Go back to the list of participants

Chris Koo

Biography:

I am 38 yo, married with 2 children and have lived most of my life in Victoria. I've been with Australia Post for 8 years and am currently in charge of our Parcels and Express businesses nationally. My father is Chinese, my mother is Scottish and I'm one of 5 children (all of us are very Australian).

Statement:

I would like Australia to continue to be a safe place to live with a vibrant, proud and challenging culture.

I believe our greatest challenge and obligation is to provide future generations in Australia with the type of society and lifestyle that we, and previous generations, have enjoyed.

This is made more challenging by the fact that security and safety are being compromised worldwide with a notable increase in cultural conflicts and terrorism.

Australia also faces significant threats from the environment such as global warming, pollution, pandemics and decreasing levels of ozone protection from the sun. As evidenced by Australia's non-committal to the Kyoto protocols, the trade off between economic prosperity and safety is often difficult.

However, I believe that effectively addressing and managing safety and security issues (ie. environmental and societal) should be our first priority, even if it means making sacrifices to our economic standard of living in the short to medium term. This argument is based on the fact that if we don't take a vigilant and long term view on these issues, our economic standard of living will inevitably suffer anyway.

Of course, this presents a significant political challenge given that governments are elected every 3 years and that many voters are influenced by short term issues. This is heightened by the fact that many Australians are probably too reliant on continued short to medium term economic prosperity as average mortgages and household debt are at record levels leaving many Australians highly vulnerable to interest rate rises and/or impacts on earnings.

Getting society to move away from consumerism and towards a longer term 'quality of life' focus will take a fundamental shift in mindset.

Strong economic growth is critical to help fund the high costs associated with the many facets of providing Australians with a safe and healthy lifestyle. Our proximity to the burgeoning Asia / Pacific economies will underpin some of this growth although this alone won't ensure our longer term economic prosperity.

We need to enhance Australia's credibility as a centre for business and take us beyond our traditional reliance on natural resources and tourism. This will mean getting our political and financial frameworks right to ensure that we are attractive to skilled workers and businesses alike and that we can competitively trade globally in our chosen areas of industry.

This may involve radical changes to our immigration policies, taxation systems, political frameworks, welfare systems and other key levers of our society. Whilst this could turn out to be the most significant long term challenge ever faced by our society, the need for such an approach should always be justified by looking into the eyes of our children and grandchildren.