Prospects and challenges
The Queensland Government is single-minded in its mission to continue the State’s strong and enduring economic growth so that all Queenslanders – today and tomorrow – can enjoy a good quality of life.
Economic growth comes from either ‘using more’ or ‘doing more’, or both:
- we can use more assets such as labour, capital and natural resources; or
- our firms and workers can increase productivity by doing more with what we’ve got; or
- we can have a combination of the two.
Economic growth and sustainable development must go hand in hand. If we simply rely on the unrelenting use of our resources, we will fail to protect the quality of life for future generations as well as for today. This means we must look to increased productivity to secure enduring economic growth.
We can increase our productive capacity by applying new ideas – either as radical inventions, or as incremental improvements to old ways of making or providing products and services. New ideas that work – innovations – emerge in a culture of discovery, creativity, diversity and risk-taking; they flourish when skills and knowledge are encouraged and stretched to keep pace with change.
At its simplest, the Smart State Strategy is about investing in skills and innovation to increase our productivity so that Queenslanders can enjoy the benefits of a strong, prosperous economy and a better quality of life.
‘Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.’ (William Pollard, Soul of the Firm, 1996)
The Smart State Strategy is the centrepiece of the Queensland Government’s broader economic development strategy and provides a dynamic stimulus to the stability provided by the Queensland Government’s:
- investment in infrastructure
- track record of providing a sound fiscal environment
- low-cost tax and regulatory framework.
