Merinotech Australia Pty Ltd: WA

"MERINOS for THE FUTURE"

The Annual Merinotech Forum on August 4th 1999 was well attended.

The program was very challenging. The first two speakers, futurist Ann Macbeth and Task force member Danny Samson set the scene by giving participants information on trends for the future and ideas and attitudes that, if adopted, will ensure a profitable future. Ann and Danny also ran a futuring workshop asking participants to consider a variety of ways to adapt to the changing customers of the future. There were three other workshops where new ideas on cooperative wool supply chains, grazing practices, sustainable land management, Total Genetic Resource Management and strategies for becoming a best woolgrowing enterprise.

As Ann Macbeth says:
Resisting change is like holding your breath - if you succeed, you die.

"Future Trends"

"If you are not confused, you are not paying attention" is a quote from the Wall Street Week in the 80's that still reflects how many of us feel as we try to deal with the immense speed of change impacting every aspect of our lives.
We see government rapidly changing from being the leading voice in economic and trade development, with its traditional applied research and development grants, to becoming the administrative backup for business to forge its own path into the global marketplace.
Governments' rapid deregulation, corporatisation, privatisation, and leveling the playing fields, are all part of this changing relationship between government and business.
After 200 years of leading the growth of Australian industry, government is getting out of making the rules and funding the processes. Government is declaring loudly that they will no longer be responsible for the outcomes - you and I must accept much more responsibility for what happens in our lives, both in business and in our community.
During this very rapid role change, government is relinquishing a great deal of power. Big Business is ready and willing to pick it up. The transnational and multinational corporations are flexing their economic might, often having more say than our national or state governments about what actually occurs in our back yard.
Some future thinkers have deep concerns about these powerful profit-driven organisations globally pursuing economic growth without loyalty or affinity to any one nation or culture.
As a futurist watching the global trends hatching at the grass roots level around the western world, I am more optimistic that this imbalance of power is only a temporary situation. I see and hear daily how a growing number of local communities, composed of ordinary mums and dads, young and old, are starting to demand, and get, control over their own communities, their lifestyles, their jobs and work styles, and their futures.
There are two main reasons for this long term optimism : the changing power in the marketplace away from the producer and toward the consumer - us ordinary people; and, the growing realisation that our materialistic world with its greed-is-good value system is working against a healthy, happy, sustainable world for ourselves and our children's children.
More than anywhere else in the world, all the necessary ingredients for that healthy sustainable future are here in Western Australia. All we have to do is change how we see ourselves and how we do some things.

But first, we must take responsibility for that change and for our future - now.

Ann Macbeth