Day 1 - Monday 20 March - University of Western Australia Hon Graham Kierath MLA Opening Speech. Mr Dusan Mills introduced The Hon Graham Kierath MLA. The Hon Graham Kierath MLA thanked Mr Arthur Ikeda, Managing Director of Yanchep Sun City, Mr Jon Kelly, Mayor, City of Wanneroo, Mr John Forbes, Co Chairman IDEA Project Steering Group, Advanced Land Resources, and all attending for their time and input. The Hon Graham Kierath, MLA, as patron of the IDEA Project, opened the conference with the following address: "Today marks a significant moment for our State. It begins a process that will be felt for generations and help set a plan for the future of our city to the north. There has never been a day like today for our State because there has never been a project like St Andrews. The enormity of what is proposed takes your breath away. A development of a 6000-hectare parcel of land under one ownership is unheard of in Australia. When completed in 30 years, St Andrews will account for 13 per cent of Perth’s population growth. About 150,000 people will be living where there is now mostly just sand dunes. That works out to be about five towns the size of Bunbury. Of course before it reaches those eventual proportions there is a long way to go and a large investment to be made – some $12 billion in fact. Over the past decade the State Government has invested $1 billion into the area and is committed to seeing this project reach fruition. Hard as it is to imagine, there is little doubt the satellite city will become a reality. Already there have been some significant steps down this path. Probably the most important was the St Andrews Strategic Corporation Agreement between the Tokyu Corporation, Yanchep Sun City, the City of Wanneroo and the State Government. From there, was created a joint employment creation feasibility initiative called the Idea Project. Idea stands for Innovation, Development, employment and Applications. The Project Team first identified 12 industry cluster categories that could be targeted for the Northwest Corridor including education, research, tourism and services. The team then undertook a study tour to examine and learn from the experiences of similar projects in other parts of the world and to meet acknowledged experts in this kind of employment generation. Next work was commissioned to identify the social benefit cost analysis for the Project in order to recognise the advantages to the community as a whole of bringing forward employment at St Andrews. It is the reports from the study tour and the social benefit cost analysis that will form the backbone of this workshop. To be conducted over the next three days, the workshop in itself will break new ground. Never before in Australia has there been an international job creation workshop such as this. In all, it is expected to eventually create 60,000 new jobs in the St Andrews area. Sessions for the first day will be here at the University of Western Australia with the subsequent two days at the Joondalup campus of Edith Cowan University. There will be video-conference link ups with some of the worlds leading authorities on co-ordinating projects such as what is proposed. The community will also be able to participate in the workshop through the interactive web site and I would urge those interested to seize the opportunity. You can’t get much better community consultation than an immediate response on the internet. As I mentioned before, the size of the St Andrews project is breath taking but the task still ahead is also considerable. However I am confident the work over the next three days will go a long way to bringing the reality of this massive project even closer. In opening the workshop I wish it success and again encourage the community to embrace the chance to participate. Thank you