This site is designed to popularise knowledge around the theme of Australia’s Sustainable Development Employment Capacity
With regard to Covid 19 economic recovery, we support the ‘Smart Stimulus’ concept: using job rich infrastructure spending that generates return on investment to drive low-carbon transition. See:
Clean Energy Council and Beyond Zero Emissions Clean Stimulus Plans
Smart stimulus can create millions of jobs and accelerate our transition to zero
BZE_Million_Jobs_Plan_May_2020
A lot of good minds are working on these concepts in Australia at the moment:
For example:
The Stimulus Summit co-hosted by the Smart Energy Council and RenewEconomy on May 6: https://www.smartenergy.org.au/events/stimulus-summit-renewablesled-economic-recovery-online-event
See also Superpower: Australia’s Low-carbon Opportunity, Ross Garnaut, Black Ink 2019
This site is based on the idea that the the employment potential of low-carbon transition looks a lot more credible when job prospects are considered economy wide. It presents leading thinking on job potential in a low-carbon in a global, integrated way.
The approach is influenced by the web sites ‘The Conversation’: https://theconversation.com/au
and RenewEconomy: https://reneweconomy.com.au/
The idea is to be more specifically focused and less academic than The Conversation, and less news oriented than Renew Economy
The core content is drawn from academia, independent research organisations, business, government, civil society and the media ( mostly online)
This content is research focused, endeavouring to select the most authoritative and up-to-date reports and articles available
Over time, the plan is to add video content from these sources presenting key points of the research and articles in an engaging way.
This will include interviews and presentations along the lines of TED talks, and any other format participants like
Advocacy: The purpose of the site is to advocate for the pursuit of the themes below. They are not intended to original, and should be broad enough for acceptability to all political persuasions and economic standpoints
I hope these themes sketch out a basis for shared optimism about material progress that has eluded western societies in recent times.
The contents of this site demonstrate that Australia has a strong foundation to pursue all of these themes, but is more advanced in pursuing some than others
Key Themes
- Economic modernisation through low-carbon development
- Most jobs in a low-carbon economy will be in services sector
- Extension of service-based and higher value adding production to less developed regions (especially adding value to primary production and resources)
- Focus on construction and infrastructure to raise productivity, generate jobs and deliver return on investment
- Institutionally focused approach to innovation and economic development (see ‘About Us’ for more discussion)
- ‘Base industries’ (e.g. advanced manufacturing) generating value adding to support service industries
Social Themes
- Civilised consumer society: supply is creativity and ingenuity, demand is expression of higher human qualities
- Human potential/positive psychology – capacities of all members of society are harnessed and integrated, particularly through an emphasis on education and training
- Integration of design as a central element of innovation, value adding and quality of life – especially with regard to urban development
- Emphasis on creativity across the arts, entertainment, media, technology and engineering – as a creator of value and quality of life
Sectoral Themes
- Financial services – may not generate many new jobs overall but central to financing innovation, construction/infrastructure, projects and business in general. To avoid excessive government expenditure and involvement in the economy, the financial services sector is key to financing and investment to implement the development of other sectors.
- Caring professions – health, aged, disability, early childhood: a major employment growth area, contributing to quality of life
- Health and biomedicine: adding value and quality of life, an area of comparative advantage for Australia
- Tourism, leisure/sport: a major employer and export industry
- Agriculture and land management: focus on research for maintaining productive and environmental values in the context of climate change