 Senator Ludlam. Thank you Madam Acting Deputy President and I rise to add some comments from a similar part of the world but further south from where Senator Smith has just been speaking of and this is an issue that I also know our Acting Deputy President has quite close to her heart which is the city of Geraldton. It was an event that both of us attended at the Cusp Center in Fremantle a matter of a few weeks ago for the launch of a document produced by the community of Geraldton that caught me by surprise somewhat I suppose not really knowing what to expect. It's titled Geraldton from Local to Global Regional City and it's an extraordinarily visionary document it's come out of a series of workshops of deliberative workshops that were held by Jeanette Hart's Carp who some senators in this place might be familiar with whose specialty really is is democratic decision-making around what kind of communities we want to live in rather than top-down democracy. This is bottom-up deliberative democracy and it works exceptionally well if it's given a chance. Now on Geraldton they've given this a try and one of the outputs of that process is this document from Local to Global Regional City based around the concept of how they want this city to look in the year 2029 which would be 400 years since the Dutch were bumping into the coast it's also interestingly will be 200 years since the establishment of the Swan River Colony further to the south. It's been put into gorgeous visual language by David Galloway and Sarah Andrews and that at that launch we heard from the Mayor Ian Carpenter who deserves congratulations for his leadership in this project and they're quite dynamic CEO Tony Brun who have come up with a quite ambitious vision for Geraldton's future. Now this is a city for senators not from Western Australia about 430 kilometres to the north of Perth in the Midwest region it's historically it's been the economy up there has been based on agriculture and the pastoral industry a lot of interest at the moment in iron ore deposits not too far from the city of Geraldton and the community doesn't want to just be a quarry so they're interested in the expansion of their town they're interested in its development but they don't want to be left as some other Western Australian communities have as a fly and fly out centre with services hollowed out with housing completely unaffordable and with the economy dangerously unbalanced. So they've taken the initiative and produced this document and I was there congratulate Minister Simon Crane for being at the launch and for giving the community a boost and that I think takes this document to the next step it's come from the community but it's been endorsed obviously by the federal government and also I think by the state government the leader of the nationals in Western Australia has also made a contribution to this document they're looking for an economically adaptive city changing and diversifying the economic base so initial opportunities obviously still coming from agriculture fisheries and mining but to become a regional logistics and freight hub they will be the first regional centre to have every household connected to the nbn so even if there is a change of government next year and the opposition decides to simply flatten the proposal Geraldton at least will get through the net and I think they the coalition would then have probably some difficulties explaining to neighbouring communities why they don't get the system but Geraldton will be through they are also looking to the square kilometer array project that portion of that which will offer a completely different kind of economic opportunities to the region and being selected as one of 33 cities worldwide to receive an IBM smarter cities challenge which is which really I think takes local aspirations and gives them something of a global boost they're proposing to be a carbon neutral city and they are not just fiddling around at the edges but the this is the region as was explained to us that has all of the major renewable energy resources you could say with the exception of hydro including wind solar geothermal power biomass power and an amazing wave resource and they're not sitting on their hands they're proposing to make this the world's first carbon neutral heavy industry city so as the mining industry expands as most people believe it will they are proposing to take not just the increased demand on the grid but existing demand and put large scale solar plants in there there's already a 10 megawatt solar farm going in which will be I think the largest certainly the largest in the state if not in the country but also to roll out with local developers and and other commercial interests renewable energy technology across all the portfolios to make this a renewable city it's an extraordinary effort that they're taking and it was quite something as a Green's MP to come to the launch and realise that this is a community initiative this is not something that we've been banging on about it's it's rising from the community itself I hope that the local member Barry has who was also present at an event that I spoke up at that night will convince his leader not to pull the plug out from under this community if he gets the chance if there is a change of government next year not only will they be ripping the nbn out of regional communities that thought they would be getting it but all the work that has been done on the clean energy act and on creating the resources to enable the kind of vision that's coming forward from the city of gravey gelton to become a reality will evaporate will disappear and we will not let that happen we want to help gelton realise this vision that's been put forward and then endorsed by the town's leaders and brought to state and national prominence I mentioned the one of the reasons for the trip or my invitation to get up there and then to hear firsthand from some of the people who put these proposals together was an invitation by Andrew outweight and Kate Najar from pollinators incorporated which is a an extremely innovative and quite rapidly growing a group of social entrepreneurs based in gelton and they I think are helping catalyse some of the really interesting things that are going on up there it's Australia's only member-based organization dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs so it provides a structure for members to cooperate and access the support needed to realise their dreams their projects their aspirations for their community and it operates Australia's first regional social enterprise co-working and innovation space called city hive on the new marina waterfront in gelton so they'd organised quite an engaging public event which I was fortunate to be able to attend titled myth busting politics and people power which is where I was able to hear the member for jurak speak as well it attracted a full house on a Friday night we had an extremely lively and interesting discussion about how our political system is broken in their view how it is not providing for what people want and it wasn't a whinging session in fact quite the reverse there are a lot of proposals and propositions put forward for how we can or how people in the local community and in regional cities like gelton can use this place can use their representation in this place in some senses to simply get out of the way and let them do what it is that they're trying to do I mentioned fellow panellist professor Jeanette Hart's carp who works globally but probably locally in Western Australia best known for the dialogue with the city process that she ran with a former planning and infrastructure minister Elana McTianan which took on a larger scale for the city of Perth people's feedback from across a range of different viewpoints and ran a deliberative process that came out with a planning policy that was actually quite visionary for the time it was put forward and we're still getting some of the benefits of that and she I think gives some some teeth to one of the Greens four pillars that have participatory democracy around the concept that democracy is not just a piece of paper that you put in a box once every three or four years but it's about taking these issues into your own hands and that in some cases we in this place and in state assemblies around the country are seen as the block and not the enabler and that needs to change so I congratulate that pollinators group for for their vision and their reach into the community and the projects that they're running including an event that I was able to speak at the following morning the the catalyst project that they're running with a number of local people local leaders to which I was very fortunate to be able to meet my first stop in gelatin was to launch the bike black spot iphone application which I I may have spoken of in this chamber before but I would encourage all senators with an iphone wherever you live because this application is national now to go to bikeblackspot.org and help our planning minister albernesi because I know cycling is a passion of his but we haven't been able to get a national cycling fund off the ground yet and you will be able to either from the web or from your smartphone photograph your bike black spot and it takes it to a google map and sends an email and your photograph and your note about the lack of cycling infrastructure or else something that you think is good to a website gelatin's the first regional city that we launched that in and I was pleased to be able to make that contribution because this is a community that cares a great deal about public transport regional rail infrastructure and of course cycling and it's a perfect place for it as a city that's flat and has great weather so I look forward to working more with some of the community leaders in gelatin and helping them support the amazing example that they're setting for the rest of the country