Guest Blog by Pippa Hepburn, LEG ’22
When we started Leading Economic Growth (LEG) ten weeks ago, I was confused by the repeated assertions from Keisha and the teaching staff that they were ‘excited’. I figured, like any good laconic Australian, that they would surely tire of this pretence and I would eventually see the real people behind the energetic façade.
Ten weeks later, I’ve stopped waiting for any masks to slip. Week after week, I have been privileged to learn from brilliant, passionate people who care about their work and the communities they work for. There is no sign that the LEG team is anything other than deeply committed to economic growth for the greater good of humanity.
We are told that leadership is by example, and we should try to embody the principles we most admire. I have experienced the LEG team lead us by example to a better way of approaching our work and understanding our economic environment. They live it and they teach it – and it was obvious from the final course presentations that they have a profound effect on their students.
I was born outside Australia and raised here by rather un-Australian parents. No sports or meat pies were consumed in my household. My sense of the Australian ‘Us’ has been informed by years of careful study of my fellow citizens and I have retained a suspicion that I am not quite ‘one of Us’. However, while I completed LEG and talked with my beautiful team members Jorge, Mauro, Olivier, Sisay and Beto, I discovered just how Australian I am. I also realised that my thinking has become parochial and complacent. These realisations have opened my mind to many possibilities for personal growth and development. Far from being scared by this, I am encouraged to try harder and learn more.
In my application to LEG, I described my love for the small inland towns of the Great Southern region of Western Australia, and my concern regarding their ever-dwindling populations. I was focused on the lack of opportunities for these communities, and the vicious cycle of opportunity loss leading to emigration and further population decline.
Now that I have completed the course, I might express my concern that these small towns exist in a regional economy that is insufficiently complex, with only a few simple exports and poor access to the inputs that provide opportunities for growth. I might also risk offering the opinion that economic growth in Western Australia is not inclusive and there is insufficient State investment to improve access to these inputs in my region.
I might further suggest that, if the binding constraints such as water supply, power grid access and digital connectivity are relieved, and new industries are developed, the people in these small towns will need to ensure their own growth is inclusive. To have a truly prosperous region, we need to broaden the sense of ‘Us’ to embrace diversity and harness the knowhow that exists in the new, different, and marginalized sectors of our population. We need to stop importing people for labour and ignoring their talents and ambitions. We need to value Others and make them Us.
However, this is only my opinion. Instead of telling people what I think, I want to gather a group of representatives from around the region and ask them to join me in seeking the truths behind our situation. I will try (and fail) to muster the eloquence and vitality of Matt Andrews when discussing the complex nature of our problem. I will introduce tools such as fishbone diagrams and growth diagnostics to analyse our problem. Our group members will be inspired to reach out to others and form their own groups, expanding the circles of connection and knowledge and seeking information from many people in a coordinated yet non-hierarchical manner.
