His personal desire and commitment for a plan to be developed and implemented by the community for Tasmania out to 2020, created a new way for all Tasmanians to be involved in the decisions that affect our lives.
Tasmania Together took more than two years to complete.
Such a process – inviting the community to have a say about every aspect of society – had never been attempted in such detail.
Tasmania Together includes a visionary statement and broad goals underpinned by specific benchmarks that can be regularly measured and monitored.
It is a plan based on an ethos of community involvement and ownership in determining a preferred future for the people of Tasmania and ensuring that all Tasmanians can participate.
The words in Tasmania Together come from those Tasmanians who attended public meetings and those who made submissions.
The Tasmania Together Progress Board, the Community Leaders Group and staff in the Secretariat, thank Jim for the commitment and leadership he gave to ensure the vision of all Tasmanians is realised over time.
This group had primary responsibility for the development of the plan, and consulting with the community to see what the people of Tasmania wanted the plan to contain.
This process included the identification of benchmarks.
The group was drawn from the widest possible spectrum in the community, with every effort being made to include representation from sectors of the community who may previously have felt that they were excluded from decision-making processes.
This ensured the Community Leaders Group was an independent body representing the Tasmanian community to the greatest extent possible.
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Michael Aird Jane Bennett Emma Catchpole Professor Rob Clark Grant Dunham Catherine Fernon Tony Hainsworth Jenni Jarvis Bev Jennings Danny Keep Roz Lansdell |
Nathan Mansell Dr Jenna Mead Mary Reason Jerril Rechter Wendy Schoenmaker Manny Spiteri Philipa Varris Louise Sullivan Ivan Webb Dave Willans |
This Search Conference was a starting point for Tasmania Together. It resulted in a draft document titled Our Vision, Our Future, which was distributed widely throughout the state and acted as a springboard for discussion.
As a measure of community involvement in the process, the entire print run of Our Vision, Our Future was requested by and distributed to 14,000 committed organisations and individuals.
More than 100 community organisations were consulted and more than 160 detailed written submissions were received from business groups, peak bodies and individuals.
All of this material was invaluable, coming as it did on the back of more than 4,000 comment sheets returned by readers of Our Vision, Our Future and more than 6,200 messages from website visitors.
Thanks to the support of Australia Post, Tasmania Together postcards were delivered to households throughout the state, and 2,500 people went to the trouble of putting their views in writing and returning the card.
Not one word was wasted. Every submission was entered into a database, a task that took two months, before a powerful software program sorted the material into areas of common interest – themes that people felt most strongly about.