Australia's water supply challenge has been rated as Australia's single biggest development challenge over the next 10 years.
Results of CEDA's Big Issues project are being released at a CEDA Sydney event on Wednesday 11 July and are published in this week's BRW magazine. The Big Issues project saw water ranked ahead of other key national issues including labour skills, economic productivity, and world ecology and climate change.
CEDA's Big Issues project is designed to help identify the challenges Australia faces over the next 10 years. It will play a key role in developing CEDA's research agenda for the period ahead, as well as helping CEDA's trustees and all Australians to understand the issues facing the nation.
The scope of the issues considered includes economic development and business issues but also social and environmental issues.
The Big Issues list was developed in a process which saw 300 CEDA trustees rank 100 candidate issues in 11 distinct "environments" drawn from research firm IBISWorld's Business Environment Database. The top 20 were then considered by an expert panel containing 14 of Australia's leading economics, public policy and business experts.
CEDA's chief executive officer, David Byers, described the Big Issues project as part of CEDA's push to increased informed debate about Australia's national priorities.
"By publishing this list, we aim to provoke more discussion among policymakers and citizens in general about where our national priorities lie," he said.
"Australia can benefit from clearer understanding about the issues that will determine our long-term success as an economy and a society."
"This is not the last word on where our national priorities should lie. We do believe it is a worthwhile starting point."
The Top 10 Big Issues as voted by the expert panel are:
For further information please contact:
John Harris
Corporate Relations Director
Phone 03 9652 8415
Email info@ceda.com.au
Printed from the CEDA Web site at http://ceda.com.au. Copyright 1999-2009 CEDA