

Linda Nieuwenhuizen
19 Sept 2024
Last month I was in Canberra for the Regional Australia Institute’s annual summit. As you would expect the agenda was all things regional and dominated by energy, workforce and housing.
Last month I was in Canberra for the Regional Australia Institute’s annual summit. As you would expect the agenda was all things regional and dominated by energy, workforce and housing. And a quick shout out to Liz Ritchie, CEO Regional Australia Institute and Deni girl will deliver the Furphy Memorial Lecture for 2024 at SAM next month.
But back to the Summit. The impact of remote and hybrid working was highlighted by non-other than the Reserve Bank of Australia. The RBA considers regional areas less than 150 km from a state capital to be ‘commutable’. Their graphs comparing regional and metro unemployment and residential building approvals now include a third line titled ‘commutable’ – and there are distinct differences. The RBA’s definition is welcome confirmation of trends we have seen emerging across regional Victoria.
With the help of google maps we drew the 150 km arc around Melbourne – and it shows Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Latrobe (Moe/Morwell/Traralgon) are within the 150 km zone – Shepparton isn’t. (It also requires some common sense to know that Jamieson is 150km as the crow flies but 230km by road)
We’ve called this out in our submission to the Victorian Government’s Plan for Victoria – and recommended the Plan at least acknowledge the existing and growing differences between inner and outer regional Victoria. Outer regional means an increased reliance on rental markets to attract and retain a workforce that makes a ‘boots and all’ commitment - not a daily commute while they try out their new job.
It underscores the need for locally delivered education and training, the importance of local sports, arts and health services and pathways, intra-region transport and local employment.
It also means activity centres are less likely to be focused around a train station and more likely to be around a key employer or service provider such as GV Health. And based on the data from the RBA, there is also a need for housing policies that can activate and incentivise private sector investment outside the commuter zones.
Geography also matters to our industry. Recently we hosted the Australian Food and Grocery Council for a member event showcasing our $3.2 billion local food and grocery manufacturing sector. Our combination of sun, soil and water has long been acknowledged as our superpower, but speaker after speaker referred to our location as our other lesser-known superpower.
We know we are the most important intersection in south-east Australia.
We know we are the gateway into and out of the Murray Darling Basin and the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation region.
We know we are in easy reach of multiple capital cities and the Port of Melbourne – Australia’s busiest container port.
We know our local dairy processors anchor the Australian dairy industry, processing milk from Gippsland, south west Victoria, and over the river. We know close to 1 in every 6 litres of milk purchased in Queensland and NSW was processed in a factory in northern Victoria.
We know our horticultural sector is ‘funnelling’ fruit from growing regions in NSW, SA the south east and Gippsland via their sophisticated warehousing and packing sheds in Greater Shepparton to domestic and export markets. One facility has plans to move 500,000 bins – that’s around 100 b-doubles every week of the year.
We did a very rough and generous tally of planned investment mentioned by our panel members and we came up just short of a billion dollars. Our panel members spoke of evaluating sites up and down the east coast of Australia before targeting their investment here – and in every case our geography was a key deciding factor.