The Geelong City Deal: Federal Investment in a Regional Capital

The Geelong City Deal, the $370 million joint investment by the Commonwealth, Victorian, and Geelong City Council governments signed in 2019, provided the funding commitment for the infrastructure and economic development projects that Geelong has identified as the priorities for the city's long-term growth and competitiveness. The Deal's projects, spanning the arts and convention centre expansion, the TAFE and university skills investment, the transport improvements, and the economic development programs that support the automotive transition, represent the most significant federal investment in Geelong's infrastructure since the post-war period and the recognition of the regional city's strategic importance to Victoria's economic geography.

The Geelong Convention and Event Centre, funded in part through the City Deal, provides the business events infrastructure that Geelong has needed to compete for the conferences, exhibitions, and corporate events that the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Exhibitions) sector generates. The convention centre's opening, adjacent to the waterfront precinct and within walking distance of the city's hotel stock, creates the venue that positions Geelong as a Melbourne alternative for events that want a distinctive regional character alongside the professional event management infrastructure that metropolitan venues provide.

The skills investment component of the Geelong City Deal, supporting the retraining programs for automotive industry workers and the development of the training pathways for the health, technology, and advanced manufacturing sectors that are growing, addresses the human capital dimension of the economic transition that infrastructure investment alone cannot achieve. The coordination between the training investment and the industry attraction programs ensures that the skills being developed match the demand that the incoming businesses create.

The transport investments of the City Deal, including the road and intersection upgrades that improve the freight and commuter network of the city's growth corridors, provide the infrastructure foundation for the development that the City Deal is designed to catalyse. The transport capacity that the upgrades create directly supports the industrial development of the Geelong port and ring road precincts that the logistics and manufacturing businesses the city is attracting require.

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