paul mallett advocates for the establishment of the Kanamaluka Convention, an annual civic assembly that brings together community, government, business, and researchers  to examine the evidence, agree shared priorities, and commit publicly to action for the Greater Launceston region.

Every year, organisations across our region publish reports about housing, health, education, transport, family violence, economic development, climate resilience, community safety and dozens of other important issues. Each contains valuable evidence. Each identifies priorities. Each recommends action.

Then, too often, everyone goes back to work.

The report is launched. A media release is issued. A handful of meetings are held. Some recommendations progress, many do not, and before long another report arrives asking many of the same questions.

What if we had a better way?

I believe Greater Launceston needs an annual civic assembly: the Kanamaluka Convention.

Not another conference. Not another consultation. Not another talkfest.

A disciplined annual process where our region comes together to examine the evidence, agree shared priorities, commit publicly to action, and return the following year to report honestly on what happened.

The idea begins with a simple observation. The biggest challenges facing our region do not exist in isolation. Housing stress, loneliness, poor health, insecure work, family violence, disability exclusion, transport barriers, energy hardship, educational inequality and financial strain overlap and reinforce one another throughout people’s lives.

These are not simply individual problems. They are shaped by systems, history, policy decisions and the opportunities available to people. If human systems help create vulnerability, then human systems can be redesigned to reduce it.

The Launceston Tamar Valley is not short of institutions or leadership. We have councils, state and federal representatives, businesses, universities, schools, hospitals, community organisations, Aboriginal organisations and hundreds of committed volunteers.

What we often lack is a regular, structured way to bring those voices together around shared evidence and shared responsibility.

That is the purpose of the Kanamaluka Convention.

Its role would be deliberately simple:

• Review the evidence.
• Agree priorities.
• Identify shared responsibility.
• Commit publicly to action.
• Return twelve months later to report progress.

The model draws inspiration from Strategic Doing, developed by Ed Morrison and colleagues, which asks four practical questions:

• What could we do?
• What should we do?
• What will we do?
• When will we come back together to report what happened?

That final question matters.

Too often we celebrate plans rather than progress. The Convention would create a rhythm of public accountability. Organisations would leave not simply having discussed problems, but having identified specific actions, named who will lead them, and agreed when they will return to report on results.

The Convention should bring together community members, people with lived experience, Aboriginal leaders, local government, business, unions, service organisations, philanthropy, researchers, educators, artists, environmental advocates, health professionals and elected representatives from every level of government.

Children and young people should have a permanent place at the table, not as observers, but as participants. Their ideas should help shape the region they will inherit.

The Convention should be convened annually by the Mayor of Launceston in partnership with the Mayors of George Town, West Tamar and Meander Valley. Vulnerability does not stop at municipal boundaries, and neither should our response.

Nor should the Convention focus only on disadvantage. A healthy region requires attention to many interconnected issues. I envisage six permanent streams:

• The State of Our Most Vulnerable People
• Liveability
• Economic Participation
• Children and Young People
• Climate and Resilience
• Civic Trust

Each stream would return every year to ask the same questions. What has improved? What has not? What is blocking progress? What will we each do before we meet again?

The work itself would not happen during the Convention. It would happen over the following twelve months, in councils, schools, businesses, government agencies and community organisations delivering on the commitments they made.

Importantly, the Kanamaluka Convention does not begin from the assumption that our region is broken.

Far from it.

The Launceston Tamar Valley is filled with capable, generous and resilient people doing extraordinary work every day. Our challenge is not a lack of goodwill. It is turning that goodwill into sustained collective action.

The name Kanamaluka Convention reflects the Tamar River, Kanamaluka, which has connected communities across this valley for thousands of years. It is a reminder that, despite our different backgrounds and perspectives, we share one region and one future.

The Convention is not proposed as a final answer.

It is an invitation.

An invitation to become more intentional about the kind of region we want to build. An invitation to confront difficult truths without surrendering hope. An invitation to replace fragmented effort with shared purpose. And an invitation to return, year after year, asking not simply what we talked about, but what we changed together.