04.11.2021From the CEO – November 2021
As 2021 draws to a close, Melbourne’s emergence from one of the world’s harshest and longest COVID-19 induced lockdowns seems assured. Melburnians have really stepped up to meet the necessary vaccination targets to make this happen-ahead of time. This is worth celebrating as we approach our Annual General Meeting on 18 November (our last via Zoom, we hope).
The celebrations kicked off last Saturday, hosted by Committee member, Arts Centre Melbourne at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, with 4000 lucky Melburnians enjoying the verve and inspiration of our world-famous music scene, and the exuberance of the Melbourne Cup a few days later. This has set the tone for Melbourne to come back with a roar.
At our AGM we will reflect on our collaboration with our 150 members as we continued to focus on our members’ and city’s needs with our Road to Recovery (R2R) Program.
We delivered a suite of ideas for Melbourne’s recovery, comprising affordable housing, transport, international education, the visitor economy, digital infrastructure, the ‘for purpose’ sector, arts and culture, and technology investment.
We helped amplify the voices of our productive community, the business, knowledge, performing, hospitality, service and visitor sectors, all of them severely damaged by lockdowns and restrictions.
Our message was clear and consistent: all sectors play a key role in our city’s recovery from this health crisis to manage the looming, longer-term economic crisis.
We must now lift our heads and set some ambitious targets for Melbourne to position itself as a great global city as our borders reopen and we are open for business again.
We have so much to build on – a world class research and education system, a multicultural society, close to rapidly expanding Asia, quality arts, culture, sport, events infrastructure and open spaces.
This will be the Committee’s focus for 2022. Drawing on our visionary Melbourne 4.0 program challenging Melbourne to be competitive in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and our R2R Program, we will convene our members early next year to plot and shape Future Melbourne.
So save the date for our Future Melbourne Summit on 15 February 2022 to play your part in setting the course for Melbourne’s re-emergence as one of the world’s most successful and liveable cities.
Finally, a big “merci” to Infrastructure Victoria’s (IV) outgoing inaugural CEO, Michel Masson. The Committee called for the establishment of IV in its ‘Melbourne Beyond 5 Million’ report and was proud to collaborate closely with IV, under Michel’s leadership. Michel, Melbourne owes you a great debt of gratitude and we look forward to staying in touch.
