Townsville City Council
Townsville City Council
Submission to
Inquiry into the Australian Government’s Role in the Development of Cities.
Townsville City Council August 2017
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Townsville City Council
Executive Summary
The Townsville community is proud of the city’s reputation as the capital of Northern Queensland, being one of Australia’s leading defence cities, with a strong education base, the home of Australia’s first ‘City Deal’, and an expected population growth that will exceed the state average. Townsville City Council has, and will continue to, play a strong role in guiding the development of the city and region to suit the aspirations and needs of our populace. In assessing the Federal Government’s critical role in the ongoing and future development of cities, it should also be recognised that Local Government play a key role in the delivery of services and functions that contribute to the identity of regions, which may not be necessarily undertaken in metropolitan areas. As a regional city in northern Australia, it will be highly beneficial for all levels of Government to address the promotion of development in regional centres, promotion of private investment into regional cities (including the potential competitive advantages for businesses), and identification of the regulatory barriers that are hindering economic attraction and retention. Infrastructure requirements underpin urban planning decision making in regional areas, and to ensure long-term financial sustainability the identification of requirements surrounding reliable/affordable transport, clean energy, water and waste are key factors for strategic planning and master planning functions within Local Government. Townsville City Council, following on from the ‘City Deal’, has recently adopted a Masterplan for the City (drafted by Pure Projects), which outlines several areas for growth, re-visioning of the largest regional city in Northern Australia, and addresses long-term recreational and liveability issues as well as greening of the city, cultural activation, and transport. The identification of future trajectories for regional cities and towns within Australia to direct towards more sustainable urban futures (including reduction in water, energy and resource consumption) will be highly beneficial in long-term planning for the growth of Australia, through ensuring that regional centres are destinations and places for homes of choice as populations continue to increase across the country, and thusly reduce growing impacts on capital cities. Townsville City Council appreciates the opportunity to contribute to the current Inquiry and would also be most interested to participate in any future regional Committee hearing on the ‘Australian Government’s Role in the Development of Cities’.
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Townsville City Council
1. Sustainability transitions in existing cities
Townsville represents a unique component of Australia’s regional populace, being the 18th largest local government area in Australia, having a population of over 190,000, housing Australia’s largest garrison at Lavarack Barracks, retaining an internationally renowned University, an international port and airport, and being highly recognisable as the Capital of Northern Australia. The economies of many Australian regional centres, including Townsville, are currently transitioning from traditional industry strengths in mining and manufacturing to service based industries and new technologies. Townsville has emerging and innovative industries in renewable energy, tropical science and health. Moreover, its proximity to the fast growing Asia-Pacific region makes it a natural access point for developing new international markets for these emerging industries. Support for the promotion of regional centres would help utilise the expertise and products being developed regionally, as well as facilitating greater international access through business exchanges and first- hand development programs. Townsville City Council was awarded the first City Deal in Australia in December of 2016, and this exemplifies the willingness of the Federal Government to work with Council on key initiatives that will assist in achieving focus areas, including: job creation; economic growth; and vibrancy, all of which are key areas within the City Deal implementation. The support for enhancing liveability, sustainability, and urban infrastructure to regional cities including Townsville will orchestrate the Council and Federal Governments partnership by working towards the focus areas and outcomes within Australia’s first City Deal. As long ago as 1999, the Inquiry into Infrastructure and the development of Australia’s regional areas observed the following: “Providing North Queensland with a price competitive power supply through the development of a base load power station and the development of transmission infrastructure for the supply of natural gas into North Queensland are key infrastructure requirements. Competitively priced energy is a critical factor in attracting new value-added industries to Townsville. Without a base load power station in North Queensland there will be limited opportunity for significant industrial development in this part of the State. Apart from power generation, there are many downstream value-adding gas opportunities that will be forfeited if gas is not delivered to the North Queensland Region.” Some eighteen years have passed and Northern Australia still lacks a base-load power station, while it has the highest electricity prices in Australia and a community that is in a state of “Energy Stress”, increasingly unable to pay for electricity. Businesses are closing as input costs rise and investment is drying up because of the lack of energy security and escalating energy prices. Queensland energy prices have tripled while energy prices in the United States of America have halved over the same period. Low cost energy drives manufacturing and jobs growth: Northern Australia is presently not seeing these flow-on benefits. Strategic Planning and Design fields are a keystone in ensuring liveable and enjoyable cities/towns, and from this perspective an overarching non-mandatory framework led by the Federal Government would assist in the identification of broader issues within the fields, and a ‘how to’ approach for
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Townsville City Council regional areas. With regards to the “Sustainability transitions in existing cities” inquiry, the following are therefore recommended for the committee’s consideration: Undertaking research into international and national best practice in sustainable urban development, in association with peak industry bodies. A number of Australian capital cities are consistently in the top 10 world cities when it comes to liveability. The lessons learnt (successes and challenges) should be captured and shared. Undertaking research on megatrends, in order to stay on the leading edge of urban development. Regional Australia operates under the influence of vastly different factors when compared to metropolitan and capital city areas, including differences in economics, workforce profiles, industry and education availability, the ‘tyranny’ of distance to other centres, as well as retention of individual identities that make regional cities and towns unique across the country. Infrastructure support is a key issue for the regions, and With respect to the “Growing new and transitioning existing sustainable regional cities and towns” inquiry, the following are suggested: Given the vast distances between regional cities and towns, the role of telecommunications is critical and should be considered in addition to traditional infrastructure. Providing equitable government funding for infrastructure in regional cities (and to connect cities) will be critical – it will not be sufficient to just promote private investment. An examination of the interrelationships and links to other programs and initiatives, e.g. Developing Northern Australia and City Deals, must be considered and opportunities to streamline and coordinate must also be pursued. Promote regional cities and their development through research (e.g. the vital role they play in relation to their surrounding regions) and making findings widely available and in a format accessible to the public at large. There has been too much of a focus on the capital cities to date. Promoting continued location of Federal and State administrative functions in regional centres (there would appear to be an increasing centralisation of such functions). Regional city support from the Federal Government is a key factor in ensuring that large scale programs that lead to both sustainable economics and liveability are brought to fruition. The Commonwealth Government has supported the regional local government of Townsville City Council in a number of significant city sustainability building and environmental initiatives in past 10 years, often with catalytic funding Commonwealth (Australian Government). These are: 1. Townsville Solar City – $ 15 million invested by the Commonwealth towards a key community-business-government based partnership with energy utility (Ergon Energy) and local government (Townsville City Council) – see notes attached, including linking info on other projects catalysed by this project. 2. Townsville Network Demand Management Pilot – 30 MW demand reduction combined across city achieved (see attached document) 3. Energy Transformation Townsville - $ 800k invested by Commonwealth in dollar for dollar project across city in smart street lighting, energy efficiency, smart technology integration and sensor development, citizen engagement and energy demand management.
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Townsville City Council
4. Creek to Coral Partnership - $ 2.3 million invested from Commonwealth through a number of projects leading to Townsville (Black-Ross) Water Quality Improvement Plan (WQIP); and Capacity Building across coastal catchments in coastcare, landcare, and bushcare including community groups. Townsville City Council itself has initiated and linked our own locally funded projects and collaborations, often integrated with Commonwealth agencies and education institutions (e.g. James Cook University). This includes the Townsville Smart City Projects – initially in partnership with IBM (IBM Smarter City Challenge Award) - which associated IBM Research Projects (Water utility and residential water use data collection and visualised analytics to residents; and Pre-cooling) and smarter city projects, incorporated into the Commonwealth funded project (Energy Transformation Townsville). This has all led to the Townsville Smart Infrastructure and Sustainable Energy (SISE) Framework being integrated into the Townsville City Deal and especially critical to energy management and resilient city building projects and activities. Regional areas have a prime opportunity to leverage off emerging trends, such as growth in renewable energy sector in and around Townsville City and North Queensland Region. There is a market opportunity for growing industry from sensors, designed machinery and equipment bespoke to smaller categories of design and production. Co-located infrastructure requires consideration and single interest utilities (power and water) need to consider how they work together in future for load curtailment and energy demand reduction, arising from opportunities to reduce/shed load. The energy market is a key area which may present a barrier in promoting the long-term sustainability of regional cities when compared to capital centres, and parity in pricing across various regions is a topic that must be looked at to safeguard regional centres, including addressing price on carbon and other related matters. Much infrastructure offers real time savings in electricity use and demand reductions – however local, State and National barriers exist to how energy is utilised and managed. For example replacing existing Street Lighting with tropicalised LED lighting that is permitted under existing regulations offers immediate reductions in annual costs of electricity and demonstrated the use of lighting for other purposes like digital infrastructure applications and street lights There is at present the potential for a multitude of Council-Private partnerships that will assist in ongoing sustainable development within regional areas, which can be catalysed by Federal Government financial support, and removal of red-tape. Townsville City Council has successful led such programs at a local scale in the past, that have led to a measurable injection of economic activation, as well as sustainable energy use, renewable energy implementation and increasing liveable conditions within our regional city. One such program is the ‘Townsville: Queensland Solar City’, and a briefing paper is included at Attachment 1 which outlines the program.
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Townsville City Council
2. Growing new and transitioning existing sustainable regional cities and towns.
Regional populations, particularly in North Queensland are projected to experience growth over the coming decade and cities such as Townsville are historically and presently hubs for the greater regional areas, facilitating primary industry (including agriculture and mining) and smaller economies through direct freight, transport and access to capital city and international populations. One of the challenges to be faced across Australian regional areas is the sustaining of populations and their growth through activation of local economies. The promotion of competitive advantages to regional locations such as Townsville will greatly assist in bolstering the local economy through direct injection to SME’s within the city, as well as assisting in achieving a long-term permanent population to benefit the entirety of the region through maintaining a thriving hub for business, freight and commerce. A program of Federal Government led transitioning of existing sustainable regional cities would demonstrate that Australia’s regional centres are attractive and functional places for individuals and families to live and work, offering significant lifestyle advantages. These include a cost of living that is considerably lower than in Australia’s major capital cities. For example, the average house price is approximately 17% lower in centres like Townsville than in South East Queensland, while average household incomes are just 5.0% lower than in South East Queensland. Regional centres, such as Townsville, which has the largest economy and population of any city in Northern Australia, will play a significant role in Australia’s continued urbanisation into the future, by presenting alternative living to capital cities whilst still providing residents with key infrastructure and lifestyle benefits of living in an urban environment. In this sense, transitioning and development of regional locations such as Townsville supports a sustainable population policy by focusing growth away from increasingly congested capital cities. Major regional centres are sufficiently large to have a critical mass of demand to sustainably support a wide range of economic and community infrastructure, facilities and services, as well as community, sport and recreation groups and activities. As such, they function as primary service centres for key economic and employment resources in outlying regional areas of Queensland, including significant agriculture, mining and manufacturing operations. They facilitate economic diversity and resilience throughout regional Australia, by providing a broad range of services not otherwise viable in smaller rural communities. Townsville, for example, is recognised as the economic and service hub of the broader North Queensland region totalling approximately 240,000 people. The investment of greater Federal Government activity in centres like Townsville represents an investment in critical, cost-effective nodes of concentrated service provision, enabling higher levels of service to be accessed throughout regional Australia. New and existing generations, when considering relocating or staying within a regional area, are looking for convenience, immediacy and a range of services available including:
efficient and effective public transport; connected digital landscapes (WiFi/LoFi and a range of digital networks and data access for all types of devices and applications);
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Townsville City Council
public air connections to other service centres from Hong Kong; Singapore; Denpasar etc. and including Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in particular. Public air connections are for both pleasure and work. Fast air and or rail routes mean weekends away and day or work trips of a short duration are possible. Therefore regional areas can leverage off the relative ease of transport around the smaller cities, where adequate frameworks and planning are provided to ensure a cheap, reliable and sustainable traffic and public traffic network in addition to access to a national and/or international travel options. State and Federal Governments’ have committed to significant investment in roads and public transport in capital cities throughout Australia in recent years, including from the Gold Coast to Brisbane and to add more trains across the river into the Central Business District. The Cross River Rail project in Brisbane will cost over $5.50 billion dollars for a 10 kilometre rail link, not including new trains. In New South Wales, the Government (over the next four years) has committed to spend more than $73 billion building Light Rail in Sydney, Parramatta and Newcastle. In Victoria the Government will spend over $30 billion to build the Metro Tunnel to free up the space to run more trains in and out of the city. In round figures, $110 billion will be spent in the southern capitals on rail transport alone, not to mention roads and other essential public services and utilities such as reliable and affordable natural gas supplies. Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne are suffering housing stress, where people are battling to save a deposit let alone the repayments for their first home. Every day we read or hear about the prohibitive prices of houses and apartments in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. For instance, the median price for homes in the December 2016 quarter was:
$1,123,994 in Sydney, $ 795,447 in Melbourne, $ 655,000 in Brisbane and $ 337,500 in Townsville. With significant support for the identification and funding of infrastructure requirements in regional cities such as Townsville, including clean energy (with Townsville being a prime location for solar, and having several significant large scale renewable energy programs underway), affordable transport, it will open the potential for growth within an already sustainable regional location which possesses a higher level of affordability that southern capitals, while maintaining high levels of livability. In Northern Australia the following could be considered to underpin long-term sustainability:
The investment of part of the Federal Government’s $64.5 billion in tax cuts for businesses redirected into Northern Australia infrastructure to sustain a population that can deliver on our potential to be a part of the Asian food bowl. Townsville has an International deep- water port and an international airport less than eight hours from South East Asia and two thirds of the world population. The potential for Northern Australia to be a 21st century Silicon Valley with innovation and high technology industrial parks that attract leading-edge investment into Northern Australia and grows exports to South East Asia.
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Townsville City Council
A Special Economic Zone as a major catalyst to diversify our national economy, drive regional innovation and change the population base forever. It is well known that private sector investment is liquid and flows to the lowest point of resistance or the highest rate of return. Northern Australia is competing every day for capital investments against overseas destinations that offer far more than we do and are far more aggressive in chasing investment opportunities. In 2010 the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) had flagged the potential for a Special Economic Zone, but it has not as yet come to fruition. To quote a 2012 IPA Media Release: ”The North Australia Project has been calling for a Special Economic Zone in North Australia for over two years. It is gratifying to see this idea gain the wider recognition it deserves.” ”Any Economic Zone in North Queensland should be incorporated into a wider zone covering all of North Australia. Problems identified with current arrangements in Queensland – like the disconnect between local needs and Canberra and Brisbane based decision-making – apply equally to the Northern Territory and the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia.” ”If North Australia is going to break out of its underdeveloped and under populated malaise, it needs a new vision for a system of governance that empowers local communities, attracts investment and human capital, and unshackles North Australians from the red- and green- tape imposed on them by southerners.” A new Special Economic Zone will have the potential to make it far more attractive for investor attraction to Northern Australia. This means getting rid of burdensome regulation, tapping into unused water resources and ensuring competitively priced power. Mr. Paul Bell, the former President of the Local Government Association of Queensland, was right to identify, “red tape as a major barrier to economic development in the North”. A holistic review of potential red tape that may be preventing sustainable investment in North Queensland would be beneficial in ensuring long term livability and industry presence in Townsville and the region. Northern Australia needs reliable, affordable energy together with long term pricing paths so that energy heavy manufacturing has a line of sight on cost inputs for at least 10 years, and associated population growth is supported. We also need affordable and reliable water for both urban and agricultural use, something that is currently missing in North Queensland. Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Demand Management and Behaviour Change are all interlinked in how a city develops from an infrastructure perspective:
Reliability and affordability come with strong resilient communities connected into their landscape form (wind direction/ sun angles, and retention of treed landscapes in public areas and in strong urban form. Concentrating the built environment and reinforcing existing city strengths to transition into a greater level of sustainability. Replacing failing infrastructure. Investing in people as well as infrastructure – the social relationships between entrepreneurs, commercial businesses – creating and achieving trust builds effective relationships.
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Townsville City Council
Townsville City Council has mitigated, to a degree, the impacts of successive annual electricity price increases by implementing energy conservation and management opportunities saving $1 million a year. With the new changes to electricity retail tariffs (especially demand charges) effective as of 1st July 2016, council’s electricity bill is again expected to rise by 12-15 percent. Other tariff components include daily supply charge and consumption costs. The most effective, affordable and social-acceptable way to reduce this cost is to implement a ‘systems approach’ of measures that when combined will generate greater energy reductions and cost savings than what would have been achieved by implementing measures without considering the relationships between them. “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” -Aristotle The Townsville Solar City Project demonstrated this model which integrated energy efficiency (e.g. white roofs), demand management and behaviour change (e.g. thermal storage and changing time- of-use) and renewable energy (e.g. roof top solar panels). Townsville’s Solar City Project in combination with the Network Demand Management pilot achieved a city-wide 60MW installed solar, 44,270MWhs of energy savings and a reduction of 22MW of electricity demand on the network. What this means in financial terms is over $100 million of capital deferral of network infrastructure, as well as building a knowledge and skills base for Townsville residents, businesses and council to further implement similar projects for the community. With electricity prices rising, the cost of solar dropping, and smart energy efficiency technology now available, it is imperative that Council considers a strategic approach that integrates energy efficiency, demand management and renewable energy into capital works and operations so that we stop wasting money and electricity where we don’t need to. Council has completed a significant amount of work over the past 6 months (and previous 10 years commencing during Townsville Solar City Project) on a Townsville Solar City Renewable Energy Strategy which will drive a city-wide transformation through the integration of energy efficiency, demand management and renewable energy. This work is further developed through both 10 year capex for Environmental Services - energy conservation measures (ECMs), and incorporated across council projects and services (BAU).
Figure 1: Framework for Townsville Solar City Renewable Energy Strategy Aside from demonstrating how a Council (through partnerships) can achieve real savings and energy sustainability, the Townsville Solar City Renewable Energy Strategy is an inclusive and comprehensive ‘systems-approach’ that provides opportunities to reduce hardship and pressure of rising electricity costs in our city. The strategy represents existing co-design, resident-centric services that provide opportunities for growth and resilience that has long lasting impacts and supports economic development. It’s a plan for jobs, and building community-business skills (Figure
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Townsville City Council
1). The opportunities to be developed include investment in renewable energy / energy efficiency that create jobs and adaptation, shifts and remobilises resources, which create a truly integrated approach to evolution of regional cities (Figures 2 and 3).
Figure 2 (above): Townsville Smart City Solar City Physical and Digital Relationships.
Figure 3 (below): Townsville Resilient Sustainable City Evolution.
Over the past 10 years, half the jobs created in Australia have been created within a two-kilometre radius of the CBDs of Melbourne and Sydney. The Courier Mail recently reported that 13,500 jobs had been created in Brisbane and over the same time 43,300 jobs have been lost across the rest of Queensland. Townsville has an unemployment rate over 9% and youth (15yrs to 24yrs) unemployment just under 30%. Northern Australia would welcome a plan that included measures to tackle unemployment within the region, such as:
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Townsville City Council
significant tax incentives for businesses to relocate to Northern Australia and regional taxation concessions for employees; and provisions and support for 250,000 to 300,000 thousand people currently living in greater Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the ACT move to Northern Australia with a job, through promotion and support to regional centres.
Townsville City Council would welcome the opportunity to participate and contribute further to the Committee’s inquiry into regional development and decentralisation. For further information on the issues discussed in this submission, please feel free to contact: Mr. James Ruprai Head, Future Cities Townsville City Council 07-4727 9422 [email protected]
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