MELBOURNE'S future is here. In the past decade, new professional services firms have mushroomed in inner Melbourne, becoming the state's strongest source of growth in private sector jobs, a conference on Victoria's future has been told.
The Victoria at the Crossroads conference, co-sponsored by The Age, heard that new firms in Victoria's two fastest-growing industries finance, and professional and scientific services are overwhelmingly choosing to set up in the CBD and inner suburbs, in the buzz of the city.
By contrast, new workplaces in transport, warehouses and wholesale trade are springing up in outer western and northern suburbs, along the Western Ring Road, Professor Bruce Rasmussen of Victoria University said.
These clusters of emerging industries hold the key to Victoria's future producing food, services and tourism, and education opportunities for the booming economies of Asia conference speakers agreed.
The secretary of the Department of Business and Innovation, Howard Ronaldson, said new infrastructure such as a Melbourne metro and the east-west link "is arguably the biggest single factor that will make us more productive".
Mr Ronaldson said most big cities now have metro systems, freeing up inner-city road space for commercial vehicles. Melbourne should do the same, he said: "It's a fair bet that most of the high-value-added jobs will be generated in and around the CBD. One of the big demographic shifts recently has been that close to half of all Melburnians live in the suburb they work in, or close to it."
The conference was convened by Victoria University, the Committee for Melbourne and The Age after the high dollar and high interest bills sent Victoria's economy sliding on a wide range of indicators: jobs, investment, retail and housing.
It ended, however, with a consensus that while the high dollar had created real problems for the state in the medium term, its long-term future looked good after a decade of strong growth in knowledge-intensive industries.
"When the Chinese no longer pay as much for iron ore and coal, what will we sell to the Chinese and other middle-class consumers to our north?" asked economist Saul Eslake, of Merrill Lynch. "The answer is likely to be: agricultural commodities, and commercial and personal services. Victoria is better placed than many other states to cater for the likely sources of export demand in the next 20 years."
Also at the conference, Prime Minister Julia Gillard lashed out at the Baillieu government's $300 million cut to TAFEs, using a speech on the Victorian economy to call it "crazy" and a threat to the state's competitiveness.
Ms Gillard also rejected suggestions from business and commentators that industrial relations reform was a "magic bullet" for boosting productivity, instead nominating strong education and training as a far more powerful avenue.
But Ms Gillard did not address demands for more Commonwealth infrastructure spending in Victoria, including calls from state Treasurer Kim Wells to bring money to the table for the east-west road tunnel project.
