Victoria Summit 2021 Playbook to guide a brighter future for Victoria

While the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted businesses, work and lives, it also created an opportunity to define a new vision and way forward for Victoria. This is the foundation upon which the Victoria Summit 2021 – and the resulting Playbook – was born.

Powered by the Victorian Chamber, thought leaders from industry, unions, governments, the community and educational institutions worked together to define a bold new vision to unlock Victoria’s potential.

The process – involving more than 10,000 hours of work – has culminated in a ‘living’ Playbook that acts as a guide to achieving the vision of making Victoria the best place to live, learn, work and operate a business.

The Playbook identifies six overarching considerations and categorises stakeholder input into 10 pillars, 46 pathways and 189 actions that outline the bold activity required to achieve the vision.

Victoria Summit 2021

The Victoria Summit 2021 was a unique opportunity to work together to create a shared, bold, compelling and aspirational vision for Victoria and a path for our state’s economic recovery and long-term prosperity.

It focused on exploring three fundamental questions:

What is the vision for Victoria in 10, 20 and 30 years, richly described and aspirational but achievable?
What are the pathways to securing this vision?
What actions are needed to ensure Victoria is on the path to developing and realising this vision?

The Victorian Chamber convened a Reference Group of Victorian leaders to guide the Summit process and inform the development of the Playbook. Three Working Groups across the themes of Business and the Economy, Community, Health and Wellbeing, and the Future of Work also generously provided insight and ideas throughout a series of roundtables and discussions throughout 2021.

We held three public forums – summit days – featuring keynote speakers including four former Victorian Premiers and a panel of emerging leaders.

Victoria Summit 2021 Playbook

Stakeholder input from public forum summit days, reference and working group meetings and interviews culminated in more than 10,000 hours of work to refine the Victoria Summit’s vision, pathways and actions into the Playbook.

A Playbook is different to other kinds of reports or strategies as it provides a guide rather than a concrete plan. While the framework should remain stable, the action toward achieving the vision will evolve over time.

For example, while the ideas will hopefully be brought to life by governments and other stakeholders to benefit Victoria, by deliberately not defining them as final policy positions, each Government, Opposition or political party can adopt and shape them as part of their plan for Victoria.

The five ‘plays’ identified – consider, collaborate, co-design, leverage and look long-term – embrace the spirit of the Summit process and inform the approach adopted when implementing the actions identified in the Playbook.

Six overarching considerations were also identified to help guide the Summit process and Playbook – First Australians, equality, diversity and inclusion, existing and emerging industries, regional development, agility and resilience.

While some pathways and actions explicitly acknowledge them, these overarching considerations should be considered when implementing every action to support a fair, inclusive and sustainable path toward the vision.

Pillars

The 10 pillars represent the key areas where Victoria must act across business and the economy, community, health and wellbeing and the future of work:

The Business pillar focuses on providing a competitive and supportive operating environment to allow Victorian businesses to not only thrive, but to be ahead of the curve.
The Skilled pillar is about building and evolving the breadth and depth of Victoria’s talent pool to provide individuals and organisations with the requisite skills and human capital required to succeed.
The Sustainable pillar supports the long-term goal of building a more sustainable state that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The Wellbeing pillar focuses on providing equitable, world-class health and wellbeing outcomes for all Victorians.
The Inclusive pillar focuses on enabling the full participation of all Victorians.
The Most Liveable pillar highlights how Victoria can become a better place to live.
The Innovative pillar focuses on boosting Victoria’s capability to research, develop and commercialise new goods and services to be the heart of entrepreneurship in Australia.
The Globally Competitive pillar focuses on how to maximise the benefits to Victoria from being part of an internationally connected world.
The Experience pillar covers the events, festivals and activities that give Victoria its unique cultural vibrancy.
The Connected pillar focuses on the infrastructure required to connect Victorians across the state, country and globe.

Pathways and actions

Within the 10 pillars are 46 pathways and 189 actions that outline the bold activity required to achieve the vision. Taking into consideration the evolution of the Playbook, the actions in this document typically have a shorter focus of 10 years.

While the list of pathways and actions is extensive, we recognise it is not exhaustive and the wide-ranging ideas reflect the diverse group of stakeholders involved. Overall, there is broad consensus on what Victoria should look like in 2050 and the actions required to get there. However, some actions have been identified as more contentious, which reflects the robust debate, diverse views and differing levels of support by stakeholders. From the outset, we welcomed the diversity of opinions and conceded that we would not get consensus on everything.

Twenty-eight of the 189 actions were selected as priority actions due to the impact they will have in achieving the vision and unlocking the potential of Victoria. The priority list represents a mix of overdue and new actions.

It is now up to individuals, organisations, governments and our community to help turn this vision into a reality by choosing the actions they wish to advocate for and be implemented.

Victorian Chamber Chief Executive Paul Guerra said, “The Victoria Summit 2021 has been a momentous journey that has seen unprecedented collaboration across industry, unions, educational institutions, community groups and government, culminating in more than 10,000 hours of work. It is owned by the hundreds of participants who contributed along the way: passionate, driven and visionary Victorians.

“We have been deliberate in bringing the leaders together across the State to ensure we are developing both relationships and solid ideas to ensure that Victoria is the best place to do live, work, learn and operate a business

“The Playbook will be a valuable tool for all decision-makers in Victoria, enabling them to pinpoint the areas that they can impact and make changes to deliberately and strategically set Victoria on a trajectory of international success. It is now up to individuals, organisations, governments and our community to turn these visions into reality. Pick them up and run with it!

“Thank you to all those involved in making this happen, especially our formidable Reference Group and Working Groups, led by their co-chairs. Your contributions will continue to drive our great state into a prosperous, successful and inspirational future.”

The victoriasummit.com.au website presents the Victoria Summit 2021 Playbook in its entirety, comprising all pillars, pathways and actions. Explore the Playbook to identify how you can help unlock the potential of Victoria. The future is in our hands.