Thinking of the future
Update Newsletter number 7
July 2004
One year into a collaboration between UniSA’s Bob Hawke Prime
Ministerial Centre and the Adelaide Thinkers in Residence program, the Hawke
Centre reflects on what has been achieved.
The serious thinking got underway when the Hawke Centre co-presented the
inaugural Adelaide Thinkers in Residence public lecture in mid-2003 with
Herbert Girardet reflecting on Making Adelaide a Green City. He was
followed by creative urbanite Charles Landry who had the chance to garner
the bouquets and brickbats, giving Adelaide a constructive report card
during the second in the lecture series, at the end of his term as a thinker
in residence.
An initiative of Premier Mike Rann, the ATIR program receives $0.5m in
annual government funding until mid-2007, with other partners being asked to
contribute a further $1-2m. The thinkers – all internationally acclaimed
experts in their fields – are here to help the state move forward in areas
like urban reinvention and environmental sustainability. They also promote
SA when they return home.
"The concept is the antithesis of a consultancy," says the Property
Council's SA executive director, Bryan Moulds. "What we do too often is fly
in someone who's an expert, put them in a car and drive them around Adelaide
and then get them to tell us what we should do," he said. "Instead, what
Charles Landry did was he brought us together to start to think of Adelaide
in a different way. The ideas came out of our thinking, not just his
thinking."
Next cab off the rank was the exciting multi-media performance group Blast
Theory – ably represented by Matt Adams at the third, and packed lecture,
explaining how new media communications are affecting youth, arts and
leisure. Blast Theory also met more than 240 people through master classes,
seminars and tours.
A year on from the first Thinker, the Hawke Centre has just co-presented the
latest ATIR public lecture with natural resource management expert Professor
Peter Cullen, who spoke on Water Challenges for Adelaide in the 21st
Century, offering a 10 point survival plan to a crowd of 1000 who
attended his lecture at the Adelaide Town Hall.
Director of the Hawke Centre, Elizabeth Ho said she was pleased with the
program’s popularity in the local community. “We promote widely and
effectively, but full houses of more than 1000 per lecture prove that locals
are more than keen to hear the Thinkers directly, not through a media
filter. We can see from the post-lecture enquiries that people are actively
responding to their challenges. The Hawke Centre through UniSA also supports
public access to ATIR findings, and e-links enquirers directly into the
Thinkers’ reports and emerging results.”
Ho says some of the key results of the program so far include:
- Adelaide company Darling Graphics winning a project to deliver animation to the Museum of London
- State government plans to make plumbed rainwater tanks mandatory in new homes from July 2006
- Ensure new houses built from 2006 are designed with a five-star energy rating
- Expanding the One Million Trees program to three million trees by 2014
- Funding of the Green City project to make Adelaide a leading green city centre by 2010.
For more information about Thinkers in Residence and other Hawke Centre events, visit www.hawkecentre.unisa.edu.au
Thinker in Residence reports are available at www.thinkers.sa.gov.au