Like others, the Committee for Adelaide is reviewing our work as the impacts of COVID-19 continue to be felt across our community.

This public health issue is already having significant impacts on the South Australian economy and now more than ever, businesses and community groups must come together to minimise economic impacts and work on a strategy to help the economy grow again when the time comes.

The Committee for Adelaide believes we must take a leadership position, using our membership seniority and breadth to help soften the impact and hasten recovery. We know the Adelaide community is well placed to help each other and our networks and memberships allow for this goodwill and collaboration to be celebrated and expanded.

To this end we are:

• Repurposing our working groups (sustainability of our places; economy; people) to have an immediate focus on the impacts COVID-19 is having on our business and community members;
• Setting up the Policy Committee of our Board to operate as an internal COVID-19 information center to coordinate our efforts

In addition, the safety of our members and staff is paramount and with this in mind:

• Our three working groups will meet but virtually by video conferencing, rather than face-to-face.

These working groups will look at COVID-19 more broadly and through the lens of people, place and economy and our Bigger. Bolder. Better. project. The groups are:

• Sustainability for our Places (new group) chaired by Matt Clemow
• Sustainability for our Economy chaired by Simon Toovey
• Sustainability for our People chaired by Mark Glazbrook

Likewise, other working groups will also meet virtually. At the moment, these include:

• Adelaide Abroad
• Women’s Network

In addition, all of our larger events will be postponed, including member events that we had in the pipeline. These will resume again once we receive further advice on when it is safe to do so.

As mentioned, economic recovery after the impacts of this pandemic have softened will be critical and we need to lay the foundations for this today.

Making it easier to start and grow businesses, increased infrastructure spending, diversifying source markets for students and tourists and revamping our migration system so that skilled shortages in specific industries can quickly be filled are just some of many ideas we’ll be turning our attention to.

HOW CAN YOU HELP:

If you have any specific thoughts on laying the foundations for our recovery, please feel free to reach out to me or members of our Board.

We’ll also be sharing stories of resilience and business as usual and urge you to share your own stories, monitor our social media networks and share these among your own networks.

In the meantime, our thoughts are with everyone who may be personally touched by COVID-19.

While the coming months are likely to be difficult, we look forward to continuing to work with you and your teams so that together we can help shape a better future for South Australia.