A new economic strategy guiding the City of Greater Geelong for the next decade was adopted by Geelong council this week.
Geelong on the Rise: A Clever & Creative International City 2024-34 is a 34-page document outlining the role of the council in guiding Geelong’s future, the City’s strategic advantages and the challenges facing the council over the next decade.
It also details nine areas providing economic opportunities for Geelong, including advanced manufacturing, agribusiness and food manufacturing, clean economy, creative industries and digital technology, defence, healthcare, professional business services, transport/logistics and fulfilment and visitor economy and events.
Deputy mayor Anthony Aitken spoke passionately about the plan at Tuesday night’s council meeting, saying presenting the document gave him “joy”.
“I encourage anybody to actually read the document in its totality… (it’s) very authentic and there’s some really good information that the broader community would be interested in,” Cr Aitken said.
“We talk about the good, we talk about the bad, but the important thing is we’re saying we want to determine our future in Geelong, our economic prosperity, what the components of that are and how we actually get there.
“Geelong on the Rise is supported by a detailed action plan for Council and partner delivery over the next 10 years.”
Cr Sarah Hathway was one of two councillors to vote against the adoption of the economic plan.
She stated while it contained “lots of great things”, she could not “in good conscience” support a document “champion(ing) the defence industry”.
“I acknowledge that as a council we can’t determine where the federal government chooses to spend its money, and we can’t as a council end wars or genocide occurring in other parts of the world,” she said.
“But we can control what goes into our strategic documents and what industries we want to promote or attract into our city and what we choose to highlight in our documents.”
