Regional Integrated Planning

Integrated Regional Planning in Victoria

Executive Summary

The Victorian Government is keen to develop better and more integrated processes for planning and strategies at the regional spatial scale. Currently there are many processes and stakeholders, both within and beyond government, that influence regional wellbeing. Government is involved broadly and deeply in regional planning, regional development, and the coordination of policies at the regional scale.

There are many critics of the relative lack of coordination of plans and policies across the areas of the economy, the environment and the community, and many suggestions for reform.

There are a number of conceptual issues relating to “integration”, “alignment” or “coordination”, with shades of meaning. There are also different areas to which coordination can be applied – regional statutory planning, regional development policy and strategy, and region scale coordination of central government policies. Each of these areas is open to greater integration with benefits to each region.

Arguments for greater integration come from a number of sources. One relatesto the imperatives of globalisation, as argued by those favouring a new regionalism. Another relates to the requirements of sustainability and the need for economic development strategies to be more in synchronisation with the natural environment. A third relates simply to achieving less fragmentedgovernance with less duplication and fewer gaps in government services.

There is broad agreement that regional scale policy interventions are meaningful and that these should be subject to greater horizontal (across government agencies) and vertical (across levels of government) coordination.Key issues for any integrated planning process include accountability and capacity. In the absence of regional government, who is ultimately responsible for creating a more coordinated process, and who has the resources to deliver it?

The Victorian Government already has in train reforms designed to improve regional planning and policy coordination, specifically through the Regional Management Forums introduced in 2005 and the Regional Strategic Planning Initiative. These are very recent initiatives, and there are opportunities for further reform to achieve better process outcomes. It is open to the Government broadly to adopt a “business as usual” approach; to improve current arrangements without introducing major changes; or to re-engineer theexisting governance systems in a more radical way.

Document: document.docxAuthor: Paul CollitsSave Date: 20/09/2013

RMIT University of 43

The evidence from the Australian and overseas case studies suggests that there is no “silver bullet” solution or model, and that painstaking process reform is the preferred path. In particular, creating incentives, opportunities and mechanisms for parties to collaborate at the regional scaleis the approach most likely to succeed in achieving meaningful integration.

Paul CollitsRMIT UniversityFebruary 2009



Introduction

The Victorian Government is keen to improve regional scale planning and is exploring mechanisms for greater integration of existing plans and processes across government. Part of this exercise is to examine good practice in integrated spatial planning in other jurisdictions, both in Australia and overseas.

This paper explores both conceptual and practical considerations for the Government, and uses a number of case studies to identify the key challenges of achieving greater integration and the core characteristics of good regional planning and policy.

It is hoped that both the conceptual analysis contained in the paper and the case studies will isolate the important questions and help point the way to achieving better outcomes for the Government and for Victorian regions.

Regional development, regional planning and regional governance in Australia involve many layers of interventions and activity, multiple and complex processes, often uncoordinated and under-resourced governance and poor evaluation of interventions. Regional interventions have had the following characteristics:

In the absence of regional government, yet with wide recognition of the importance of the regional spatial scale, policies affecting regions have developed over time at all levels of government without much coordination and without a firm evidence base;

Policies have often been reactive to visible regional problems, and without the case having been made for particular interventions;

Program evaluations take place often without an assessment of policy impacts on regions;

Responsibility is shared among disparate groups, funded by different levels of government and serving a diverse range of purposes;

Responsibility for regional strategies has been handed to community and regional groups, often without adequate funding for the implementation of key activities developed as part of the strategies.

Arguably, regional governance in Australia is profoundly unsatisfactory. It is chaotic, fragmented, inefficient and uncoordinated. It is poorly resourced to undertake complex, intersecting tasks, and its processes and lack of capacity to draw all the components of regional development and planning together frustrates regional leaders, stakeholders and businesses alike.

There have been many cogent criticisms of the current regional governance arrangements in Australia, and many shortcomings identified. Critics of



spatial planning in Australia such as Brendan Gleeson have long argued for a national spatial policy framework with enhanced regional planning.

In discussing the experience of participation and regional governance in Australia, AJ Brown has noted:

Cynicism also often comes mixed with exhaustion, as a response to the multiplicity of short-term, fragmented consultation and participation strategies rolled out by different federal and state agencies (Brown inEversole and Martin 2005: 27).

One of the most important recent examinations of regional governance was the 2003 industry-led Regional Business Development Analysis (RBDA), commissionedby the previous Commonwealth Government. The RBDA recognised the importance of the regional governance deficit for effective regional development in Australia, coming from a business and investment perspective. It saw poor regional governance as one of the principal barriers to regional development in Australia.

The RBDA’s final report, A Plan for Action, recognised the impracticality of radically changing government structures in Australia. It therefore argued for regional structures that could better deal with the deficiencies in the system. The RBDA’s emphasis was on long term planning beyond the short-termism of current approaches and across all levels of government:

It is vital that each region has a system in place to achieve long-termplanning based on a shared vision and to deliver government services that provide a solid foundation for business development and growth. Ideally, this should be through a single structure in each region that has delegated authority to achieve long-term planning outcomes (RBDA 2003: 30).

It also argued that planning should be driven by business, raising the issue that integrated regional planning should include the private sector.

The RBDA included economic, social and environmental planning in its vision. Its emphasis on empowering regions resonates with much of the community economic development literature of the last twenty years and with the European preference for “subsidiarity” and devolution.

It included the delivery of government services to business among the suite of activities to be undertaken by the proposed new regional bodies, along thelines of Western Australia’s Regional Development Commissions. It also argued for the rationalisation of existing bodies, or, failing that, the development of a mechanism whereby central governments could leverage a greater level of “strategic coordination” among existing institutions.



The RBDA argued that each level of government should “give up something” in order to achieve an overall better outcome. All in all, the RBDA saw its proposals for reform as requiring a radical change from the present (RBDA 2003: 30-31).

According to the RBDA:

Commonwealth and state and territory governments should play an important role in regional economic planning and development. State and territory governments, however, are too large to provide effective regional planning and the Commonwealth is often too remote from the needs of individual regions (RBDA 2003: 28).

The RBDA’s critique and recommendations are typical of many views about regional governance in Australia, and have not been addressed seriously by the Commonwealth to date. The current investigation of integrated planning by the Victorian Government is therefore an opportunity to advance the conversation in Australia about improving regional governance processes and achieving more meaningful levels of integrated planning at the regional scale.

Three Types of Integrated Regional Planning

There are three nodes of planning at regional scale in Victoria that might bethe subject of more integration:

Statutory planning – driven largely by imperatives of growth; physical planning focus;

Regional development policy – driven largely by imperatives of decline / regional disparities and spatial inequalities;

Regional coordination of state level policy – driven by the desire for policy consistency across different sectors and regional focus, and the need to monitor regional impacts of policy.

Each of these systems has different aims, contexts, drivers and challenges.

Statutory Planning

Each jurisdiction in Australia has planning systems to regulate and manage growth, with a statutory basis. Statutory planning in Australia mostly covers land use, and is concerned largely with managing population growth andinfrastructure needs. But many areas relevant to planning are not included from statutory plans, and in any event regional scale planning is in its relative infancy. Areas such as housing, environmental protection and transport planning may be included, but there is an uneasy relationship between regional planning and regional development strategies.



The Victorian Government’s new Regional Planning Initiative is attempting to take regional planning in this State to a new level, with Ministerial consultations with local councils, businesses and community representatives in all regions and the encouragement of regional scale planning with a firmerevidence base.

Regional Development Policy

Regional development might be defined as follows:

The deliberate attempt by government (at any level) and/or regional actors to influence regional outcomes, either in relation to the economy, the community or the environment, or all three, with varying objectives that generally relate to some notion of “regional well being”.

Regional development policy has a long history in Australia (Collits 2006; Sorensen 2000). The central problems that regional policy tries to address are geographical disparities. Following an early focus on decentralisation, more recently regional policy has shifted toward the support of regional competitive advantage and community driven development strategies. There is a shared commitment by governments to assisting (mainly) rural places to diversify their economies. In the last decade, there has also been a shift away from productivity focused policies towards “sustainability” and “liveability”. Policies are now more region specific and regional strategiesare generally developed locally or regionally rather than by central governments.

The central challenges of regional policy are the complex processes that drive regional development, combined with the fact that most government policies are “aspatial” yet right across the range of government activity they affect regional development in many and often unforeseen and negative ways. The areas in which government policy affects regional development include thefollowing:

Monetary policy set by the Reserve Bank; Taxing and spending policies; Changing levels of industry protection; The location of government functions and employees; The spatial distribution of capital works spending and infrastructure; National Competition Policy; The delivery of services; Higher education funding; The privatisation or corporatisation of government owned utilities.



Hence specifically regional policies might not make much of a difference to regional development outcomes, and this raises questions of how best to integrate or align “regional policies” with “policies that affect regions”.

Region Scale Policy Coordination

Governments in Australia have become increasingly preoccupied with better policy coordination at regional scale. For example, in the early 1990s, the NSW Government introduced a Regional Coordination Program through its Premier’s Department. This saw the appointment of Senior Executive Service level public servants as Regional Coordinators with support staff and a briefto improve policy and program coordination across the State’s regions. In 2005, the Victorian Government introduced Regional Management Forums across its 8 regions under A Fairer Victoria. In the Victorian case, there is an explicit objective to facilitate collaboration with local government.

The central challenge for regional coordination of government policies is thefragmentation of policies that affect regional development, regional planningand service delivery, and the fact that “cross cutting” regional problems occur. As well, in Australia the federal system encourages a lack of clear responsibility across jurisdictions in relation to regional planning.

As there is no regional government as such in Australia, and local governments have limited capacity to act regionally, accountability for actions taken at regional scale is blurred (Brown in Eversole and Martin 2005). Further, the capacity of regional players to act is quite limited, caught between central government direction and local expectations. Hence there are problems both with legitimacy and with capacity for regional institutions.

Integration at the Regional Scale

The central challenges of achieving more integrated regional planning relate to both geographic scale and to coverage of issues. The latter issue is really about the “reach” of the integration process, about how many areas of government policy or processes are included, about what is included and what is left out.

Much has been written about the quirkiness of having different regional boundaries for different purposes, and whether there should or can be a rationalisation of boundaries for the purposes of integrated planning. This is a difficult challenge for government, and not only because of the existence of different sectoral silos across government. The fact is that different regional boundaries reflect different conceptions of “region” for the differing purposes for which regions have been created. In other words, there are sometimes different regional boundaries for good reasons.



Attempts to achieve more integrated region scale planning could be focused onany or all of the areas outlined above. Moreover, improvements within each of these processes are likely to have positive impacts in relation to the others. For example, better coordination of policy is likely to reduce the fragmentation that so concerns business. Linking regional development strategies to planning processes is likely to provide regions with a clearer understanding of infrastructure needs. Transport, employment lands and housing – all areas of concern for regional planning – all affect regional economic development in critical ways.

Yet governments need to be clear about which nodes of regional planning they wish to integrate, and what the limitations are in relation to each of the three areas.

There is clearly considerable scope both for greater policy coordination and for a closer connect between regional development strategies and regional planning regimes. The Government’s Regional Management Forums and the Regional Strategic Planning Initiative provide a sound basis for improvement in each of these areas respectively.

Background to Regional Planning and Regional Policy in Australia

What is the central objective of regional policy and regional planning? Or, in other words, what are we trying to achieve, and what would success look like? Defining regional success has evolved over the past twenty years. In earlier periods, regional policy largely sought to increase productivity. Its focus was on investment and employment. More recently, objectives have evolved and become more complex, even problematic. Now the goal is to createmore “liveable” or more “sustainable” regions. As policy objectives have broadened, the task has become far more complex.

The broadening of regional planning and regional policy objectives has been driven largely by:

Emerging environmental concerns and the increased influence and reach of the sustainability movement;

The higher and more diverse expectations that people have of their regions;

A recognition of the intersecting problems that occur across the economic,environment and social realms; and

An increased policy focus on the region as the appropriate scale for addressing complex problems.

There is a rich history of regionalism in Australia. There is also a long tradition of metropolitan planning in most of the capital cities, and there have been several phases of government-led regionalisation, including the



initiatives associated with the Department of Post-war Reconstruction, the Whitlam Government reforms of the 1970s and the revival of regional development organizations in the 1990s.

However, governments have generally paid lip service only to decentralisationof population and industry (and more recently to community economic development), and there has been very little genuine devolution of power to lower levels of government. Central governments have assumed greater responsibilities over time, and local government remains weak. As Brown has pointed out, local councils have relatively little capacity to shape the regional policy environment, and to the extent that their interests and responsibilities have been increased, this has been largely at the behest of State and Commonwealth governments, which retain fiscal control and set responsibilities for the local level (Brown in Eversole and Martin 2005).

The Case for Integration of Regional Planning and Policies

The case for more integrated regional planning rests largely on the assumption that fragmentation of policy and action at the regional scale is inefficient. Fragmentation, or the absence of effective coordination across the activities, strategies and policies that affect regions, is said to causeduplication and overlap on the one hand, and gaps in the delivery of servicesthat support the region on the other. It occurs both “horizontally” across Government policy areas and agencies, and “vertically” between the different levels of government.

In Australia, with its often complex federal structure, fragmentation is seenby many as being especially problematic in view of the highly political dimensions of regional development and regional planning and the fact that all three levels of government are deeply involved in the process. Added to this is the lack of Constitutional clarity over which level of government (ifany) is primarily responsible for regional wellbeing.

At the same time that arguments for more integrated planning have strengthening, there has also been a growing focus on “the region” as an appropriate spatial scale for government policy attention. There is a substantial literature stating the case for greater policy attention to the regional scale, broadly defined as a unit larger than local government but smaller than State government.

Globalisation is often cited as an argument for greater focus on “the region”, and has been a key driver both of the so-called “new regionalism” and of moves towards more integrated planning at this scale. Economic regions are increasingly seen as the new engines of national growth.



Part of the argument is that it is now regions rather than nations that are the natural units of innovation and production. Proponents of the new regionalism on both sides of the Atlantic, and in both the planning and the regional development literature, have attempted to make this case. In the case of planners, particularly in the USA, new regionalism is generally concerned with metropolitan regions, and is closely aligned with the “new urbanism” movement and the battle against urban sprawl. In the UK, the new regionalism is most associated with regional development thinkers such as Cooke and Morgan and with the newly discovered sources of competitive regional advantage that have been driven by globalisation, namely regional innovation systems, networks and social capital (Cooke and Morgan 1998).

For lengthy periods of our history there have been regional institutions appointed by, and reporting to, different levels of government. While those involved in governance processes at the regional or “mezzanine” level generally seek to make these arrangements work to the advantage of the regions, success comes in spite of the cross cutting arrangements rather thanbecause of them.

In addition, the exponential growth in the breadth of government activity over the last thirty years, for example the growth in government interest in,and regulation of, the environment, has only increased the complexity of regional governance as the scale of government interventions has grown.

Increasing regulation of the economy in support of environmental objectives, for example in relation to natural resource management, and the move towards sustainability as a core philosophy of government have dramatically reshaped debates over regional governance. The appearance of regional bodies in the form of Catchment Management Authorities as new region-scale organisations with responsibility for natural resource management exemplifies the heightened policy focus on the natural environment and adds a new dimension to conceptions of regional development. As noted previously, now regional development outcomes are routinely couched in terms of “sustainability” or “liveability” rather than the earlier objective of “productivity” linked largely to investment and employment outcomes.

The increased focus on sustainability and its penetration into all areas and levels of government has been a powerful force in the development of support for more integrated planning in Australia and elsewhere, irrespective of the more traditional arguments related to efficiency of governance.

Globalisation is cited as a reason for more integrated planning as well. Forexample, according to international experts brought in to help develop new regional governance arrangements for Auckland, global competitiveness demands“far greater integrated planning than previously” (quoted in McDermott 2008).This group called for the authorities to recognise the interdependencies across regions in planning to meet the new demands of the globalised world.



The challenges of urban growth are another major argument for more integratedplanning, especially when combined with thinking about intersecting problems,or interdependencies. Capital cities have generally had longstanding commitments to metropolitan scale planning, and have in more recent times increased the breadth of metropolitan plans and the degree of integration. This has largely been in response to the twin impacts of globalisation and rapid population growth. This is linked to a recognition that infrastructureplanning – the core of most metropolitan strategies – is now seen as a key tocreating or maintaining global city status. Recognising that infrastructure affects all aspects of the triple bottom line has been another reason that regional planning has broadened its reach, albeit falling significantly shortof genuine integration.

All political systems suffer from policy fragmentation, especially federal systems. It is inevitable that policies will have differential spatial impacts across regions and between regions.

Another argument for integration sees it as a mechanism for mobilising regional resources. Whether this is simply to provide impetus and a single voice for regions to access Commonwealth and State funding for projects, or to lobby for better infrastructure or services, or has more ambitious objectives.

In summary, the arguments for greater integration of governance, in particular at the regional level, are as follows:

The imperative of achieving more efficient government that gives taxpayersvalue for money and accountability;

The sustainability imperative and the increasing recognition of the interconnectedness of economic, social and environmental issues;

Recognition of the imperatives of the “regional world”; The need to solve what have come to be recognised as cross cutting

problems with joined up solutions; Inequality of outcomes within and across regions; Increased connectedness / globalisation.

Clearly, the infrastructure coordination case linked to rapid population growth is less of a consideration for rural Victoria. However, the importance to overall economic development of infrastructure provision in areas such as water and road transport is closely linked to sustainability outcomes and to regional economic development.

Current Processes / Stakeholders in Local and Regional Planning



Planning processes at local and regional scale cover a wide range of issues relating to the economy, the community, the environment and the local culture. They reveal the extent of government activity and the regionalisation of many areas of policy over time. They also establish clearly the size of the integration task and the likely areas of fruitful coordination building work.

Current planning processes at local government level typically include the following policies and strategies, revealed by a recent audit of the activities of one shire in rural Victoria:

Environmental plans; Municipal strategic statements; Economic development strategies; Policies for connectedness, healthy, safe and inclusive communities; Youth strategies; Social development plans; Waste management plans; Roadside management plans; Municipal public health plans; Municipal early years plans; Aged and disability services strategic plans; Domestic wastewater management plans; Community arts strategies.

State government region scale plans and initiatives include:

Regional tourism strategies; Area health strategic plans; Human services strategic plans; Regional education initiatives; Regional Management Forums (referred to elsewhere).

The Commonwealth Government too has a range of policies and strategies covering regions, including:

Catchment Management Authority regional strategies; Regional development strategies of the former Area Consultative Committees

(now Regional Development Australia Committees);

The involvement of all layers of government in region-scale planning processes is a reminder that processes towards integration must be vertical as well as horizontal across different sectors of each level of government.

As well as government plans, strategies and policies, community or business based regional bodies covering a broad range of issues have developed plans. These cover environmental and sustainability concerns, for example as well as



heritage and cultural plans and those of indigenous communities. The breadthof community based initiatives ensures that any efforts towards more integrated planning will need to embrace public-private partnerships.

The Dimensions of Integrated Planning

The notions of integration and integrated regional strategies can have a range of meanings. Similar concepts include “coordination” and “alignment”, and it is not always clear how these differ. The concept of integrated planning suggests something more radical than alignment or coordination. Coordination suggests a process for ensuring that processes and strategies “talk to one another” and having a sense of the whole. Alignment suggests orienting the strategies of one organisation to others’. Integration suggests a much closer arrangement, something more formal and something closer than alignment.

The dimensions of integration include:

The spatial scale (local, regional, which region?); The desired outcome and focus (regional planning, regional policy,

regional coordination); Is it a document, or an institution, or a process? Is the arrangement formal, even statutory? Are there penalties if parties to the integrated plan do not meet its

requirements? The breadth of government policies/agencies covered, or the sectoral reach

of the plan/process (eg economic, social, environmental, cultural); The key stakeholders (does it include the business and community

sectors?); The lead agency arrangements (who is responsible for delivery?); The implementation strategy; The funding/resourcing implications.

There are degrees of integration across all these dimensions. There are degrees of acceptance or commitment by organisations who sign up for the process of integration. For example, to what extent does each “signatory” have to give up something (control?) in order to make the integration work? To what extent does each signatory have to alter its own strategies or plans to fit in with the new, more integrated arrangement? Are parties to the planor strategy required to provide funding support?

Australian and International Practice in Integrated Planning

A number of good practice case studies follow, both from Australia and overseas. These case studies are drawn from all three areas of regional



strategy integration – regional development, regional planning and regional coordination. There are very few, if any, examples of attempted integration across all three types. The case studies have been chosen to demonstrate oneor more aspects of the steep challenges of integrating planning processes, and how governments and other institutions have attempted to meet the challenges. The case studies highlight issues that need to be considered by the Victorian Government.

The case study regions are:

Geelong G21 Regional Plan Tasmania’s partnership agreements and the Cradle Coast Authority South East Queensland Regional Strategy Riverina Regional Development Strategy Far North Coast New South Wales Regional Strategy Portland Oregon Vancouver, Canada UK Regional Strategies European Union spatial planning Auckland Regional Council’s One Plan

A number of key questions are broadly explored in each case study:

What is being integrated? Is it regional policy, regional planning or regional coordination?

What is the reach? How ambitious is the strategy / attempt at coordination?Is it statutory?

Is it a strategy or a process? Who are the parties involved? What is the range of stakeholders? Who is responsible? Who signs off? What are the accountability mechanisms? Is it successful? How is success defined? Integration of process vs integration of resources? What are the mechanisms for collaboration among key stakeholder groups? Is there a lead agency arrangement? Top down versus bottom up? Long term versus short term planning? Participative?

While case studies are instructive, often for how and why they fail as much as for how and why they succeed, the various integration plans and processes discussed might not translate well to Victoria, as each region has its own history, issues, growth drivers and institutional arrangements. As much as anything, they serve to highlight the complexity of regional development processes and the necessary messiness of regional governance.



Australian Case Studies

Geelong’s G21 Regional Plan

The G21 initiative is a model for regional planning across Victoria. Its broad reach, integration of planning, economic development and policy coordination elements, wide community support, public-private partnerships and long term vision, is combined with a serious commitment of regional resources and a well laid out implementation plan. Over 150 regional organisations and five local government areas are committed to supporting thePlan, are the Victorian Government and key statutory authorities.

The Geelong Plan is closely linked with the Department of Planning and Community Development’s Melbourne 2030 Plan and the challenge of managing a period of substantial population growth.

The Plan has ambitious reach across government policy areas, encompassing:

Arts, culture and heritage; Economic development; Environment; Health and wellbeing; Education and training; Planning and infrastructure; Sport and recreation; and Transport.

These so called “pillars” have evolved over time, and a sustainable growth strategy was released in 2007, continuing a major process of public and stakeholder consultation.

Key features of the G21 model include the following:

A sensible and flexible approach to regional boundaries; Very broad stakeholder support and commitment; An evolving process; A highly evidence based approach to planning; Broad sectoral reach of the Plan; A long term time frame; The adoption of a formal constitution as a key part of the governance

framework An iterative consultation process involving many community players and

networks; Commitment of funding and in-kind support from member organisations in the

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Strong central government support.

The G21 initiative reflects the processes of the modern networked economy andcommunity, utilising existing networks and creating new networks of collaboration. The scale of the exercise is impressive, and as a governance model has much to teach other regions in Victoria and in other jurisdictions.

Tasmania’s Cradle Coast Authority and Partnership Agreements

Tasmania has implemented a series of partnership agreements between regional authorities like the Cradle Coast Authority and central governments. These partnership agreements are an effective means of achieving collaboration across a range of stakeholder groups in the region, have a specific project focus, and involve vertical partnerships.

The Authority’s primary role is “… to identify priorities for economic development and to broker partnerships between the different levels of government, industry and community groups to address these priorities on a regional scale”.

The Authority covers nine local government areas and a population of around 100 000. It is funded by contributions from local councils. It has formal partnership agreements with both the Commonwealth, through the Sustainable Regions Program, and the Tasmanian Government. The notion of a partnership agreement with the Commonwealth in relation to a specific regionally focused program provides an interesting model for vertical integration.

Projects are funded by partner organisations.

The Authority’s focus includes the following:

Tourism; Natural Resource Management ; Industry Development; Infrastructure Development (eg the integrated transport strategy); Education, Training and Workforce Development; Community and Cultural Development.

Hence the reach of the Cradle Coast Authority is well beyond economic development, narrowly defined, and covers a substantial range of State Government policy interests. It also acts as a voice for the region, making submission to a range of inquiries conducted by central governments.

Partnership agreements have been formulated with State and Commonwealth governments for transport services and infrastructure, tourism, education andnatural resource management.



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The partnership agreement with the State government is particularly interesting. Its focus is on economic development, and the agreement covers a range of joint initiatives designed to achieve investment and employment outcomes. The initial partnership was signed in 2001 for a three year period.

The agreement makes explicit reference to economic, social and environmental objectives; suggests that an “active partnership” is needed to drive sustainable development; underlines the importance of actions at regional scale; incorporates service delivery objectives; makes provision for regionalcommunity involvement in the process; and preserves the proper responsibilityfor the State in delivering on Statewide policies. The agreements recognise the importance of achieving efficiencies in public administration, addressingthe key problem of policy fragmentation. They also make provision for funding arrangements to be made in relation to regional-level delivery of services.

Perhaps most importantly, the agreements create a vehicle for determining strategic regional priorities. They also recognise the interlinked nature ofissues affecting regional wellbeing, placing them in the “joined up government” approach.

Board members have a strong business and industry focus, though there is alsolocal government and community representation. Education and training interests are represented. The Authority states that its Board membership isskills based rather than being representative of interest groups. This is a strength in principle, as it helps to ensure a strategic focus and helps prevent the inertia that might result from having Board members that are simply there to “represent” regional interests.

The partnership agreement approach does not aim to be an integrated plan for the region, but rather commits the partners to work together on specific projects. Funding by local councils, with no core funding from outside the region, provides a strong level of support from the region and a measure of accountability.

The broad reach of the partnership agreements provide lessons for integrated planning, as does the inclusion of Government service delivery elements. Thecreation of region wide authorities with a broader remit than economic development is significant. Also significant is the State Government’s commitment through the partnership approach to improve the effectiveness of the relationship between the central government and the regions. It should be noted that the small size of Tasmania makes achieving this a more straightforward task than is the case in more populous states.



South East Queensland Regional Strategy

South East Queensland is the fastest growing area of Australia, and the Queensland Government has been addressing issues of metropolitan growth over many years, through various iterations of a South East Queensland Regional Strategy.

The South East Region of Queensland (SEQ) is a region of high population growth and in 2003 it was recognised that planning on a regional basis, rather than by the individual local councils, would be beneficial for the area. This led to the South East Queensland Regional Plan 2005-6, which ‘provides the framework for managing growth, land use and development in the region’.

The SEQ includes 11 city and regional councils, 22890 km² and is projected tohave a population of 4.4 million by 2031(up from its current 2.3 million). The plan is a State government initiative, with input from a Regional Coordination Committee (RCC) to advise the regional planning minister of local issues and community consultation and submission from the public has been called for, before the final plan is adopted. The plan will be reviewed every 5 years with alterations made as required on the basis of population growth compare with projections.

The vision for the future includes: Creating a sustainable future, accommodating climate change and oil prices, protecting regional landscapes and supporting rural production, accommodating future growth, facilitating growth in the west, delivering smart growth, reducing the dependence on automobiles and congestion, enhancing the identity of regional communities, providing infrastructure and services

The SEQ Regional Plan is a state initiative with policies not surprisingly highly aligned to the central government policies, which include: Sustainability and climate change, Natural environment, Regional landscape, Natural Resource Management, Rural Futures, Strong communities, Smart growth,Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples, Economic development, Infrastructure, Water management, Integrated transport.

The region is contiguous with the Far North Coast of NSW Regional Strategy, which also plans out to 2031 and has an agreement to share planning information.

Riverina Economic Development Strategy (REDS)

The Riverina Regional Development Board is one of 13 economic development organisations overseen by the NSW Government and the Department of State and Regional Development.



The Region’s Strategic Plan is known as the Riverina Economic Development Strategy (REDS). It covers the period 2004-10 and covers 16 local governmentareas with a population of 160 000 people.

The Plan states that:

The document is intended to set broad directions for the economic development of the Region and to guide activities into the future that will be commenced during the term of the current Board. The Strategic Plan is also designed to assist the Regional Community involved in regional development to easily identify the role and key function of the Riverina Regional Development Board in the Riverina.

The Plan is unambiguously a regional development plan heavily focused on the economy. It therefore does not attempt to integrate regional planning efforts. However, there are some important process innovations that make thePlan stand out from other NSW regional development board strategies, and which are therefore of interest from an integrated planning perspective.

The Plan is owned by the Riverina RDB, which is appointed by the State Government and whose directions are required to be aligned with the Department of State and Regional Development’s Statement of Strategic Intent.

The Plan contains nine strategic sectors:

Agriculture; Forestry; Manufacturing and Processing; Employment, Education, and Training; Community Economic Development (including culture, heritage, creative); Transport and Utilities; International Business; Telecommunications; Tourism.

The Plan utilises a partnership approach with key stakeholders across the region to achieve its economic development objectives. While this is typicalof many regional strategies, the Plan involves formal partnership agreements with many of the stakeholder groups.

As the Plan states:The Riverina R D Board has completed or is in the process of completingMemoranda of Understanding with all these organisations and their representatives to ensure the continued collaboration between them and the Board in implementing its economic development strategy.



Each of the nine sectors identified by the Board and regional players has itsown strategies, activities and outcomes, with responsibility for implementation assigned to one of the partners and partner organisations named for each sector. Here the role of “driver agencies” is important, and might serve as a model for integrated planning initiatives. While the Regional Development Board is the driver agency for most of the tasks, other partners are sometimes assigned this role, for example the Catchment Management Authority is responsible for delivering on one of the agriculture strategies.

All strategies have commencement and end dates.

Partners involved in the implementation of REDS include the following – TAFE,State Government agencies, industry, local councils, the Commonwealth, Regional Organisations of Councils, electricity and gas suppliers, Charles Sturt University, Landcare, environmental groups. Local councils are particularly closely involved as partners in the Plan. This is an extremely broad range of stakeholders and reflects an ambitious reach for the Plan. Itrecognises the range of agencies and policies that influence economic development outcomes, including the education sector.

The process for signing up stakeholder groups to formal partnership arrangements reflects the broad regional community support for the Plan and the degree of unity across the region in relation to the Plan’s objectives. It is very much a bottom up process, even though it is aligned with State Government priorities. It leaves the relevant partners to pursue their own strategic objectives, but recognises that regional development is not just owned by one level of government or by one set of stakeholders.

Implementation involves working groups across the strategies. These are commissioned on an ad hoc basis, allowing flexible membership and sunset clauses. There are regular built in reviews of all activities to ensure thatimplementation timetables are met.

The Riverina model is a highly workable lead agency model with effective vertical and horizontal collaborations. Its innovative approach to integration goes beyond alignment and coordination and actually involves stakeholders in the delivery of the strategy.

NSW Far North Coast Regional Strategy

The far North Coast is one of the NSW Department of Planning’s regions, and regional plans are being drawn up progressively across the State, with an emphasis on high growth regions. The region covers six local council areas.



The Plan is very much a State Government led initiative with a focus on growth issues and covering the key areas of government policy that affect growth management. The Regional Strategy “…sets out the agreed position of the NSW Government on the future of the Far North Coast Region”. While this suggests a comprehensive plan, the focus is very much on land use and infrastructure planning in the tradition of Australian regional planning overthe past three decades.

The Plan looks out to 2031. The key regional challenges are listed as the environment (for example maintaining biodiversity), population growth and housing (growth of 60 000 is expected to 2031), limiting urban sprawl, providing a framework for infrastructure planning, provision for employment lands and the creation of jobs.

However, the Plan has considerable reach across government policies, coveringenvironment, cultural heritage, natural hazards, settlement and housing, economic development and employment growth, water and energy resources, and regional transport. Each area has outcomes and actions laid out and an implementation plan.

The region is contiguous with South East Queensland and there is an agreementbetween the two State Governments to share information on planning matters. The region is experiencing strong growth and the plan is couched very much inthis context of continuing strong growth against a backdrop of environmental sensitivity and the need to maintain jobs growth into the future.

The Plan is a top down State Government led approach, but with due recognition of regional views and interests. For example, there is an alignment of the Strategy with the Northern Rivers Regional Development Board’s 2005 Regional Industry and Economic Plan. The Plan is recognised by the State Infrastructure Strategy as the planning instrument to be used by State agencies and public trading enterprises.

There will be annual monitoring of the Plan and five yearly reviews.

The Plan demonstrates the way in which a State led initiative can be applied at regional scale, incorporating a public consultation process but with centrally determined objectives and centrally controlled processes, working across the economic, environmental and social realms. The Plan remains very much within the regional planning paradigm and does not entail radical shiftsin regional governance but rather a collaborative, partnership model with central government oversight. The Plan is closely aligned with key Government policies, especially in relation to infrastructure.

Overseas Case Studies



Metro Vancouver (previously The Greater Vancouver Regional District)

Metro Vancouver is a cooperative federation of 22 municipalities and one electoral area, an area of 282,000 hectares and covers a distance of 96 km from Maple Ridge to Bowen Island, with a population of 2.1 million (2006 census).

Metro Vancouver incorporates four entities: Greater Vancouver Regional Development, Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District, Greater Vancouver Water District and Greater Vancouver Housing Corporation. Its mandate is to manage the water system, waste water treatment, solid waste system, the parks system, air quality, planning and growth, and housing economically and effectively on a regional basis whilst maintaining and enhancing the quality of life.

Translink, which was previously part of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, is a separate entity which has to submit long term planning and borrowing plans to Metro Vancouver prior to their implementation.

Board members are appointed from the municipal councils with voting based on one vote per 20,000 populations and they elect a ‘Chair’ from amongst themselves.

The Sustainable Region Initiative (SRI) was adopted in 2002 with three guiding principles:

protect and enhance the natural environment, provide for ongoing prosperity, build community capacity and social cohesion.

The priorities are: achievement of sustainable service delivery targets, an integrated system of sustainable management and collaborative governance.

The Strategic Plan for the integrated system of sustainable management policythemes include: Protecting the Green Zone, Sustainable Economy, Develop complete and resilient communities, Achieve a compact urban area, Support sustainable transportation choices.

The Metro Vancouver Plan has changed somewhat since 2002 with a move to environmentally sustainable orientated planning and a greater emphasis on leadership and communication. There is recognition of the need to accommodateclimate change and limit city growth whilst providing quality of life. Involvement of the community in solving regional problems through outreach programs brings a sense of ownership and participation. E.g. Zero Waste Challenge and the Tap water campaign.



Portland, Oregon, USA

The Metro Regional Council is an elected regional government representing three counties and twenty five cities in the Williamette valley, Oregon, USA.They are responsible for implementation of the Regional Framework Plan which incorporates land use planning, urban design and urban growth boundary, watersources and storage, solid waste management, transportation, emergency services for natural hazards and management of public cultural centres and heritage cemeteries.

A council of six members is elected for four years from the six districts within the region, with a region wide elected president and an independent auditor who reports to the public annually. The charter which commenced in 1992 was reviewed in 2002 with amendments adopted in 2003. Committees of informed citizens are employed to give additional advice to the council and voluntary participation is encouraged. The relatively broad charter is to provide ‘planning, policy making, and services to preserve and enhance the region's quality of life’. Planning is based on growth projections out to 2040 with an estimated extra one million people arriving in the region by 2030. The process is intentionally open and participatory with citizens encouraged to put forward ideas and volunteer forphysical maintenance and development of conservation areas. Planning resourcetools are available online for use by the general populace and professionals such as teachers, developers and architects.

Metro is funded through broad based property, sales and/or income tax but with citizen approval, specific taxes can be levied on the population for specific purposes (e.g. for development of a public building). Metro planningand development is undertaken under State legislation laws.

The Regional Plan is based on eight fundamental value statements which encourage ‘quality of life’ and the basic philosophy of the 2040 growth concept: to preserve our access to nature and build better communities for the people who live here today and who will live here in the future.

The Portland Metro Council and its participatory model of citizen involvementin advisory committees, voluntary conservation work and sharing of planning resources is an excellent example of democratic process.

United Kingdom

The UK has a strong history of regional policy dating from the 1930s, with a focus on addressing regional disparities, particularly between the north and south. The spatial concentrations of disadvantage have been a long-term



source of concern for UK Governments, including the current Government. Suchconcerns are a classic driver of regional policy interventions.

Since 1997, the UK Government has set out consciously to address the challenge of “joined up government”. Indeed, it coined the term. At the same time, the UK has undertaken a massive program in attempting to create functional regions through an array of new institutions and processes, and has increased dramatically its funding support for regional economic development. And the initiatives of the current Government are in addition to a pre-existing structure of Government offices for the regions.

Hence the UK would appear to provide a good case study in integrated regionalgovernance. The UK has been a virtual laboratory of regional governance reform over the past decade. The Government’s commitment is serious, and thebreadth of its initiatives covers all three areas of regional management outlined above – regional development, regional planning and regional coordination of government policy.

Since 1997 the UK Government has introduced a range of regional institutions and processes to advance regional planning, regional development and policy coordination at the regional scale:

Offices of the Regions (actually dating from 1994) with responsibility fordelivering government services and coordinating policy in the regions and an interest in aligning regional strategies with government policies;

The creation of nine new English regions; Regional Development Agencies (from 1999) with responsibility for (non

statutory) regional economic strategies (2.3 billion pounds funding in 2007-08);

The creation of the Greater London Authority and the London Development Agency;

A “single pot budget” for RDAs from 2002; Regional funding allocations from 2005; Area based initiatives; Regional Assemblies as regional planning bodies producing statutory

Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) and with responsibility for scrutinising RDAs.

As indicated in a 2007 Review of Sub-national Economic Development and Regeneration, the Government is keen to devolve more responsibilities to regions and local authorities. The model adopted since 1997 is for the Government to set overall policy directions and to set up region scale institutions to implement its policies, but with considerable local responsibility and substantial funding. Much of the activity and policy development has had traditional regional development objectives – to reduce disparities across and between regions.



Further empowerment of regional authorities (Regional Development Agencies orRDAs) is envisaged by the review. The Government also wishes to strength regional scale accountability both upwards to central government and downwards to local authorities. This is a key issue for regional governance and relevant to the Victorian Government’s current concerns. The Government is keen to ensure that local councils take greater responsibility for economic development outcomes at the sub-regional scale. RDAs will be required to have a more strategic role.

Equally importantly, the Government is keen to ensure that regional policy decisions are taken at the right spatial scale, and to this end, the review examined how local authorities fit into regional scale decision making (UK Government 2007: 3).

Most importantly, the review supported the notion of a single regional strategy setting out each region’s economic, environmental and social objectives. These strategies would be developed by RDAs and would combine planning and regional development.

The Government’s policy of devolution is partly driven by the perceived need of regions to be able to adapt their economies flexibly to the ever-changing imperatives of a global world. Its focus on region scale policies and programs presupposes the central tenets of new regionalism thinking – that regions are the new focus of economic development in the globalised world andthat policy should reflect this. It takes further than most governments the idea of region specific policies (normally still devised by the central government), while still maintaining central government control of overall policy settings. The central Government also sets targets and performance indicators for RDA performance. So it is by no means complete devolution.

Commendably, there is also a strong policy focus on setting clear objectives in the UK approach. This is partly in response to the European Union’s insistence on policy and program evaluation in its regional development initiatives. Regional policy is notorious for its blurring of objectives and, in the case of Australian practice, for having a poor track record in policy and program evaluation. Regions will be required to determine their regional growth objectives strategies for meeting them.

One of the proposed initiatives currently being considered is to develop multi area agreements to allow groups of councils to agree to collective targets for economic development.

The key issue under consideration with most relevance to Australia is the Government’s intention to devolve more policy making to the regional level but to simultaneously strengthen accountability. This is a major paradox forregional governance. In effect, the absence of regional accountability sets a limit to the degree of devolution that is possible. It again raises the



question of who has responsibility for setting objective and priorities. Seemingly, central governments will continue to set objectives for regions, even under a relatively devolved system of governance.

Accountability to the national government will be strengthened through betterParliamentary scrutiny of regional performance against the strategies. Underthe latest proposals, local authorities would have responsibility for agreeing the regional strategies but final sign off on the strategies would remain with UK Government ministers. (UK Government 2007: 9-10).

Having ministers with responsibilities for particular regions, as has been the case in Western Australia and New South Wales, is under consideration as well, along with a new management framework for government agencies.

Business in the UK has complained about the ad hoc nature of the establishment and operations of many British regional bodies (UK Government 2007: 52). This is consistent with the findings relating to fragmentation ofthe RBDA in Australia. Business in particular has difficulty with bureaucracy and overlapping responsibilities, “Whitehall siloism” in the UK case. Fragmentation and complexity lead to sub-optimal policy outcomes and confusion. The 2007 UK Government review notes that there are typically at least 20 strategies for each region.

The UK case is instructive for Victoria for a number of reasons. It is aboutboth devolution and integration. It addresses the key problem of lack of accountability at the regional scale of governance. It attempts to involve local authorities in meaningful region scale activities. It is exploring ways of improving the performance of those involved in regional governance, partly through better incentives which are seen by the UK as critically important. It stresses the importance of a good evidence base for policy. And the UK approach has involved action learning as it has attempted over twelve years to fashion optimal regional planning. Finally, the UK case involves all three nodes of regional integration - regional policy, planning and coordination arrangements, and the UK Government has sought better ways of integrating planning and regional development.

OECD and Europe

OECD countries are now more accountable for the provision of public goods andservices, but to achieve regional policy objectives sub-national and higher levels of governments must co-operate and co-ordinate decisions and actions. A contractual approach for multi-level governance arrangements of regional development policy has been used in different ways in a number of EU regions.In 1999 the OECD created the Territorial Development Policy Committee as a forum for international exchange and debate on these issues.



Contracts between a central government and sub-national levels of government can be efficiently used to manage relationships, particularly with respect toregional policies. Mutual duties between two parties can be efficiently managed through a contractual arrangement, particularly in relation to the possible strategic behaviours by the parties, the side effects of the outcomeof their interactions and the dynamic of the relationships. Contracts are used as the framework of decentralisation policies or of co-operation among the levels of government.

Contracting and Regional Development policies: (OECD 2007)

“In France, a strongly unitary state, the logic of contracting is clearly to jointly manage policies in the framework of a decentralisation policy in which the central government remains an essential partner of the sub-national one.

In Italy, the logic is mostly to empower sub-national governments. Contracts aim therefore at transferring responsibilities so as to trainand make more accountable sub-national government, although relevant examples exist of both actors learning, as the case of complex projectsfor which the exchange of knowledge among parties is a condition for the effectiveness of the contract.

Germany is in the middle of the road. On the one hand, it is a federalstate. On the other hand the central government retains the initiative in many policy domains and “delegates” tasks without negotiating specific arrangements with the sub-national levels. In that case, it seems that more contracts that are tailored to particular place-based characteristics would be needed.

In Spain, the logic is clearly to jointly run structural policies because, despite the strong decentralisation of the last years, many policy domains require cooperation. Contracts are a way to manage these inter-dependences and to manage the antagonisms that characterised the decentralisation of Spain.

In the above cases and in the majority of OECD countries, regional development policy is a shared responsibility between central and regional levels of government. The nature of this sharing varies according to countries but tends to be characterised by strong inter-dependencies between levels of government in terms of decisions to be taken, tasks to be implemented, and the implications of policy success (or failure). Consequently, regional development policy, which requires ex ante co-ordination among levels of government, often employs contractual mechanisms for dealing with co-ordination needs.



Regional development policies are also complex. They are often characterised by a mix of various policy areas (innovation, social policy, infrastructure, etc.). This complexity is also due to a notable degree of uncertainty about the best opportunities to be selected, the precise targets to be reached, and the best strategies tobe applied. This complexity suggests the need to use relational instead of transactional types of contracts. In effect, the former arebetter adapted to situations which aim to foster identification of goodpractices and learning.

However, while general contracts for regional development tend to be relational, they often encompass precise tasks to be fulfilled that canbe clearly negotiated through transactional contracts (in particular for supporting infrastructure projects). “

Territorial policy has focussed on sustaining growth to make regions more competitive. (OECD 2005) This is complicated by the different needs and characteristics of different regions. Competitiveness policies pose some governance problems, particularly in terms of cross-sectoral policy integration, but also resource sharing and planning issues. Policies now focus increasingly on measures that promote innovation, particularly by building linkages such as:

Real estate based projects Cluster- type policies Linking research and industry

Policies should focus on the enabling environment as a factor that promotes business activity, and rural policies should emphasise the potential of ICT and of amenities in providing a base for enterprise development. The relationship between central and regional government, and co-ordination between ministries and departments is critical.

At regional level, closer co-operation among municipalities offers significant cost and outcome advantages. Co-operative solutions allow local authorities to preserve their identity and autonomy. The inclusion of private stakeholders in the decision making process also contribute to the competitiveness of regions.

Auckland Regional Council and One Plan

Auckland has a tradition of statutory region scale planning dating back to the 1970s, and since the 1990s has developed a series of regional governance models that attempt to better place Auckland in the global economy by a more coordinated approach to planning and policy at the city region scale. Attempts to improve the city’s governance and planning regime are explicitly



linked to the perceived impacts and opportunities of globalisation, as per the new regionalism approach to regional development.

As well, the recent initiatives reflect ongoing concerns over fragmentation. Hence the Auckland approach involves all three elements of integration – regional policy, regional planning and regional coordination. The importanceof having a voice for the region has been particularly important.

The Auckland Regional Council bears some similarities to the Portland model, whereby local councils have agreed to hand over a range of powers to a largerregional institution, while retaining its own specific powers. The Regional Council currently has responsibility for land use, transport and economic development.

Currently, the New Zealand Government has running a royal commission on Auckland governance (May 2008). This is particularly relevant to the Victorian Government’s interest in integrated planning. The Commission is considering specifically the call for integrated planning for the city region. Its key foci are as follows:

What kind of local government arrangements will help Auckland become a successful world-class city?

What decisions should be made and implemented at a regional level? By whatbody or bodies or processes should these decisions be made?

What decisions should be made and implemented at a local level? By what body or bodies or processes should these decisions be made?

To what extent should individual local councils follow consistent practices? How do we ensure that decisions made at national, regional, andlocal government levels are consistent with each other, and that they leadin the same direction?

How do we ensure that whatever form of local government is adopted remainsproperly accountable to the people of Auckland?

Moreover, the past ten years have witnessed many other attempts at achieving a more coordinated approach to region scale governance in the city, with a range of objectives and implementation strategies. The Auckland experience is therefore potentially instructive in relation to Victoria’s current consideration of the issues.

Initiatives undertaken in recent years include the following:

A regional policy statement released in 1994; The Regional Growth Forum established in 1996; The Auckland Regional Economic Development Strategic leadership Group

(AREDS) was set up in 2001 and a strategy published in 2002; Competitive Auckland was established in 2000, followed by the Committee

for Auckland in 2003, reflecting business interests and issues;Document: document.docx

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The Auckland Regional Growth Strategy developed by the Forum; The introduction of statutory powers in planning for the Regional Council; The Regional Sustainable Development Forum established in 2007 as a

“collaborative political forum” and a committee of the Auckland Regional Council;

The Royal Commission, focused on what decisions should be made a regional level, by whom, and through which processes;

One Plan, a proposal advanced by an international group of experts under the Metropolitan Auckland project commissioned by (McDermitt 2008; Auckland Regional Council)

The One Plan proposal was designed as “… a single purposeful plan for the region” to “integrate the different strategies and plans into one framework (McDermitt 2008: 8). It is being developed by the Regional Sustainable Development Forum. The One Plan approach’s key features are as follows:

Broad sectoral reach and ambitious objectives, including environmental planning, infrastructure and economic development;

Concern to achieve effective governance arrangements and strategies for a staged approach to implementation;

Attempts at achieving meaningful buy in from local councils and industry; A long term focus over 20 years; A strong bottom up element with community pressure to achieve actual

outcomes from all the various planning processes; The plan aims at integrated sustainable development.

According to Auckland Regional Council:

“One Plan for Auckland (One Plan) will provide a single, strategic framework and plan of action for the Auckland region. It will provide a detailed infrastructure plan to progress social, economic, environmental and cultural well being, and to strengthen the links between national and regional strategy, planning and action.

The aim of One Plan is to set a clear direction for how the region plans to achieve its aspirations for sustainable development.

In its first iteration, One Plan will be focussed on a few significant actions. Successive iterations will build on these, and new areas of action,towards the development of one integrated action plan in time. Over time, the objectives, goals and targets already expressed through a number of strategy documents will be drawn together in One Plan under a series of focussed action plans.

The One Plan approach will better integrate regional planning, investment andaction.



Over time, the objectives, goals and targets already expressed through a number of strategy documents will be drawn together in One Plan under a series of focussed action plans”.

In summary, One Plan marks a serious attempt at integrated planning at regional scale, with a focus on implementation strategies and regional governance. It is informed by the context of globalisation and is fully in tune with current thinking about the drivers of regional development. It haslessons for the Victorian regional development process, even though it is focused on a large city.

Summary of Case Studies

The case studies demonstrate the wide range of objectives and methods for achieving greater coordination of policies and strategies at the regional level. It is not an unexpected finding that there is no one clear model to emerge, but rather a range of practices reflecting varying aims and interests, differences between top down and bottom up approaches, and a rage of motivations, including the political desire to capture the benefits of being seen to be addressing problems of fragmentation without necessarily altering the core

Challenges for / Barriers to Integration at Regional Scale

There are substantial technical, bureaucratic and political barriers to achieving more integrated regional planning in Australia. If it were an easyprocess, arguably it would have been done already. As argued earlier, there is a considerable history to regionalism in Australia, but a poor record in devolution and decentralisation and a general lack of both capacity and legitimacy at the regional level. Key barriers to better regional governanceare familiar, and include the following:

Three levels of government without clear responsibilities delineated and aculture of blame shifting based on a mixture of politics and self interest;

A lack of a history of governance devolution in Australia – lack of skills, good practice models, culture of integration, culture of silos andcentral top down control by State and Commonwealth governments;

Lack of will by government to make the necessary governance reforms; The breadth of regional and local plans and processes which involve

separate vertical reporting processes; Lack of accountability mechanisms at regional scale; Lack of agreement over the meaning of “integration”; Uncertainty over the “reach” of regional planning;



Perennial funding shortfalls at the local level for undertaking projects that could build partnerships;

Different regional boundaries for different government agencies; The weakness of local government; The lack of willingness of central governments to work together on

regional solutions, despite a culture of informal cooperation at the localscale;

The lack of incentives for local councils to cooperate at regional scale, despite some successful experiments through Regional organisations of Councils.

These are barriers that could be overcome or at least addressed seriously with political will and a willingness to make resources available for mechanisms to build good models at the regional level. The case studies above are instructive in providing models and mechanisms for collaboration. Regions such as Cradle Coast in Tasmania and the Riverina have been able to develop trust and a willingness to collaborate across the region, and in the Tasmanian case, this includes formal linkages with higher levels of government.

The Tasmania case also provides a framework for dealing with the difficult question of determining where bottom up and top down processes meet, to the satisfaction of all parties. Framing a process that allows State governmentsto maintain a desired level of policy control while allowing meaningful inputand the capacity to implement at the regional level.

The capacity for local players to act regionally will vary across regional Victoria, depending on the culture of collaboration that exists and the partnerships already in place. With a history of Area Consultative Committees going back to the early 1990s, there is reason to hope that existing processes might be built upon to achieve better regional outcomes.

In the case of G21, there is an impressive process already in place that can be used as a learning tool if not an exactly replicable model for other regions. Geelong has the critical mass to make such partnerships work, and not all regions will have the capacity (will, resources) to match this effort.

Principles and Models of Effective Regional Governance Models

Many potential reforms of regional governance are available, and the case studies confirm some of these approaches. They include:

Regional government or the creation of regional councils; Greater powers to local governments; Bigger local governments;



Incentives for local institutions to collaborate; The creation of single bodies at regional scale with responsibility for

integrating plans; Empowering a lead agency in each region to drive collaboration and

integration; Ministers for regions (as in New South Wales and Western Australia); The creation of partnerships between levels of government; Empowering State government agencies to act more regionally and to join in

partnerships at the regional level; The British system of having Offices for the Regions; More empowered regional development agencies, eg with control over the

spending of money;

Niklasson (2007) has outlined a number of strategies for achieving greater integration that he has observed though a multi county study:

Centralise control of the public sector; Joined up government / horizontal management (formal reorganisation is

uncommon); Devolution (to elected politicians) / deconcentration (to public

servants); Encourage general networking by the stakeholder agencies (partnerships); Establish a national representative (body) in each region; Contracts between central government and regional bodies, or between

regional bodies; The creation by central governments of partnership arrangements at the

regional level , through instruments such as control, oversight, accountability and evaluation.

There is something to the argument that a globally integrated world with regional development driven by complex processes should not be “over coordinated”. This is an adaptive governance model favoured by Sorensen, which allows regional dynamism to emerge through voluntary cooperation among agents rather than central control.

McDermott too fears that too much coordination might simply add on another layer of bureaucracy and, perversely, stifle regional development. Accordingto McDermott, writing on the Auckland experience:

… there is no compelling argument that delivery will necessarily be enhanced by bringing a wide range of development activities and infrastructure into a single organization” (McDermott 2008: Introduction).

There is something to these claims. The current conventional wisdom that onesize does not fit all in regional policy suggests that regional mechanisms for greater integration should allow for regional differences and local



innovation. Moreover, any integration reforms should allow regions to adapt to changing circumstances.

One are of potential reform is to provide support to regional networks and encourage local leaders and practitioners to upgrade their skills in coalition building. If the encouragement of a lead agency model is attempted, it must go hand in hand with skill building.

Considerations for Reform

There are many questions for consideration by the Victoria Government in relation to integrated regional planning. The case studies demonstrate a range of policy instruments, varying objectives, and the full range of regional planning, policy and coordination perspectives. Some key questions for further consideration are as follows:

Where should the “top down” meet the “bottom up”? In other words, which level of government should drive the integration process and adopt lead agency status?

Is integration of regional planning just a top down process? In other words, are the outcomes mainly for the benefit of the region or mainly forthe benefit of the State Government?

How much devolution should be involved? Is it up to the regional institutions to decide on the content and direction of the strategy or integrated plan?

How is the regional vision decided – who owns it? How does the central government ensure its preferred outcomes are

delivered while ensuring local / regional ownership of regional strategies?

Who implements the plan, without the creation of another tier of bureaucracy? This relates to lead agency status and necessarily involves questions about resources.

How are effective links created between regional strategies and State policy directions?

How are regional structures created that can effectively represent regional interests and deal effectively with all three levels of government?

To what extent are governance reforms required by the imperatives of integrated planning?

Are traditional boundaries suited to dealing with emerging interdependencies?

What are the dimensions of vertical and horizontal integration?

As the RBDA process concluded in 2003, many regional stakeholders and certainly business remain deeply dissatisfied with the current state of regional policy and planning in Australia. The core concerns relate to



fragmentation, overlap, split responsibilities and shifting governance arrangements. No one seriously contemplates regional government, and while some experts such as Tony Sorensen are relaxed about regional governance chaos, the consensus is that things could be improved.

Added to the complexity of the arrangements is the current consideration by the Commonwealth of regional governance arrangements relating to its own Regional Development Australia Committees (formerly Area Consultative Committees). The likely outcome from the Commonwealth’s deliberations is incremental change rather than a fundamentally new set of arrangements relating to alignment of regional institutions. Different models will probably apply to different States and Territories. There may be some rationalisation of structures if the NSW approach is followed. However, the current Commonwealth process is not about integration of regional processes, but rather process improvement within the regional policy arena.

Options for Further Action

In the final analysis, the Government faces choices between continuing current process (business as usual); process improvement; and process re-engineering. Hence options for further action by the Victorian Government are as follows:

Business as usual – to leave current processes as they are, without any specific policy interventions to improve the degree of planning integration;

Process improvement – to ramp up incrementally efforts to integrate the processes that affect regional outcomes, without the creation of new institutions;

Process re-engineering – to more radically restructure existing institutions or to create new institutions and processes with clearly delineated responsibility for integrated regional planning, eg to create new coordinating bodies at the regional level.

If choosing either the second or third model; the following options are available:

Central government to lead the coordination; Central government to do the coordination; Central government to encourage local and regional institutions to

collaborate more / integrate; Central government to force local and regional institutions to collaborate

/ integrate.

The first option, keeping the status quo, is a recipe for more of the same fragmentation and duplication of effort that has characterised regional



planning to date and which has drawn far-reaching and justified criticism. The third option would require substantial processes of adjustment and possibly new layers of bureaucracy, and it is uncertain whether the upheaval across government and in regions would be worth the effort.

The second option is by far the most likely to be effective while remaining within the current thinking of the Victorian Government. It might involve new incentives and mechanisms for collaboration in an effort to streamline current processes and more clearly delineate responsibility for implementing regional plans.



Appendix Case Studies in Integrated Planning

Plan Lead Agency

Purpose Reach of Plan Statutory

Geographical Process

The GeelongRegional Plan

G21GeelongRegion Alliance

Integration of planning, economic development and policy coordination, encouraging wide community support, public-private partnerships and long term vision, combined with a serious commitment of regional resources.

Arts, culture and heritage;

Economic development; Environment; Health and wellbeing; Education and

training; Planning and

infrastructure; Sport and recreation;

and Transport.

Population:254,500Area: 894,441ha5 Municipalities

Planning to 2050

Integrated Regional Planning using eight themesfor foci.

NSW Far North CoastRegional Strategy

NSW State Government

The strategy will guide local planning in the sixlocal government areas, and inform decisions on service and infrastructure delivery.

Environment, Cultural heritage, Natural hazards, Settlement and housing,

Economic development and employment growth,

Water and energy resources,

Regional transport.

State Population: 2280006 municipalitiesTo 2031

Plan is a top downState Government led approach, but with due recognition of regional views andinterests.

Riverina Economic DevelopmentStrategy

Riverina Regional Development Board

To set broad directions for the economic development of the

Economic Development Plan

Agriculture, Forestry, Manufacturing and

Population: 160,00016 Municipalities

Formal Partnershipagreements with stakeholder agencies

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(REDS) region and to guideactivities into thefuture that will becommenced during the term of the current board.

Processing, Employment, Education,and Training

Community Economic Development

Transport and Utilities

International Business Telecommunications Tourism

2004-2010 Bottom up process,even though it is aligned with StateGovernment priorities.

Cradle Coast DevelopmentAuthority and PartnershipAgreements

Cradle Coast Development Authority

To identify priorities for economic development and to broker partnershipsbetween the different levels ofgovernment, industry and community groups toaddress these priorities on a regional scale

Tourism Natural Resource Management

Industry Development Infrastructure Development

Education, Training and Workforce Development

Community and CulturalDevelopment

Partnerships with State & Federal

Population:100,0009 Local areas

Local Regional Planning with State & Federal funding and implementation

South East Queensland Regional Strategy

QueenslandState Government

To provide the framework for managing growth, land use and development in the region

Infrastructure, Water, Eco-development, Land use, Transport,

State Population: 2.3 millionArea: 22890 km²11 CouncilsPopulation projection to 2031

Plan is a top downState Government led approach, but with due recognition of regional views andinterests.

Portland Metro

‘Metro’ Integration of landuse, growth, water

Land use, Urban design & growth

State Population: 1.4 million

Consultative Planning and










http://www.cradlecoast.com/redirect.asp?page=00034%20Industry%20Development



http://www.cradlecoast.com/redirect.asp?page=00029%20Tourism

Region, Oregon

and waste planning.Coordination of transportation and emergency services.Management of public cultural centres and heritage cemeteries.

Natural hazards Water, Environment Public cultural buildings

3 counties, 25cities2040

Coordination with independent auditing

Vancouver Canada

‘Metro Vancouver’

To manage the watersystem, waste system, parks system, air quality, planning and growth, and housing, economically and effectively on a regional basis whilst maintaining and enhancing the quality of life.

Water, Air quality Waste, Land use & development Housing Political leadership

Federal Population: 2.3 millionArea: 282,000 ha20 years

Consultative Planning and Coordination

UK RegionalStrategies

Regional Development Agencies

To address the challenge of “joined up government” to advance regional planning, regional development and policy coordinationat the regional

Economic, Environmental Social objectives

Federal UK Federal Strategy to encourage accountable regional economic development and planning



scaleEuropean Union Regional Planning

Sub-national levels of government

To manage relationships, particularly with respect to regionalpolicies, in order to be more accountable for theprovision of publicgoods and services

Regional development Social policy Infrastructure Industry

National OECD & Europe Shared responsibility between regional and central government

Auckland Regional Council ‘One Plan’

Auckland Regional Council

Short-term – to deliver better on existing commitments, and set a clear direction for sustainable development.Longer-term - make and implement better decisions guided by the Auckland Sustainability Framework’s vision of a resilient region.

Transport Connected digital society

Cultural diversity Sustainable environment

Integrated regional development and investment

Effective collaborative leadership

Regional Population: 1.3 million7 Municipal CouncilsRegional growth strategy to 2050

Integration of past plans into ‘One plan’ with overall strategiesdeveloped for regional growth and development



References

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Regional Integrated Planning

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