Garlick, Steve (SCRRI)

Steve is a Professor in the Graduate College of Management at Southern Cross University. He holds the position of Director of Research of the Southern Cross Regional Research Institute. He also holds a visiting research fellow position in the Centre for Continuing Education at the Australian National University.

Steve is probably one of Australia's foremost authorities on regional economic development policy. He has around twenty years experience as a researcher, policy developer and program manager in regional and local development, local government and labour market areas.

He was the prime architect of the former Australian Labor Government's Working Nation regional development strategy, the consequent regional development program, Commonwealth cross-portfolio coordination arrangements for regional development as well as earlier Commonwealth regional development programs such as the Country Centres Project.

Steve has more than seventy research publications, created the Australian Regional Developments monograph series and has managed a number of major regional development consultant projects for the Federal Government, including the McKinsey & Co, Lead Local Compete Global work and the second McKinsey report, Supporting Regional Leadership: Unfinished Business. He has experience of overseas regional development policy and practice, having been a visiting fellow in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies in the UK in the early 1990's, and has provided regional development and local government advice to governments in China, Poland and Canada.

Steve's most recent work in regional development is the report, 'Creative Associations in Special Places': Enhancing the Partnership Role of Universities in Building Competitive Regional Economies published in the Evaluations and Investigations Program series of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA). He is currently following up this work on projects with the European Union.

Steve has been a senior executive in the Commonwealth Government for around ten years at the Assistant Secretary and First Assistant Secretary levels.

Selected Publications:

• The Role of Universities in the Economic Development of Regional Communities - Changing Relationships in Australia, Chapter 3 in Universities and Regional Engagement, edited by Zbys Klich, Southern Cross University Press, Lismore, 1999.
• Creative Associations in Special Places’: Enhancing the Partnership Role of Universities in Building Competitive Regional Economies, EIP Report No. 98/ 4, Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, 1998.
• Regional economic development: new partnership challenges for local government, chapter 14 in Australian Local Government: Reform and Renewal, by Brian Dollery and Neil Marshall (eds), Macmillan Education Australia Pty Ltd, South Melbourne, 1998
• The Ebb and Flow of Regional Development Policy and Practice in Australia: An Overview and Future Possibilities, keynote address to Meeting the Regional Change
• Labour Market Characteristics and Determinants of Unemployment in the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales, Southern Cross Regional Research Institute report, April 1998
• The Incongruity of Place and Institution in Spatial Economic Development - Some Early Thoughts, paper to the Regional Science Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-25 September, 1996.

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