Brisbane is the key to Queensland's growth

The changing world economy has meant a decline in the role of rural and primary industries and a rise in the importance of services supported by efficient, globally competitive urban economies.

This doesn’t mean abandoning rural industries or their people, but it should mean Governments more actively arguing that the fortunes of all Queenslanders – city and bush - are now closely tied to the competitiveness of our urban economies.

Successful urban economies are needed to maintain and drive the fortunes of rural and provincial areas. Linkages between the fortunes of urban economies and rural ones need to be built.

But instead of actively supporting urban areas as the pathways to prosperity, State budgets happily boast that two thirds of capital works are spent outside the Brisbane region. This is despite the fact that the south east corner, which makes up just 1.3% of the land area of the state, accounts for two thirds of the population and 80% of the growth.

As a result, the capital city suffers massive infrastructure deficits. There are plans for Integrated Regional Transport networks but the budget is more than $10 billion short of what’s needed.

The capital also continues to suffer from policy weaknesses which paint our reputation as a 'big country town' instead of a competitive metropolis. The ongoing and outdated debates about Sunday trading and daylight saving are just two examples.

In the case of daylight saving, a suggestion that daylight saving could be introduced just for the urbanised south east region in order to allow it to be more competitive with places like Sydney and Melbourne met with resistance from rural communities who argued that it would inconvenience them in their dealings with the capital.

But the cost of inconveniencing the capital city in competition with other capitals is that the prosperity the capital could be enjoying just isn’t there and that in turn is affecting the prosperity of the entire state.

The politics are sensitive but the economics of the argument are not. Instead of apologising for urban infrastructure projects, the State could more aggressively argue that this urban infrastructure is the best chance for many regions to access national and global influence.

And if our governments embraced this as our greatest opportunity for global influence, we would see budgets and policy programs devoted to supporting and developing our cities as global assets. Globalisation and urban strategy are two sides of the same coin.

The development of our urban infrastructures would be not be relegated as an issue for local government, but embraced at the national and state level as a program of utmost economic importance.

In the same way that governments tackle tax reform and waterfront reform, we would find ourselves reforming our urban transport systems, our information technology infrastructure, funding our urban educational institutions and supporting our urban quality of life in order to retain and attract 'knowledge workers' who work in places which have the most to offer, not where 'old economy' businesses say they should.

These are important for the entire state, not just the city in which they are located. Imagine if Sydney suffered a major economic downturn? The ripples would affect the economies of all regions in the country. In the same way, the economic fortunes of Brisbane are vital to the fortunes of regional and rural communities in Queensland.

For that reason, Queensland’s best chance of turning around its economic performance is through a greater commitment to the economic and social needs of its capital city and its major urban centres.