Last week the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) identified 20 regional precincts with the capacity to be economic and social powerhouses - subject to a kickstart from willful and committed governments.
The list is the key tenet of the NFF's Regional Development Precincts agenda and sparks a conversation about what we as a nation want our bush cities, towns and villages to look like into the future.
Australia stands alone in concentrating its population and economic activity in big cities.
There are 64.1 per cent of Australians living in cities, compared to only 30pc of Canadians and New Zealanders.
There are significant economic and social costs to this needless concentration, including urban congestion, population and economic vulnerabilities and the neglect of regional and rural communities.
The NFF's Precincts agenda seeks to redress this problem.
For too long, government resources have disproportionately focused on urban centres at the expense of regional Australia.
Despite 30pc of Australia's population living in regional and rural Australia, less than 30pc of infrastructure spending is for the benefit of regional communities.
As an example, the 2021 Infrastructure Australia (IA) Infrastructure Priority List did not identify or add a single high priority project that could be categorised as having benefit to regional Australia.
Large scale electricity generation projects and transmission lines that have the sole purpose of shipping electricity to our capital cities are identified as regional infrastructure on the IA priority list.
The story is the same with respect to cultural amenity.
As an example, 90pc of the NSW Government's arts budget is spent in one local government area - the City of Sydney - despite it accounting for 3pc of the state's population.
It should be a source of national shame that regional Australians have a lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates due to substandard access to health services.
A 2020 NSW Upper House inquiry into regional and rural health services found egregious gaps in medical services, including hospitals without Panadol, leading NSW Health to apologize for the standard of medical services in regional and rural communities.
The disadvantage goes to business as well.
For example, South Australian grain farmers pay more in freight and logistics costs to get wheat to Indonesia than their Canadian cousins, despite the journey being almost 10,000 kilometres shorter.
If the same price disparity existed at McDonalds, Australian consumers would be paying $19.35 for a Big Mac.
The NFF's Regional Development Precincts project provides a pathway to a vibrant and prosperous regional Australia.
Instead of solely focusing on disadvantage, we are seeking that all levels of government come together to harness the competitive advantages of our regional centres through place-based development.
According to a 2021 OECD report, national-level policies overwhelmingly benefit urban areas, whereas place-based developments provide the most cost-effective pathway to economic development and productivity for non-urban areas - which, coincidentally, would be of national benefit.
As a first step, the NFF has recommended spending $375 million over four years to establish governance, reporting and capacity building resources on the ground for the 20 precincts.
This translates into just over $4.5 million per year, per local government area to provide basic things such as in-house economic development staff and access to economic, engineering and planning expertise to put together shovel-ready transformative hard and soft infrastructure proposals to state and federal governments that can stand the test of a cost-benefit analysis.
The NFF has also sought a competitive $1.1 billion priority precincts fund to ensure that investments in things such as the first and last mile of a journey are not neglected.
We hear too many accounts of state and federal government multi-million-dollar investments in freeways and intersections to allow for the use of high productivity vehicles completely wasted because there is no local government funding to make the needed upgrades to local roads.
This translates into about $14 million per year across the 20 precincts.
Beyond this seed investment, the precincts are expected to stand on their own two feet to attract public and private investment.
The NFF is not seeking to turn towns like Shepparton into another Melbourne.
The Regional Development Precincts proposal charts a course for places such as Shepparton to be given the opportunity to be the best versions of themselves, and provide the social and economic amenities of all those communities in and around these regional centres.
- Fiona Simson is the President of the National Farmers Federation and a Liverpool Plains farmer.
