No agency seems to understand economic statistics and in particular Destination NSW reinforced the misunderstanding about the effects of the October '13 bushfires. At stake are matters of national and State significance. Ecologically Sustainable Development principles are failing in what has become an eco-reactionary polity. The vitality of the business sector needs to be revived, employment and training strengthened, and housing provided to support mainstreets and to reduce the Tombstone appearance of Katoomba in particular.
In Tourism Districts such as the Blue Mountains, it is essential to realise that local interests can kill progress due to self-interest and that inadequate leadership in state-level agencies and lobbies has to be transparent and accountable to broad membership and cynical electorates. Targets have to be imposed and enforced.
As the local marketplace is resistant of reform, change must come through the sort of process proposed by ReviveBlueMountains, articulated through Victoria's Regional Cities Growth Strategy Framework, and extolled by Malcolm Turnbull:
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If you want anyone to change, you have to persuade them they have a problem. Then you have to explain the solution (July 2014).
The principles and theories of economics talk about competitive markets being the highest form of society. They also expose the ill-effects of monopoly and oligopoly whether on the business or labour side. In the Blue Mountains the dysfunctional outcomes include economic decline, a $140,000,000 penalty to families and businesses, and questionable developments. There was also a calamitous failure by a NSW regulator, over misleading rating information being accepted, which exposes a more general laxity in NSW governance arrangements. NSW cannot succeed without genuine reform in regional contexts.
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About the Author
Robert Gibbons started urban studies at Sydney University in 1971 and has done major studies of Sydney, Chicago, world cities' performance indicators, regional infrastructure financing, and urban history. He has published major pieces on the failure of trams in Sydney, on the "improvement generation" in Sydney, and has two books in readiness for publication, Thank God for the Plague, Sydney 1900 to 1912 and Sydney's Stumbles. He has been Exec Director Planning in NSW DOT, General Manager of Newcastle City, director of AIUS NSW and advisor to several premiers and senior ministers.