vice Chancellor of local university Deakin. As in Britain, successful future industries will be heavily research-based, like health care. With competition for key labour from the booming mining states, Geelong has an active programme of sponsoring migrants from overseas in areas of specific skills shortage. The UK is one of the source countries.
We also discussed how city centres have to respond to the shift of retailers to out of town shopping malls, leaving behind a rash of “pound shops” or “$2 shops” as they are called here. A Geelong team had recently visited the UK to look at some good examples of city centre regeneration in Birmingham (retail) and Newcastle (cultural).
A visit to Geelong’s impressive National Wool Museum was a reminder that economic evolution is nothing new. A major export industry from the 1830s, the wool trade financed many of Geelong’s handsome Victorian buildings. As recently as 1970, Australia had 180 million sheep and wool was the country’s top export.
Like many industrial cities, Geelong is fiercely proud of its local footy team, the Cats. They’re the team I have been supporting since arriving in Australia, which proved to be a great choice last year when they won the AFL Grand Final. Unfortunately, last Saturday I saw them defeated by the mighty Collingwood – “the team everyone loves to hate”. Geelong CEO Brian Cook (British-born, as it happens) showed me round the stadium and training ground, and described how the league works. Unlike soccer in the UK, there are a number of measures including a draft system and salary caps which aim to reduce the differentials between the different teams. It’s a great sport which I love to have the chance to watch on visits to its Victorian heartland.