Australia's 12 largest cities have called for a formal agreement between the three tiers of government to collaboratively deliver better prosperity, liveability and sustainability for their cities.
Meeting in Canberra to support a submission to the Rudd Government on the development of a national urban policy, City leaders said a tripartate framework of Federal, State and Local Governments was critical to attaining national outcomes on these issues.
"The way forward is through the sharing of local knowledge, experience and intelligence on implementing successful outcomes," says chair of the Council of Capital City Lord Mayors (CCCLM) and Lord Mayor of Darwin, Graeme Sawyer.
"It's crunch time, and unless we respond to this urgency we will not deliver the urban outcomes Australia needs.
"The Major Cities, conscious of climate change and our ageing population, can deliver in a timely and efficient manner."
The CCCLM has joined with Major Cities partners Newcastle, Wollongong, Geelong and the Gold Coast to develop the Towards a City Strategy position paper for influencing the make-up of the Federal Government's national urban policy.
The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, the Hon Anthony Albanese, told the summit the Rudd government valued the dialogue with the Major Cities in developing its National Urban Policy.
"We have changed the partnership between local and national government structurally and beyond the occasional. Never again will there be such a gap between these two levels of government," he says. "We want a living, breathing document that evolves as our Cities evolve."
Albanese indicated the National Urban Policy would be launched before the end of the year.
The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore MP, says it is vital that State and Federal governments work with the City to remove the legislative brakes on the introduction of cleaner localised energy generation systems or trigeneration.
"Governments did this in the UK years ago, and now London and Woking draw their own power locally and not from coal-fired plants, slashing emissions and the power bills of consumers," she says. "If we get government agreement, we will achieve the same results here."
