Page 3173 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
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I will take another minute or two to mark that this past Sunday was Australian Beard Day. The family-friendly ACT event was held at King O’Malley’s by Canbeards, the Beard and Moustache Club of Canberra. It doubled as a fundraiser for White Ribbon. Winners of a range of beard categories were judged by members of The Beards—the band, for those of us who do not know. I was delighted to see that the main prize, for best Canberra beard, was won by Matt Leonard, a Belconnen local, the president of Canbeards. I want to offer my congratulations to Matt, Canbeards and King O’Malley’s on a great Sunday afternoon event.
Smart Seeds
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (7.03): I rise to speak in support of a program called Smart Seeds, an annual program for young professionals to experience the real policy and logistical challenges faced by decision-makers across the public and private sectors. The program is backed by GHD Advisory. Smart Seeds is a program run in cities around the world and across Australia, but in 2017 the program ran for young professionals for the first time here in Canberra. It was a privilege to be invited to be a part of the program in Canberra, albeit in a small way, and to meet and interact with a group of up-and-coming leaders in the government and private sectors who, as part of the program, were challenged to develop concepts in the urban renewal space.
The Canberra program started back in April this year, with young professionals from numerous government and commercial organisations. The first event for participants was a challenge workshop which defined the problems that would be tackled by the young professionals in the program. That was followed by a launch workshop where the young people started working on their problems. There was then an ideation workshop which was aimed at refining the young professionals’ thinking around idea creation and problem solving. The final two events were a pitch workshop, where the young professionals refined their ideas, and a showcase in late June, where guests and judges listened to each group pitch their ideas. Whilst those were the defined program components, a considerable amount of work happened between each of these events.
There were five teams of young professionals, who all developed their own concepts and pitches. Regions Reimagined, made up of Kerri-Ann Smith, Joyce Xu, Chloe Reeves and Sara Wilson, pitched an idea to move 200 families from Sydney to Goulburn while offering networking opportunities and employment, either with their current employers or with local businesses. The participants would move into newly constructed affordable family homes, while a business hub would be developed in the regional centre.
The second group was called Helping Hand, made up of Alex Hardy, Neil Jones, Daniel Cirovski, Rebecca Cox and Ark Du. It pitched the idea for a “Helping hand” software app to help young professionals connect and grow their ideas and their network of advisers within an organisation. A third group was Solvathon, made up of Daniel Jackson, Rowena Sturn, Wade Liu, Alex Bardell, Chris Haughton and Galani Dube, who pitched a competition to foster collaborative solutions to infrastructure problems in cities and in other communities.
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