WA needs a forward-looking and long-term approach to sustainable regional development.
PICTURE this. The year is 2028, you are a minister and you have been asked to reflect on the past five years.
In 2022, when you took office, the world was just emerging from the pandemic, the state was struggling with workforce and housing shortages, and cost of living was through the roof.
What policy decisions did you make? Was it a time to batten down the hatches, time to take a conservative approach to policy and avoid hard or courageous decisions?
For me, I would say it was the perfect time to try something different.
From March to September 2020, more than 145,000 people left capital cities for regional and rural Australia, almost certainly the largest migration to regional areas since the era of the gold rushes in the 1800s.
The pandemic experience of 2020 accelerated the use of technology and enabled new ways of working, challenging the long-accepted status quo of workplace practices, environments and locations.
Our regions account for around 40 per cent of total national economic output – Australia’s economic stabiliser – even with very little purposeful or strategic development and investment.
After such a monumental shock to the system, we have an opportunity to pause and consider our population settlement pattern and investment for the next 20, 40, 100 years.
Now is an ideal time to reshape regional development programs – to move away from a disparate suite of programs bound to election cycles, to a long-term, evidence-based approach of deliberate regional development and place-making.
In Western Australia, we have a highly concentrated population base crowded into the Perth metropolitan area and the South West.
More than three quarters of the 2.8 million people who call WA home live in this narrow strip.
The remainder are spread from Kununurra to Esperance, out to the border with South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Although we have the natural resources, land mass and economic opportunity to support it, we have no major population bases outside of Perth.
There’s nowhere comparable to Bendigo, Ballarat, Albury-Wodonga or Geelong.
We’re all clinging to a small sliver of real estate while government spends money, hand over fist, on infrastructure to reduce congestion and accommodate an ever-sprawling urban footprint.
There is merit in an intentional and sustainable population growth strategy for regional centres. There’s merit in trying something different.
With proper investment and planning, regional cities can become population bases which sustain a diverse range of economic opportunity, employment options and provide high-calibre services and support to the surrounding hinterland.
While there is a clear economic and security imperative, there is a moral obligation to reduce the disparity of services in regional and remote communities as part of closing the gap strategies for First Nations people.
Likewise, the provision of health services – a challenge which COVID-19 brought into sharp focus. It was clear regional patients had significant challenges accessing timely healthcare, even with technology and a first-class emergency response in the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Regional development cannot be an afterthought. Our state’s future productivity and success depends on it.
Long-term planning, investment in human capital, incentives to encourage the private sector and education institutions to engage with our regions is imperative.
In the short-term, government could be investing in practical measures with its massive budget surplus, such as a $1 billion Regional Headworks Investment Fund to reduce the high cost of water, power and sewerage connections for residential and industrial developments.
They could be investing in enabling infrastructure to remove barriers, which make growing regional businesses a challenge.
Reliable power, digital and transport connectivity spring to mind. If we miss the opportunity to capitalise on the accelerated change that the pandemic created, we are destined to see our regional towns as nothing more than dormitories to serve the mining and agricultural sectors.
This is not the future I want for our state.
I want a vibrant capital, with thriving regional cities cemented as destinations of choice, supporting industry and underpinning abundant regional economies.
An opportunity to receive a first-class education, to innovate, access health care and grow old with loved ones, no matter where you live.
That’s the future I think we deserve.
