Life Sciences Queensland

6 7 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 “We already have a future food hub that’s forming up in Mackay,” Blain remarks. “We need to be able to support them in growing that community, to build up regional jobs and give people those opportunities to stay local.” To that end, LSQ arms itself with hard data about the work their corporate members are doing. They’re also diligent about broadcasting those successes via their podcast and website, both of which are designed to set the scene of capabilities in Queensland. “Once you do gain traction, the other piece is to loudly share those accomplishments,” Blain says. “We’ve got a podcast series that’s going on three seasons’ worth of episodes highlighting various members. We also have case studies on our website that showcase just the general innovation that’s coming out of Queensland.” “Storytelling of the successes that we have is really important to inspire people and encourage them to keep trying,” echoes Williams. “That’s part of the rationale behind our focus on the case studies and the podcast – to show how many people are out there. I’ve personally shared them with some friends who have absolutely been blown away and had no idea that was happening in Queensland. More people need to know about it. So, it’s about how we can sell it, send our message out more broadly, to inspire people, especially young people, who are generally already motivated to want to change the world.” In the wake of COP26, where global governments met to negotiate critical measures to prevent runaway climate change and biodiversity loss, LSQ has also added its voice to those calling for ambitious targets to save the planet we call home. “We’ve had a pandemic and in less than two years, we’ve seen a vaccine being created that no one believed could be created, through collaboration across the world,” Williams says. “How can we have a similar approach to decarbonising the world? The COP26 targets have set some pilot programs out there and in Queensland particularly with the Brisbane Olympic Games going to be carbon positive, there’s a particular challenge to decarbonise even faster. So it’s what can we do in a sector? In the agricultural sector – what can we do to make sure that practices are being used that are more carbon-friendly? In the energy sector – are there technologies that we could be working on to come up with lower carbon fuels? The biomedical side has been enormously successful, but we need to bring this energy now to the other two sectors to see how we can help them and that decarbonisation agenda.” The future is certainly very different from what it was a couple of years ago, but Williams insists she’s a great believer of “having a look at yourself” after a few years of operation to see how LSQ is measuring up to its objectives. “We need to really take inventory and work out how we can be a better association for our members, more relevant, and more focused,” she shares. “We’re going through a strategy process at the moment, coming up with how we’re going to change ourselves. Part of that is looking at the constitution and our membership structures. The other part is really trying to understand what we ought to look like to be best suited to go forward. Do we still say a size of three? Or do we try and be ambitious and grow and be able to properly tackle those COP26 issues?” “We’re entering into our teenage years as an organisation and it’s time for us to grow up and start delivering some real positive things for the industry here in Queensland,” Blain says, summing up the emotion. “Our future, forward thinking isn’t just the next one or two years – it’s actually the next 10 years and beyond. So, I’m really excited to start with these strategic sessions and work out where this industry is going to be headed.” L I FE SC I ENCES QUEENSLAND