A shared narrative and plan for ‘Queensland’s New Economy’, driven by a key set of future economic opportunities, remains critical to ensuring we harness the full potential of our State. We seek to capitalise on our competitive advantages across a diverse portfolio of current, new and emerging industries.
Uniquely focused on Queensland-wide solutions, the QFI enables unrivalled multi-sectoral collaboration amongst Queensland’s most influential leaders and organisations, facilitating top to top engagements, evidence-based research, and expert opinion forums with a solutions led focus.
Strategic Foundations to Grow Queensland’s New Economy
The Queensland Futures Institute’s ‘Opportunities for Growth’ Report identified five strategic foundations, that if we get right, will form a solid base from which to accelerate Queensland’s economic growth. These form the basis of the QFI’s program of activity:
Developing a shared narrative for Queensland’s future economy
Queensland has been marketed in a range of different ways over the years, but these campaigns have not provided a long-term vision. Taking advantage of the new and emerging growth opportunities depends on creating a clear and powerful narrative that reflects Queensland’s strengths and communicates its future direction both within the State and externally, to the rest of Australia and the world.
Playing to Queensland’s strengths
Queensland’s economic strengths – notably resources, tourism, agriculture, construction, and education and training – have provided a strong foundation for its economy. However, many of these industries depend not only on population growth and the environment but also on global export markets, making them susceptible to ‘boom and bust’ patterns. Diversifying existing industries and creating new ones can help spread economic activity and reduce reliance on any one industry for growth. Transforming well-established industries can present new economic opportunities, particularly for regional areas which house much of the knowledge and experience in these industries.
Equipping Queensland with skills for the future
Access to talent with high quality skills is a key barrier to innovation for Australian businesses. Addressing this barrier relies in part on aligning the skills people gain from education and training providers with those being demanded by employers. If Queensland is to continue to advance its knowledge-intensive and services industries, it will need to get the skills balance right and provide education and training structures that allow workers to adapt their skills to changing workforce requirements.
Managing environmental and social barriers to growth
Queensland’s already strong resources and energy sectors can develop further opportunities from addressing the state’s key environmental challenges. To leverage these new growth opportunities, Queensland needs to get the fundamentals right by developing a long-term strategy for the energy sector, managing its international environmental commitments and securing community support for industry developments.
Supporting inclusive growth in Queensland’s regions
While focusing on a single industry has put regional economies at risk of ‘boom and bust’ patterns, it has also allowed many regions to develop strong expertise and experience in traditional industries – many of which feature in future growth opportunities for Queensland. It can be a challenge for regions to diversify their economies and pursue new and unfamiliar growth opportunities. While there is a growing culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in Queensland’s regions, this needs to be supported by investment in areas such as connectivity, digital inclusion and education to enable regional centres to leverage their existing strengths.
Building a Narrative for Queensland’s Future Prosperity
A clear and powerful narrative that reflects Queensland’s strengths and communicates its future direction is an essential foundation of a prosperous future. The following Queensland
Futures Institute programs aim to define key building blocks of this narrative.
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As Queensland emerges from almost two years of havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic there are many reasons to have optimism for the next decade. Queensland is seen as a safe place to live and to do business with a high quality of life, even during a global crisis....
Queensland and Australia need to actively pursue policies which encourage decentralisation and ensure equity for people living in major regional centres. Queensland is the most decentralised of all the mainland states, with 49 per cent of people living in the capital...
As a member of the Queensland Futures Institute, you and your organisation will be provided unrivalled access to a broad program of quality thought leadership and industry forums and engagements, strategically focused on key state economic development priorities.
The Queensland Futures Institute acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land, pays respect to Elders past and present, and extends that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Queensland.
