The creative economy is defined broadly, including publishing, architecture, design, advertising and software and digital content, as well as the more “purely” creative areas such as dance, visual arts, acting, music and so on.

There are three categories of workers in the creative economy: specialist creatives, who work in creative roles within creative industries, support professionals who work in non-creative roles within creative industries, and embedded creatives, who work in creative roles in industries that are not otherwise typically thought of as creative.

Contemporary Australia is home to a wide range of creative arts and industries, from world-class films, visual and performing arts, to publishing and the games industry.

Australia has a vibrant arts, culture and entertainment community which is known internationally for its unique cultural style and enriched Indigenous history. Australia also plays a key role in the education, training and development of future leaders across all arts and creative industries.

CSIRO manages national research facilities and scientific infrastructure on behalf of the nation to assist with the delivery of research. The national facilities and specialised laboratories are available to both international and Australian users from industry and research.

Curtin University, formerly known as Curtin University of Technology and Western Australian Institute of Technology, is an Australian public research university based in Bentley, Perth, Western Australia.

DARPA
The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defence responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

We pursue our objectives through hundreds of programs. By design, programs are finite in duration while creating lasting revolutionary change. They address a wide range of technology opportunities and national security challenges. This assures that while individual efforts might fail—a natural consequence of taking on risk—the total portfolio delivers.

DARPA Lite - Australia
Cybersecurity, Land, Air, Sea and Space are the five dimensions where Australia needs to manage sovereign innovation, without fully relying on alliance partners overseas.

The Defence Strategic Review says…

“Defence’s current approach to capability acquisition is not fit for purpose. The system
needs to abandon its pursuit of the perfect solution or process and focus on delivering
timely and relevant capability.

Defence must move away from processes based around project management risk
rather than strategic risk management. It must be based on minimum viable capability in the shortest possible time.”

And in Germany:

"What used to take 10 years is now achieved in a few months. We will build a new shell plant in Germany in record time to create strategic security of supply," the Rheinmetall CEO said.

At the same time, in response to the #German government's accusations of insufficient support for Ukraine, Papperger stressed the good cooperation between officials and the arms industry.

"A lot has changed for the better in military procurement. Last year, Rheinmetall alone received orders or framework agreements worth more than €10 billion from the federal government for the Bundeswehr (German Federal Armed Forces) and Ukraine.”

Australia needs to be able to respond agilely and quickly to any potential challenge to Australia and its supply chains.

Ensuring Australians are secure online is a shared responsibility – everyone has a role to play. This Strategy sets out our plan to protect Australians online.

The world has never been more interconnected; our reliance on the internet for our prosperity and way of life never greater. Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of secure online connectivity. It has also shown Australians’ resilience and resolve to work together for a common goal. That same whole-of-nation partnership between government, businesses and the community must also be applied to ensuring Australia is cyber secure.

Australians are rightfully seizing the opportunities of our digital world. However, as the opportunities have increased, so too have cyber threats. Well-equipped and persistent state-sponsored actors are targeting critical infrastructure and stealing our intellectual property.

Cyber criminals are also doing great harm, in ltrating systems from anywhere in the world, stealing money, identities and data from unsuspecting Australians. They are taking advantage of COVID-19 to target families and businesses, including health and medical research facilities. And they are hiding on the dark web to tra c drugs and other illicit goods, and share abhorrent images of child abuse. Our response must be bold to meet this threat head on.

This Strategy positions us to meet these evolving threats. Our vision is a more secure online world

for Australians, their businesses and the essential services upon which we all depend. We will deliver this vision together, through complementary action by governments, businesses and the community. Through this Strategy the Coalition Government will invest $1.67 billion over ten years in cyber security – the largest ever nancial commitment to cyber security. We will develop new Government capabilities, incentivise industry to protect themselves and their customers, build trust in the digital economy, and support the community to be secure online.

This need for qualified cyber security specialists has been further intensified by the recent effects of COVID-19 which drove Australian businesses to shift their operations to online and their workforces to remote. With increasing cyber threats and a growing amount of sensitive information circulating online, Australia needs to move quickly to close the cyber security skills gap.

This government push towards a more secure internet has created an industry shift where most IT teams now require cyber security knowledge in order to service their business’s technological needs. With this projected industry growth comes the continuously growing need for skilled cyber security professionals, making those who possess these skills and qualifications highly sought-after. The shortage of skilled cyber security specialists also means that professionals with these skillsets can demand a higher salary.

The Darling Downs manufacturing sector is worth around $2.8b annually to the local economy with approximately 380 businesses focusing predominantly on food and metal related products. With some support, local manufacturing could increase substantially.
The Federal Government has launched the Modern Manufacturing Strategy to make Australian manufacturers more internationally competitive, help businesses scale-up and where possible adopt advanced manufacturing technologies to improve outputs. The strategy has chosen six industries based on Australia’s competitive advantage, which will become the manufacturing sector’s focus. These sectors include:
• Resources technology and critical minerals processing
• Food and beverage
• Medical products
• Recycling and clean energy
• Defence
• Space
Pixie Ice Cream have invested in packaging automation equipment from German-based company Schubert. This has significantly increased their production capacity to service the Australian and now international markets. Home Style Bake purchased machinery from Switzerland that will triple the output of their bread roll manufacturing. Wagner’s Composite Fibre Technologies recently introduced new robotic technology, enabling cross arms production to increase from 1,000 to 20,000 per month. Oakey Beef recently completed an automated cold storage facility and robotic palletising system.

Toowoomba for Climate Action is playing our part to keep global average temperatures in a safe, liveable range, so that all humans, other species, and living systems can flourish.

Did you know that Toowoomba Regional Council was the first in Queensland to capture landfill methane for energy production?

Council has both reduced the emissions it is responsible for by 80% and now saves ratepayers over $1 million/year in energy savings!

Council’s most demanding energy user, the Wetalla Water Reclamation Facility, is now 90-100% supplied with free renewable power.

Dozens of other Councils have been inspired by Toowoomba Regional Council to do similar projects on their own landfills.

As a cultural hub of the Darling Downs for more than 100 years, The Empire continues to serve our community with a focus on developing the arts in our region, delivering world class entertainment locally and telling the important stories.

Economic Development agencies include Regional Development Australia Darling Downs and South West and State Government agencies including the Department of State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure & Planning and Trade & Investment Queensland (TIQ), plus Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland (USQ), TAFE Queensland South West, the Toowoomba region’s Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), Tourism Darling Downs, Southern Queensland Country Tourism and regional business chambers and associations.

Apprenticeships and traineeships are excellent examples of pathways into work that have proven to be effective. But they are specific to certain occupations.

Apprentices and trainees made up about 10 per cent of the pathways people take into the workforce. He said policymakers needed to create better vocational education and training (VET) courses to give young people stronger options outside universities and apprenticeships.

3.9 million people were enrolled in vocational education and training last year, but up to 2.4 million of those were in short courses such as first aid and construction safety.

Toowoomba and its surrounding regions which include the Maranoa, Western Downs, Southern Downs, Goondiwindi, Burnett and Moree regions, is a food producing powerhouse for Australia.

The food capability of these council areas is driven by the diversity of fresh and value added products grown and produced in these locations.

Key agricultural outputs for this catchment include cotton, grain, beef, pork, poultry, dairy and fruit and vegetables. Aiding the regions food capability are the regions' research facilities, including the University of Southern Queensland’s Institute for Agriculture and the Environment which focuses on developing solutions for a sustainable and profitable future for the rural sector.

Is Australia’s housing crisis self-inflicted? If so, then we need a series of reforms to reverse it
The best long-term solution to the structural problems of the rental crisis is to build more public and/or affordable housing.

Make renting more Sustainable. Increase rent assistance or look at rental caps, similar to countries in Europe and some US states, long term tenancy agreements with incentives for all parties to the agreement.

Build to Rent
The Build to Rent property sector is growing in Australia – this new class of housing is focused on providing high quality purpose designed and built rental stock, creating an additional housing choice for Australian renters with greater security and service.

Build to Rent developments are typically owned by institutional investors for the long term and the owner could be the developer/ongoing building manager. The format provides tenants with the flexibility of renting with the security of home ownership.

Build-to-Rent developments are usually large-scale residential properties specifically designed, built and managed for long-term ownership and rental.

Social Housing
In the 40 years between 1981 and 2021 the percentage of all Australian households living in social housing (i.e. state owned and managed public housing or community managed housing) has ranged from 4.9 per cent in 1981 to 3.8 per cent in 2021. Such a drop in the proportion of social housing raises the question of has Australia achieved the balance right, and also just what is the right level of social housing for Australia?

In 2018 Statistics Canada said 628,700 Canadian households, more than one in ten renter households nationally (13.5% of 4,652,500), were living in social and affordable housing.
In New Zealand, as of 30 June 2021, there were 74,337 public housing households. This equates to 4.0% of households living in social housing.

In England (in 2018) 17% of households (3.9 million) lived in social housing, while the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes that 1.2 million households live in public housing, which is 0.98 per cent of all housing.

The mining industry, (including; coal mining, oil and gas extraction, metal ore mining, non-metallic mineral mining and quarrying, and exploration and other mining services), has had a presence in Western Gas and coal-fired power stations feature prominently in the region with a total of six active thermal power stations.

Kogan Creek Power Station is one of Australia's most efficient and technically advanced coal-fired power stations. It is one of the greenest coal-fired power stations with the lowest environmental impacts of any coal-fired power station nationwide.

Dalby Bio-Refinery Ltd (DBRL) is Australia’s first grain-to-ethanol facility. The refinery converts nearly 200,000 metric tonnes of sorghum into 76 million litres of ethanol and produces 180 thousand tonne of Wet cake (WDG) or 65 thousand tonne of Dry DDG cake each year, employing approximately 50 people. 13

More recently, renewable energy farms have invested in the region with multiple solar and wind energy farms either currently under construction or approved for construction.

Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg and Toowoomba all support a significant ADF presence nearby or provide port and freight access for Defence.

The University of Southern Queensland’s (UniSQ) Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences, based in Toowoomba, provides a dedicated facility for space and defence research. UniSQ’s unique capabilities and facilities include Australia’s longest duration hypersonic wind tunnel (>200ms); the only Australian university solid propellant rocket fuel manufacturing laboratory; rocket motor and fuel tank manufacturing with Australia’s most advanced industry scale robotic composite material filament winding cell; and Australia’s only capability in airborne diagnostics for re-entry observations of Space modules. UniSQ has significant capability in ultra-high temperature ceramic matrix composites for rocket motor components.

Toowoomba is the second largest inland Australian city. Home to a vivid music, café and restaurant scene, many of them in laneways tucked in alongside century-old landmarks, Toowoomba is loaded with theatres, galleries, great shopping and glorious parks and gardens.

Explore the First Coat art project – one of Australia’s most prominent regional arts projects. Artists from around the world have created a walkable gallery of street murals in the heart of the city.

What if we could turn our landfills into producers of renewable, clean energy – if the waste gas from our non-recyclable and non-reusable rubbish were a resource that had a second life?

That’s exactly what we’re doing in collaboration with the Toowoomba Regional Council. LGI is transforming the Toowoomba Waste Management Centre into a renewable energy superpower in the fight against climate change.

Our new renewable energy power station at this landfill is the first in Queensland to convert methane from landfill into electricity. Council’s most demanding energy user will now be mostly (90-100%) supplied with renewable power fuelled by waste gas the tip.

This new project at the Toowoomba Waste Management Centre is the first in Queensland to convert methane from a landfill into electricity to power a Council’s waste water treatment plant.

Deakin University is a public university in Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1974, the university was named after Alfred Deakin, the second Prime Minister of Australia. Its main campuses are in Melbourne's Burwood suburb, Geelong Waurn Ponds, Geelong Waterfront and Warrnambool, as well as the online Cloud Campus.

Deakin has a deep history of collaboration. We have forged partnerships with leaders in industry, government, and research to solve problems, share ideas, and inspire work-ready graduates. From developing community initiatives, connecting with global universities, to innovating with industry, Deakin promotes collaboration in everything we do.

Research at Deakin is about changing the world. Our innovative research centres help to solve global challenges, create smarter technology, and improve the health and wellbeing of communities. With a diverse range of research areas, close links with industry, and first-class facilities, Deakin research creates real-world, far-reaching impact.