Published as: *‘New Governance, Green Planning & Sustainability: Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together’ Australian Journal of Public Administration (with Brian Coffey) 66(1), 23-37. NEW GOVERNANCE, GREEN PLANNING & SUSTAINABILITY: TASMANIA TOGETHER AND GROWING VICTORIA TOGETHER

Bridgman and Davis (2000:91) have argued that 'ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives'. This paper compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro-policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless both plans have the capacity to ‘green’ state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro-policy setting. The paper encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re-engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability. INTRODUCTION The Labor governments in Tasmania and Victoria have developed strategic plans (Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together) that articulate medium term (10-20 year) policy directions for their states. We suggest here that these frameworks can be compared and contrasted in terms of the opportunities they afford for promoting sustainability. Both resonate with the agenda of reinvented government in the wake of decades of market driven policymaking (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). Both also signal a revival of interest in planning, and offer potential for pursuing environmental sustainability, notwithstanding the challenges (Yencken 2002) that would entail. Whilst sharing commonalities, the two plans nevertheless represent different styles with the Tasmanian process more strongly driven by the community, and the Victorian process more clearly articulating a strategic agenda to distance the government from the economically rationalist Kennett years. Whilst Tasmania's plan is derived from a bottom-up process, Victoria's plan is delivered top down. Despite their differences, however, both plans make significant commitments to sustainability, in Tasmania with the adoption of environmental goals, benchmarks and indicators, and in Victoria with the adoption of the triple bottom line. We turn in this paper to two contrasting bodies of literature, new governance and green planning, in order to derive principles by which to evaluate the sustainability potential of the two plans. The utility of new governance literature as a source of evaluative material is in its concern with the re-engaged state and its drawing of the community into policy development (Bingham, Nabatchi and O'Leary 2005:548). New governance literature extols the benefits of state reflexivity, with the promotion of deliberative policy development that is well conceived, practiced and reinvented through significant community engagement. This literature provides a set of principles by which to review the Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together plans such as the extent to which these are apolitical, deliberative, power sharing, embedded and lasting in the institutional sense (Rhodes 1997; Lundqvist 2001; Reddel 2002). On the other hand, the green planning literature is designed for analysing the pursuit of sustainability, and fits 1 At the time of writing, Tasmania Together was undergoing its first five year review and a refreshed version of Growing Victoria Together had just been released. This paper is concerned with the initial versions of both plans. 2 Apolitical is used throughout in the sense of being beyond party and short term electoral politics. Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 2) very well with the practice of state planning being examined here. This literature emphasises state commitment as a key principle in the pursuit of sustainability, and advocates processes that are comprehensive, participatory, integrated and adaptive or capable of iterative reform (DalalClayton 1996; Selman 1999; Buhrs 2000). The approach taken in this paper is comparative in Rose's (1991:439) sense of presenting 'empirical evidence of some kind in an attempt to compare systematically and explicitly' in this case two state planning exercises. Comparative analysis helps avoid the assertion of uniqueness through false particularisation, (Rose 1991:450), in this case helping to avoid the finding that there is one best policy pathway to pursuing state sustainability. In keeping with the comparative method, this paper develops a set of concepts from a review of two bodies of literature which allows us to test our hypothesis that sub-national plans offer potential for pursuing sustainability. We have not attempted to compare two similar case studies, but have chosen two contrasting studies, using the contrasting theories of new governance and green planning to enable us to analyse the tensions we encounter. These theories allow us to situate and discuss tensions between deliberation and planning, between policy empowerment and policy progress, and between policy institutionalisation and politicisation. The analysis undertaken here of the state plans provides a useful test of the 'robustness and transferability' of the concepts of new governance and green planning, and a means of reflecting upon their utility (Mackie and Marsh 1995:176). The paper firstly reviews new governance and green planning for sustainability, before turning to an account, analysis and discussion of Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together. We broadly adopt Salamon's (2002) conception of new governance, which sees policy as a collaborative exercise, that engages a range of policy networks, that reshapes the way government works, and that steers administration from hierarchy towards empowerment. We adopt Dalal-Clayton's (1996) definition of green planning as the development of comprehensive and integrated policies, plans and strategies to address environmental problems, with sustainability as their goal. By sustainability, we mean the 'use, conservation and enhancement of the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased' (Commonwealth 1992:128). We take a macro-overview in analysing state planning, and have left the detailed attention of how to make the two plans more purposefully articulate in pursuing sustainability objectives to work elsewhere (Crowley 2006; Coffey and Major 2005). We are also concerned here with sustainability potential rather than outcomes, which would require an evaluation entirely beyond the scope of this paper and its concern with state planning processes. NEW GOVERNANCE, GREEN PLANNING & SUSTAINABILITY New Governance Governance is a notion that is at once ill defined but also well understood as referring to the changed role of government in contemporary times. Government has moved beyond its post World War Two largess and legitimacy, through the straitening and turbulent reforms of the 1980s, to arrive in the post strong state era of the twenty first century. Over that time government has also moved from the act of governing with sole authority and legitimacy, to the need to govern in more complex ways today by steering, partnering and devolving (Considine 2005:165). If government is essentially about the process of acting with total authority and legitimacy, then governance has become about extending this process beyond the state, raising the question of the extent to which authority and legitimacy can be assumed beyond government. Pierre and Peters (2000:1) define governance as covering the whole range of institutions and relations involved in the process of governing, with its appeal being in making political science more policy relevant and in raising the issue of how to pursue collective goals. Governance is Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 3) thus to varying degrees a power sharing, deliberative process in pursuit of collective ends but one that complements the traditional policy making roles of the state. Some refer to new governance as the placing of particular emphasis upon the involvement of society in the process of governing (Pierre and Peters 2000:7). It is a term referred to by several authors that varies, Lundqvist observes, between the extremes of governing by state control and governing by increasing societal control over policy. For example Pierre and Peters locate the state at the centre of the structures and processes of governance whilst juxtaposing this with new governance in Rhodes's sense as governing at times without government (Lundqvist 2001:321; Pierre and Peters 2000; Rhodes 1997). Rhodes (1997) presents a complex picture of the varying meanings of increasing societal control. These range from minimal state involvement at one extreme to self-organising networks at the other. He explains that networks offer a 'third way' beyond either the state or the market for acting authoritatively in service delivery. These are not only self-organising and inter-organisational, but are also capable of resisting government steering, developing their own policies and moulding their own environments (Rhodes 1997:53). Reddel's conception of new governance is 'based on the themes of dialogue, deliberation and association'. This offers promise 'as a policy framework that can re-conceptualise the statecommunity (and market) relationship and deliver improved community outcomes'. His emphasis is upon new governance in the context of place based or spatial policies. If new governance involves bringing society back in to policy making, then in Reddel's sense this is place specific and represents a rediscovery of community in response to the 'anti-state crisis' (Reddel 2002:545). New governance is then also an acknowledgment of this crisis, which is manifest as the broadly perceived remoteness, irrelevance and untrustworthiness of representative politics, and the need 'to establish legitimacy in the face of the erosion of public trust' (Bishop and Davis 2001:191). New governance in this societal driven sense is both a move toward deliberative, partnership building (Hodgett and Johnson 2001) and a way of working together in consensual, apolitical fashion beyond the adversarial political arena. Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together can both be seen as new governance exercises at least in the sense that their very broad impetus was community disillusionment with politics and thus heightened dissatisfaction. They belong, albeit as contrasting experiments, to the move towards more and better participatory democracy in response to the distrust of politics and politicians that is the key problem of liberal democracy today (Davis and Weller 2001). In both cases for very different reasons there was a fundamental policy re-visioning and machinery of government reorientation driven by a sense of ‘bringing society back in’. In terms of more than rhetorically reaching out to the community, we are interested here in the extent to which the plans were beyond a narrow conception of self-interested politics, were deliberatively derived, were empowering of the community and were embedded to effect broad and lasting change. Given their emphasis on the environment in Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, reflecting the historical politicisation of 'environment' and the unresolved disputes in both states, we are interested in the sustainability potential of both plans. Green Planning for Sustainability? Governments can approach sustainability in a range of ways, from policy principles to legislative prescription, and at various levels, from national to state to local. Whilst much attention has been paid to national initiatives, this paper is concerned with the more neglected state level and state planning as a potential vehicle for pursuing sustainability. Green planning is a diverse activity that can be undertaken using a range of approaches for a range of objectives and, importantly, may be informed by deliberation or design (Kay and Alder 1999). Green planning is also very much a rational-comprehensive exercise whereby the ‘ends’ are identified in advance and the ‘means’ are sought to achieve them (Richardson and Jordan 1979:21) albeit subject to iterative redesign in implementation. There is also confusing use of the terms 'green Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 4) planning' and 'sustainability planning' with Australia's Ecologically Sustainable Development process, that was pioneered in the late 1980s, referred to as either or both (Buhrs 2000). We define green planning as the development of comprehensive and integrated policies, plans and strategies to address environmental problems, with sustainability as their goal (DalalClayton 1996). Green planning proposes to make sustainability concrete, by setting milestones for improvements in environmental quality, generating or strengthening public support for environmental measures, and enhancing transparency and accountability (Selman 1999). The performance of public and private actors are measured against specific milestones (Buhrs 2000), just as the achievements of Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together are measured against indicators and objectives. Public support is critical however. Indeed 'enhancement of public participation in environment and development decision-making is generally understood as an essential characteristic of governance for sustainable development' (Meadowcroft 2004:162). Whether or not a green plan is to gain ongoing community and government support will depend on how it was generated, with an inclusive, democratic process the most likely to generate acceptance (Buhrs 2000:119-20). One of the defining features of green planning is the emphasis on the integration of environmental objectives, not just into non-environmental policy areas but across government at all levels, and into partnerships with community and business. The OECD (2002) sees integration as an overarching goal beyond the quick fix and about specific commitments by governments to economy, ecology and society in equal measure, with institutional adjustments made to turn commitment into practice. Integration remains a challenge in industrialised countries with most developing green plans and sustainability plans independently of their national plans, with the notable exceptions of Denmark, France and New Zealand. And few such countries link green plans, sustainability plans and budget processes, again with the exceptions of Canada, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway (Dalal-Clayton 1996:50-53). Hertin and Berkhout (2003:40) see no improved integration in sight, observing that although the challenge of integration has been debated for decades, environmental policy practice is largely unchanged (see also Coffey and Major 2005). Yencken (2002) also argues that there must be a substantive understanding and appreciation of the scope of ecological problems, matched by a strong political commitment to address these in no uncertain terms over time. Effective green planning for sustainability policy thus requires an ongoing commitment to, and continuity of, knowledge generation and review. In the case of conclusive data being unavailable, partnerships can be encouraged by government policies to mobilise finances for research and development and to ensure that the knowledge generated is widely shared, debated and understood (OECD 2002). Equally important is an adaptive approach to management to deal with the emergence of new knowledge and to ensure that decision making is always well informed by appropriate data (Dovers 1999). Related to this is the need for ongoing review during implementation, and effective monitoring, evaluation and reporting as a means of tracking and reviewing progress, as is typical of state planning. State planning is thus a potential vehicle for green planning for sustainability. STATE PLANNING IN TASMANIA AND VICTORIA The new governance and green planning literature has considerable overlap in terms of reviewing state planning for achieving sustainability to which we will return. From the literature above, there is, for example, similar emphasis upon deliberation as problem solving in new governance and green planning in terms of overcoming public alienation and of rescuing the environment respectively. Political commitment is significant for both in terms of assuaging public cynicism, and moving past rhetorical efforts to achieve sustainability, although bipartisanship, working together and apolitical support is increasingly expected. Knowledge generation and management is also emerging as a significant issue in terms of setting meaningful goals, targets and benchmarks in state and green planning, but also in terms of integrating and Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 5) adapting knowledge across sectors. There are tensions between new governance and strategic planning as policy styles that do interest us here, as we consider Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, and that are picked up in subsequent discussion. These tensions are between deliberation and planning, between empowerment and policy change, and between institutional and political routes to embedding policy. Tasmania Together The Bacon Labor government was elected in August 1998 following the demise of the shortlived 1996-98 Liberal minority government that had been supported in power by the Greens. The Premier saw the need for uniting Tasmanians as a priority, and began consulting around the concept of Tasmania Together six months later. Tasmania Together is an Australian first, a people driven 20 year social, environmental and economic plan, but one also strongly driven in terms of leadership, conviction and process from the top. The inspiration for it came nearly a decade earlier when former state premier Michael Field discovered the Oregon Shines state plan during his Labor Listens community consultation process. The Bacon government also needed to distance itself from the previous Liberal minority government's well-respected Directions project which had itself been an attempt to remedy poor state planning. The Labor solution was a development and social partnership agenda comprising Tasmania Together, Local Government Partnerships and Industry Councils with a mandate for industry planning (Kent 2000). Tasmania Together has moved policy making to long term with the community shaping its own well being, culture, democracy, economy and environment, and with community vision affecting the forward planning of government agencies. The intent was for Tasmania Together to be an apolitical exercise linking the community with public policy in an open, transparent way to achieve measurable long-term objectives that are target based with time-lines, indicators and progress reports. The framework was designed by a Community Leaders Group with extensive community input, and expert benchmarking groups then working on the detail of its objectives, but it is now managed by an independent, legislatively mandated Progress Board. The Progress Board steers the implementation of Tasmania Together on the understanding that it is not owned by the state government or tied to its political fortunes. Tasmania Together's vision and goals belong to the community and are intended to be pursued by the community, its individuals, groups, public and private interests, the Progress Board, and all levels of government. Tasmania Together's implementation measures include reorienting agency priorities towards the need to address its benchmarks, in priority clusters, and the budget prioritisation of agency submissions that are linked to achieving its objectives. In the longer term this will drive agency change by encouraging whole of government approaches to issues, including the gathering and sharing of information relevant to benchmarks, and by financially rewarding joined up approaches. In terms of state government organisation, a Tasmania Together Interdepartmental Committee reviews government activity annually, and the Progress Board reports annually to Parliament against Tasmania Together priorities. Cabinet signs off on priority benchmarks for government activity before sending these to Agencies for incorporation into their planning, budgeting and policy processes, including their devising of cross agency budget submissions. The Progress Board is appointed after expression of interest and has gender, regional, and community balance amongst its seven public members, the remaining two being one university representative and one senior public servant. The Progress Board monitors progress towards the achievement of benchmarks, working with community, business, and government, with support from Department of Premier and Cabinet. 3 The community polarisation in Tasmania surrounding environmental issues in particular from at least the early 1970s with the flooding of Lake Pedder has inspired a range of attempts at community deliberation. 4 The Tasmania 2020 goals are: to value protect and conserve our natural, cultural and built heritage; to ensure there is a balance between environmental protection and economic and social development; to value, protect and maintain our biological diversity; to ensure our natural resources are managed in a sustainable way now and for future generations (CLG 2000, 2). Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 6) Tasmania Together began as an attempt at apolitical planning and is intended to evolve beyond adversarial politics as the community and private sector link their activities to Tasmania Together goals that have become state priorities. Initially it had support from the Liberal Opposition and the Greens, and the State government has not used it for political point scoring, or re-election. The process has attracted controversy however for the Government's choice of community leaders, for the ejection of dissenters from the Community Leaders Group, and for the capacity of the framework to capture issues. But Tasmania Together's legitimacy was dealt its most severe blow by the late Premier Bacon's refusal to acknowledge the community benchmark for an end to the wood chipping of Tasmania's old growth native forests. There are nevertheless positive signs. The Tasmania Together Progress Board has resisted political pressure with its refusal of the late Premier's request to amend the community's target for an ending to old growth logging. Tasmania Together itself continues to unfold and evolve, now with the support of Premier Paul Lennon, in a transparent and accountable manner, with mandated five yearly reviews, and with legislative capacity to amend and adapt the process. DATE TASMANIA TOGETHER August 1998 Bacon Labor government elected February 1999 Tasmania Together initiated May 1999 24 member Community Leader's Group formed June 1999 Search Conference December 1999 Draft launched for public consultation February/May 2000 Our vision Our future released for public consultation September 2001 Tasmania Together launched with benchmarks, standards, indicators, and targets; of 212 benchmarks, 99 required clarification by Tasmania Together Board when established; 209 were unanimously agreed by the CLG; 3 were contested old growth logging; greenhouse; & ozone. June 2002 Progress tabled in State Parliament July 2002 Bacon Labor government re-elected (Premier subsequently passes away) June 2003, and 2004 Progress reports tabled in State Parliament August 2005 Five year review launched; concluded in August 2006 March 2006 Lennon Labor government re-elected August 2006 Progress tabled in State Parliament NovemberDecember 2006 Revised Tasmania Together due to be launched Table 1. Tasmania Together timeline Growing Victoria Together In a result that surprised many people, the Kennett Liberal government lost the 1999 state election to be replaced by a minority Labor government led by Steve Bracks that held office in its first term with the support of three independents (Woodward and Costar 2000). Despite the Labor campaign being highly critical of the market based prescriptions and the leadership style of the Liberal government (O'Neill 2000), after the election there was a sense of not knowing what the Bracks government stood for. Initially this was resolved by the establishment of four pillars of governance restoring democracy through open and accountable government; responsible financial management; delivering improved services, and promoting growth across the whole state (DPC 2000). In November 2001, the Government released Growing Victoria Together: Innovative State, Caring Communities (DPC 2001) which details its policy priorities. This plan establishes social, environmental and economic goals for the next 10 years, and shows how the Government will lead the way to achieving to them (Office of the Premier 2001) 5 Adams and Wiseman (2003) provide a useful ‘insiders’ account of the development and rationale underpinning GVT, and how it fits with the Bracks Government’s approach to new governance. Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 7) Growing Victoria Together clarified what the government stood for more clearly than its pre-election platforms, despite these being comprehensive and detailed, but this clarification also served a number of related purposes. Although the government was polling strongly there were criticisms about the number of reviews it had instigated and its lack of on-ground activity, leading to quips that Victoria was a 'state of review' with a 'do nothing government' (Chappell 2001). An Age editorial called for the Government to not only steer to completion projects commenced by the previous government, but to articulate its own vision (The Age 2001). Growing Victoria Together became a means of doing this, with a $1 billion Growing Victoria Fund to support new infrastructure investment announced in the first budget (2000-2001) (Adams and Wiseman 2003:13). But Growing Victoria Together also indicated priorities, established indicators of progress, and provided a clear, transparent means of ticking off on promises and achievements for years to come. This was critical for building credibility with the public in the lead up to the November 2002 election. Growing Victoria Together is thus a signpost document that defines priorities and future directions in the post-Kennett era, distancing the Government very clearly in policy terms from the past, and accommodating public and private sector concerns (Ferguson 2001). It works to reintegrate the business of departments in a strategic whole of government sense, and to convey a clear path of reorientation towards achieving strategic goals (Adams and Wiseman 2003:14). After Kennett’s economic rationalism, Growing Victoria Together seeks to bring the community and the environment back into policy focus, with the Bracks government looking for broader measures of progress and common prosperity than economic growth alone (DPC 2001). In terms of implementation, forty-two priority actions are proposed in response to the eleven strategic issues identified. The strategic issues cover education, community services, financial management, safety, transport and communications, sustainable development, jobs and industries, communities, environmental protection, human rights and responsive government. For each issue, the Government states its visions, outlines what it has achieved, lists priority actions, and indicators of progress. The issues and priority actions outlined in Growing Victoria Together guide the Government's budget choices and the directions of government departments, with overall coordination through the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC 2001). The indicators of sound financial management are however broadly consistent with the Kennett government's (DPC 2001:12), which leaves the Bracks government open to the criticism that the state's economic framework is unchanged (Hayward and Ewer 2003:16). Furthermore consultation on Growing Victoria Together was limited to key stakeholders and policy insiders, no draft documents or papers were released for feedback, and no independent implementation review body monitors progress. DATE GROWING VICTORIA TOGETHER October 1999 Bracks Labor government elected March 2000 Growing Victoria Together Summit held October 2000 Progress report titled “12 Months on and beyond ...” released November 2001 Growing Victoria Together released February 2002 Snapshot of government achievements released titled Turning Victoria Around: Delivering Today, Building for Tomorrow November 2002 Bracks Labor government re-elected with majority in both Houses of Parliament March 2005 Refreshed version of Growing Victoria Together released November 2006 State election due 6 The Victoria 2010 vision is for: innovation leading to thriving industries generating high quality jobs, environmental protection built into everything that the Government does, caring, safe communities in which opportunities are fairly shared, and for access for all Victorians to the highest quality health and education services throughout their lives (DPC 2001). 7 Identifying the extent to which Growing Victoria Together contributed to the Government’s resounding re-election victory is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is fair to suggest that it would have, at very least, contributed to the impression that the Government knew where it was headed (Hannan 2001). Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 8) Table. 2 Growing Victoria Together timeline The two Labor governments have thus chosen very different processes for overcoming past politics, with Tasmania choosing deliberation to move beyond Green supported minority government, and Victoria choosing strategic policy to move beyond the Kennett legacy. Both plans reflect the respective political choices made by Labor governments to allow the community to set the policy agenda in Tasmania, and to wrest the policy agenda away from economic rationalism in Victoria. There is no doubt that both plans have set their stamp on state policy making and are achieving their immediate aims, although it is too early at this stage and beyond the scope of this paper to determine or evaluate how successful they have been. Our interest is in the potential both plans have for pursuing sustainability, Tasmania's by linking its deliberative design up with state of environment reporting processes, and Victoria's by capitalising on the overt political support already expressed by the Premier for sustainability. We turn to this following our discussion of the new governance and green planning features of the plans and the tensions we identify between deliberative and strategic policy design. REVIEWING TASMANIA TOGETHER & GROWING VICTORIA TOGETHER New Governance Tasmania Together apolitical, deliberative, power-sharing and embedded? It is fair to acknowledge that there has been cynicism about and criticism of Tasmania Together from the community and political parties, although it was initially established with tripartite support from the Government, and the Liberal and Green Opposition parties. The Liberals now oppose it and the Greens no longer overtly support it. Before the process was handed over to an independent secretariat, there was also a view that the Community Leaders Group was a partisan body under the control of Labor's Leader in the Legislative Council Michael Aird. The process has also always been strongly associated with the reforms of the Bacon government and the late Premier personally, although it is now endorsed by his successor. And there has always been a lack of trust by critics of the process which is seen as disingenuous coming from a government that had won office after supporting a reduction in Lower House numbers (McCall and Hay 2005). When in opposition, immediately prior to winning power in the 1998, Labor had supported the Liberal minority government initiative to reduce Lower House numbers in an attempt to prevent another minority government. This successful move was broadly condemned as an antidemocratic attempt to wipe out the Greens and undermine the deliberative potential of the Hare Clarke electoral system. This move was seen to be a rejection by the major parties of the notion of sharing parliamentary power. Although Tasmania Together is a deliberative project, it is not designed to share power, nor to carry the voices of dissenters such as the Greens, but it is designed to see broad community agreement on ways forward translated into policy. It is well embedded by legislative and governance processes, and its board and secretariat, and it drives agency policy agendas, agency budgets, and progress towards community goals. Growing Victoria Together apolitical, deliberative, power-sharing and embedded? The public origins of Growing Victoria Together rest with the Growing Victoria Together Summit held in March 2000 (Office of the Premier and Treasurer 2000). One hundred public figures including Ministers, the Leader of the Opposition, an independent Member of Parliament, and union, community and business leaders discussed future directions for the state. This culminated in the development of recommendations to Government, the establishment of the Victorian Economic, Environmental and Social Advisory Council (VEESAC) (a nonstatutory advisory body comprising community leaders), and the release of a unanimously agreed Communiqué. Despite these origins, by November 2001 when the Premier released 8 Interestingly neither process was inclusive of the green activist or environmental policy communities. 9 There were only two participants representing environmental interests. Reviewing Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together 9) Growing Victoria Together it was clearly a partisan document, and one that had required a sustained effort to win the support of both Ministers and Departments. No formal public consultative mechanisms were established to provide input to the development of Growing Victoria Together with the Government relying instead on existing processes, and views provided through Community Cabinet processes and the VEESAC. Growing Victoria Together is thus not a deliberative process, although the Government had sought support from key stakeholders for its overall priorities for Victoria for the coming decade. This may be an example of networked governance in a restricted sense, but it was not power sharing or participatory governance. Neither is Growing Victoria Together legislatively embedded into Victorian government policy process, despite efforts to track its progress, so that its survival within and beyond the life of the Labor government remains discretionary.