Future Brisbane: What it takes to be Australia’s third big conurbation

If South East Queensland wants to be the third global city/conurbation in Australia, this is what is required to get there, writes Bernard Salt.

Brisbane is the hub of Australia’s fastest-growing region.

It is a number of cities and communities whose time has come. It will host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is a collection of “city cogs” that all work together to create a greater living, working entity.

It is South East Queensland, or more simply SEQ.

Here is a region comprising Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba and a series of smaller towns and villages.

This story is part of The Courier-Mail’s annual Future Brisbane series that advocates for a better city and region. Read all the stories in the series here

In round numbers, SEQ has four million residents, rising to more than five million by mid-century and possibly reaching seven million by century’s end.

SEQ is now Australia’s third-largest conurbation; the others being Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong (six-million-plus) and Melbourne-Geelong (six million). But unlike the southern capitals, which spread outwards from single points of settlement, the SEQ Conurbation stretching 250km from Noosa to Kingscliff (and 130km inland to Toowoomba), was created by a fusion of cities coming together at different times over the last 200 years.

Brisbane may have been founded in the 1820s but it took 150 years for the Goldy and the Sunny to emerge on either flank. The agricultural fecundity of the Darling Downs triggered the formation of Toowoomba from 1849. The greater city of Brisbane emerged slowly as the advantages of initial settlement and gold favoured Sydney and Melbourne and their institutions.

But as the colonies united to form a first-world economic force the ever-swelling SEQ Conurbation proved irresistible to eastern seaboarders. Just as America’s middle class journeyed west along Route 66 to Los Angeles in the mid-20th century, so Australian lifestylers, tradies and aspirants pushed north along the Pacific Highway to the sunny uplands of SEQ.

Over the last half-century, lifestyle zones emerged at scale in places like Miami in the US, Europe’s Costa Brava and in Australia’s SEQ. This growth created opportunities in building, construction, infrastructure, aviation, tourism and in the delivery of services including universities, schools and hospitals.

In the coming half-century to 2075, world population will peak at 10.4 billion. In this world Australia, including Queensland, will prosper by exporting food, energy, resources to rising markets.

This will make Queensland both valuable and vulnerable.

We will need world’s best practice alliances as well as the capability to build, service and direct a variety of security apparatus; these are all opportunities for SEQ.

Sydney and Melbourne got an early start in headquartering the corporate entities that built modern Australia, and especially in banking, retail and (more recently) in superannuation.

The next iteration of Australia’s development – as a food, energy, resources and lifestyle basket to the world – provides an opportunity for SEQ to cultivate the kind of businesses that created the southern capitals’ scale and impact.

Consider this logic: if there is to be a 25 per cent increase in world population within 50 years, then perhaps Queensland should be planning now to lift exports by 30 or even 40 per cent?

In this world, Brisbane needs bigger ports and ever-evolving best-in-class logistics in order to expand.

Perhaps the opportunity for Queensland isn’t so much in foodstuffs, commodities and energy, but in building an Eagle Street-based global logistics business.

The SEQ of 2050 should aim to have two or three businesses in the Australian top 10 publicly listed companies ranked by market capitalisation. Currently the top 10 is dominated by Melbourne (4), Sydney (4) and Perth (2). Top-tier head offices create opportunities for highly skilled work. This objective could be supported by a state-sponsored program of attracting and/or cultivating emerging businesses. It could also be supported by a program of identifying and celebrating business talent.

What we do not want for SEQ 2050 is for the assets of the region, let alone of Queensland, being shaped by boardrooms based in London, Hong Kong or Silicon Valley.

And speaking of Silicon Valley, here is a global force that did not exist 50 years ago. To locals Silicon Valley is known as San Francisco’s Bay Area. Would Silicon Valley have been as successful had it retained the name, let alone the concept of The Bay Area?

Bernard Salt

If SEQ wants to be seen as, to be positioned as, the (rising) third global city/conurbation in Australia (and with aspirations of knocking off No.2 and No.1) then the question becomes, what is required to get there? Because I say that Australia generally, and Queensland specifically, should upgrade its security apparatus, and that no significant city-region can be truly considered global unless and/or until it hosts the Olympics (tick), and headquarters of a critical mass of corporate assets (in progress, surely).

Currently the most valuable corporate asset headquartered in Queensland is Suncorp, listed as the 26th most valuable business in Australia (excludes US-based businesses listed on the ASX).

If “global city” is the space SEQ wants to play in, let alone shine in – let alone win in – then I say you cannot do that while your destiny is (largely) determined by boardrooms based elsewhere.

I want a think tank dedicated to the future of Queensland, a culture that celebrates ethical business building capabilities, the creation of a global logistics business, and an ongoing discussion about SEQ as a brand. I’d like an SEQ branding that encapsulates concepts such as clean, green, smart, connected, and lifestyle-infused.

I want further investment in defence assets and infrastructure. I want SEQ to be recognised as a global business building hub and especially amongst the next generation of entrepreneurs both here and abroad.

And I want the state government to take the lead in facilitating a better future for SEQ – and for Australia.

But in order to make progress, we need to get business and community leaders as well as the broader population on board to help plan the route and destination of the SEQ 2050 train.

Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group