Think Tank: Rob Borbidge

ROB Borbidge may not be Premier of Queensland these days, but he still sits on some of the city’s most powerful boards.

Photo of former Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge for Thinktank. Pic by Richard Gosling

ROB Borbidge may not be Premier of Queensland these days, but he still sits on some of the city’s most powerful boards. He believes a slick public transport system is the key to unlocking the city’s full potential before and beyond 2018.

Rob Borbidge AO served in the Queensland Parliament from 1980 until his retirement from politics in 2001. He was the 35th Premier of Queensland, leading the State Government from 1996-98. He is currently chairman of the Board of Advice at the Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University, a member of the Council of Griffith University, a Trustee of Friends of Griffith University (inc in the US) and a Trustee of the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital.

He is chairman of Study Gold Coast, Careflight Group, Cedar Creek Cellars, senior counsel for GovStrat, a government relations company in Brisbane. He is also chairman of Embracing 2018 Advisory Committee.

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“Our responsibility is to make sure that, once the games have come and gone, the city has a lasting legacy as a result of having hosted the games.”

Rob Borbidge. Photo: Richard Gosling

What do you love about the Gold Coast?

“I love the fact that the beach and the bush are so connected.

“We also have some of the best educational and health facilities in the country and we’ve got the advantage of not being too big.”

What do you think could be done better in the city?

“Public transport has always been a problem and it’s improving but the simple reality is that our road network is strained and stressed and we have to continue to improve public transport infrastructure.

“No-one likes to spend hours each day in traffic jams and the only way that we can get around that is by having better public infrastructure and that, historically, is the great issue for Australian governments that all too often is not addressed.”

Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Legacy board chairman Rob Borbidge.

In your travels, what have you seen being done elsewhere you think could work well here?

“Now we have the light rail, we have to extend it. There are constraints on governments’ ability to do that but the more we can involve the private sector, the better.

“I just can’t see governments having the money or the resources to provide the infrastructure we need so we’re going to have to look more to the private sector.

“The trams in Melbourne have evolved into something the city could not live without.”

The then opposition leader Rob Borbidge with dairy farmer Grant Currey at his property Coomera in 2001.

If money, time laws and approvals were no issue, what is one big project you’d undertake tomorrow?

“I’d have a very fast train link between Brisbane and the Gold Coast — as in a real fast train.

“That’s a missing link in Australia. If you go to Europe, the rail networks are superb and the trains are fast, services are regular and it takes away from people the incentive to use their car because it takes longer to drive. If we could do Gold Coast to Brisbane in 30 minutes, no-one would drive.”

The then Qld premier Rob Borbidge in the Rainforest Resort in Kuranda in 1997.

What conversations should Gold Coast movers and shakers be having?

“We need to be demonstrating, particularly to southern investors, that the Gold Coast is the new Australia.

“It is now a city where education is a major industry as well as tourism.

“It’s a city where filmmaking is very important, where we make some of the best boats anywhere in the world.

“We need to get away from the old perceptions of the Gold Coast as a bit of a shallow place full of dodgy people.

“Gold Coast is a far deeper, more caring, more compassionate, more intelligent society than people give it credit for.”