Random examples of potentially significant external trends / events,
apparently not considered, include:
a recent Commonwealth report (Developing Australia - A Regional
Perspective) suggested regional development machinery primarily
responsible to Commonwealth Government agencies;
social development has been just as important to the development of East
Asian societies as has economic factors. Only with the emergence of a middle
class is it being seen as possible to relax the autocratic political style
on which their rapid progress depended (Funbashi Y, 'Asia's great
Awakening', Weekend Australian, 15-16/1/94). In SE Queensland, the
middle class is declining, which could reduce political stability and thus
reduce economic effectiveness;
Australia's security status is being re-assessed less favourably (Dibb P.,
'Asia's Simmering Cauldron could Soon Boil Over', Australian,
19/11/93);
Air cargo airport complexes surrounded by industrial sites are
increasingly being seen as means to address global markets (Whittington D.,
'Joining the Jet Set', Planning, Sep 1993, pp22-23);
a global business culture may be emerging as one key to participation in
global markets because a common culture enhances co-ordination within
enterprises (Mirow M., Competing in Global Industries: Why the Ground Rules
are Changing', Siemens Review, 6/90);
recent studies suggest that land use and transport changes can have a much
smaller effect on pollution than can technological changes (Bae C., 'Air
Quality and Travel Behaviour', Journal of the American Planning
Association, Winter 1993, pp65-74). Creating Our Future
suggested the former approach;
Australia is currently being urged to develop closer relationships in Asia
despite the near universal inability to understand the radically different
cultural basis on which such societies and economies operate. Taking only
one example, power is not equated in much of East Asia with having the right
to make decisions as it is in the West (see Pye J., Asian Power and
Politics, 1985). Rather power is equated with not having to make
decisions, because the powerful have subordinates who will make them.
Influence depends on position (which allows control of the agenda) and on
access to information to make helpful suggestions. The community's thinking
about regional development in SE Queensland has already been directly
influenced by such methods for exerting influence (via the MFP process);
improved communications appears likely to reduce some current assumed
requirements for commercial space (eg shopping and banking by computer).
Many of the businesses and jobs which will require large provisions in
future may merely be embryonic at present.