Geoff Roberts
More than 40 years since completing his UNE degree– in Natural Resources, Resource Management (with Honours) – Geoff Roberts is today one of the country’s most influential strategists and planners. A former Chief Commissioner of the Greater Cities Commission, he has overseen the expansion of greater Sydney and the development of the Six Cities Region in response to rapid urban growth.
Planning for future needs – housing, jobs, infrastructure and services – on such a large scale has presented unique opportunities to address inequality, congestion, pollution and cultural sensitivities, but has also posed complex challenges.
“I don’t think you would be drawn to studying Natural Resources in 1978 if you wanted simplicity,” Geoff says. “I was originally imagining an ecological or environmental science career; New England dieback was very big and I thought I would be one of the geniuses who would discover how to manage our ecology better.
“The irony is that I have done that all my professional life, but not sitting in a laboratory looking down a microscope, but by taking an interdisciplinary approach to systems thinking and strategy and government policy, and applying ecological principles for better decision-making. I have tried, throughout my career, to be in the room when the big decisions were being made.”
UNE’s Professor John Burton, our foundation Professor of Natural Resources, was a major influence. So, too, was renowned water scientist Professor Peter Cullen at the University of Canberra, where Geoff completed a Masters of Applied Science.
He then spent a long apprenticeship consulting, working almost exclusively for governments on major projects, including Sydney’s “green” Olympic Games; many of the largest water and transport initiatives across Sydney, NSW and Australia; and the management of World Heritage Areas nationally and internationally.
In June 2019, Geoff was made a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his significant service to urban planning and development. He was also the Planning Institute of Australia’s National Planning Champion and appointed Head of Global Relationships for NSW Treasury the same year.
“In hindsight, all of that was getting me ready to come into formal government, first as the Deputy Chief Commissioner and Economics Commissioner under inaugural Commissioner Lucy Turnbull AO and then as Greater Sydney Cities Chief Commissioner myself,” Geoff said. “I saw that as a chance to get western Sydney a fair go and I became one of the key thinkers behind the Six Cities megalopolis, which includes Australia’s most important urban economic area and one of the fastest growing regions in the world.
“It was my job to question the urban and semi-urban trends and to build a planning strategy for encouraging the right investment, so we spent money on things that gave the greatest value to society. But I still count Western Sydney as one of my greatest achievements and contend that the logical long-term capital of Sydney is Parramatta.”
In 2022 Geoff became Chief Commissioner of the rebadged Greater Cities Commission, established to drive the creation of the Six Cities Region across a vast geography from Newcastle to south of Wollongong. Against a backdrop of often competing land-use, housing, transport, education, climate change, environmental and technological issues, the son of a soil conservationist found opportunities where others might have only seen obstacles.
“That’s what I learnt at UNE – that if you are not in the room, you are not in the deal,” Geoff says. “I took a view – and I’m sure Prof. Burton’s teaching inculcated it in me – to spend my working life pushing my way through doors to where the real decisions were made. I am probably in that first-generation of interdisciplinary, science-based, strategy-based, planning-based people who understood the importance of making trade-offs so the politicians got the best advice possible. Equity is my big driver – ecologically, culturally and economically.”
Fortunately, Geoff says he has the discipline, and the patience, to play the long game. “I don’t really believe in revolution; I am more of an evolutionary kind of person. The vagaries at the intersection between the public and private sectors, between local communities and national and international interests, have always interested me. I find the ambiguity intoxicating and infuriating. We try to predict what’s going to happen, on the best collective knowledge we have, but strategic planning is never finished.”
Geoff remains a board member of the Western Parkland City Authority and holds an Adjunct Professor position in the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW.
