Like a lot of small, remote communities - which I think we are in the scheme of things - we are probably over-represented in two areas: conservatives who don't like change or who are concerned not to risk too much, and those who feel frustrated that we don't embrace change, and take more risks like 'the rest of the world' we read and hear about.SJ, so you would rather than we did not try, and just continued to plod along?
The truth is likely to be that most communities have the same pressures within them.
I think both points of view have some merit. We do have limited resources, and we should take care of them. On the other hand, there is no progress without change and risk.
Overlay on this our democratic system, which actually has some tolerance for risk taking and a limited tolerance for failure, and it's clear that there is a path forward between the extremes of care-free risk taking and the fossilization of deep conservatism.
The answer, then, is to be 'bold' but to do so carefully with good planning and good monitoring.
The Zoo fiasco - which is probably what it is - seems to have lacked both good planning and good monitoring. The over-optimistic figures in the business plan look like bad planning and invite questions about how the figures were computed, by whom, and why so much trust was placed in them. For example, did Westpac, the main lender apparently, fail to do proper checks of their risk because they felt the government would always bail out the Zoo? (For that matter, will the government do so?)
So the answer, not just for the Zoo, seems to be to take steps forward, sure, but to watch how we go. Again in the case of the Zoo, where was the overview; how did things get so bad before anyone rang the bells?
In this case, too much risk taking, not enough caution.