30.06.2020Setting Priorities
Through collaboration with Government, civic leaders and the broader community, we strive to protect our community’s future prosperity. Since 2016 we have been interviewing our members with the support of our member Ipsos, to help shape our advocacy agenda.
This year, the Committee is committed to supporting our members during the current COVID-19 crisis and understanding how to best address a return to the vibrant and safe city we all take pride in.
We also wanted to benchmark members’ opinions regarding Greater Melbourne’s progress concerning the Committee’s key focus areas of Future economy; Urban optimisation; Infrastructure; and Liveability (prior to the pandemic).
Research highlights:
- Overwhelmingly, respondents agreed their organisations had received some kind of impact from COVID-19 already (89%); 4% felt it was too early to tell and 7% felt there had been very little (or no) impact.
- Worryingly, around a third (32%) told us the pandemic has resulted in a major impact on their organisation (including cancelled contracts, redundancies etc.).
- Looking forward to June 2021, respondents appear to have divergent views on their organisation’s prospects, with 28% believing things were likely to improve; 25% to deteriorate; 22% to stay the same (22%) and 24% saying it felt too early to make a call on future prospects.
- Looking ahead, respondents told us there was a range of areas the Committee should concentrate on to improve future Melbourne. When asked to pick the top three advocacy areas, sustainability/climate change was the most commonly identified area (55%), followed by transport (38%), and the arts (31%). Rounding out the top five were tourism (30%) and unemployment (27%).
- Aside from the pandemic, the Committee wanted to identify the areas that respondents believed have been most progressed in Greater Melbourne, in relation to the Committee’s four areas of focus.
- Infrastructure: the strongest performing of the four areas with almost a quarter (23%) reporting there has been sufficient progress, and a further 63% saying there had been some progress.
- Liveability: one-in-five (20%) thought there had been sufficient progress; 57% believed some progress had been made.
- Future economy: three quarters (84%) said Greater Melbourne is making progress (70% some and 16% sufficient).
- Urban optimisation: although more than one-in-ten (12%) reported there had been sufficient progress, this was the weakest performing area. More than a quarter (27%) felt there had not been progress made in this area.