MIW skills and training solutions required
Overall lack of population to support jobs demand within the GW region
Training and retraining alone will not come close to matching jobs demand with placements. There is a fundamental need to understand population attraction and retention drivers within regional Australia. With population comes diversity of job interests and ability to fill jobs - population supports the viability of all manner of services provision and drives higher community consumption within a defined geographical area. This in turn supports better economies of scale for provision of services and infrastructure, and also lowers unit cost for services. The Greater Whitsundays region has an unemployment rate of below 2.3%, job participation rate is 76%, 75% of people with a job work 35 hours or more in the region and 94% of school leavers in the region are either going on to further studies, have work lined up or are undertaking apprenticeships. The majority of jobs seeking to be filled are aligned to ANZSCO skills levels of 3-5 (relatively unskilled) and they are jobs for here and now – not jobs of the future. This is not to say technology use and augmentation should not be looked at and utilised to partly manage jobs needs and requirements – but it is not the sole solution.
Lack of clarity toward what is a regional area and how policy context impacts regional development program solutions and settlement trends into regional areas
We need a better definition of regional and differential growth and development policies for regional areas vs just regions. Data showcases that people are not moving to regional Australia (or what RDA GW would call regional Australia) - a review of Commonwealth Bank and RAI Population Moving Index Data coupled with ABS LGA population data and general transport connection services highlights the national data pertaining to regional population movement and regional development is skewed. The data showcases that over 70% of the nation’s internal migration to regions over the past two years is re-settlement into metro regions. Metro regions are those regions within 160km from a capital and where the region is serviced by efficient and cost-effective public transport between a capital and metro region. The suggestion by RDA GW is that government should reclassify regional as per the Australian Statistical Geography Standard - Remoteness Area (ASGS-RA) classification scheme and, as such, those areas classified as ASGS-RA 1 or Major Cities are not regional and thus government should be looking at policies that provide support to regional development aligned to those LGAs that are classified as ASGS-RA 2-5 - that is areas coded as being Inner Regional Australian, Outer Regional Australia, Remote Australia and Very Remote Australia. Reference
A need for a regional housing summit and aligned study and solution recommendations
RDA GW would welcome the ability to work and co-fund with stakeholders a regional housing summit and study. The primary purpose of the summit and aligned study would be toward outlining regional agreed solutions and actions that could be advocated to state and federal government as a collective voice. RDA GW has outlined a commitment toward this type of approach within the Regional Development Roadmap - where the solutions to this need to be subregional and specific, but where nonetheless there are some common driving issues. RDA GW has been able to talk to a cross section of regional stakeholders on this issue and, with feedback over the past few months, we are aware of respective subregional studies and actions being undertaken but are not aware of any collective Greater Whitsunday regional approach to date. Some overview of feedback on this matter has included:
In the region there is significant occurrence of housing/dwellings being empty and not utilised or at least not fully utilised – such as government housing being empty, 1-2 people renting four- or five-bedroom homes due to lack of housing type diversity, retirees seeking to downsize but where limited small home/apartment offerings are available.
Dwelling owners transferring rentals to Air BnB to realise higher net returns.
Investors consider the GW region to be too high a risk (asset depreciation), aligned to housing development relative to other regions – a reflection of the dominance of 1-2 sectors to the regional or subregional economy and cyclical commodity prices. Linked to this is a general investor lack of clarity and confidence concerning low carbon economy impacts on the GW region. A focus needs to be on lowering risk and providing information for investors - such de-risking actions could include:
Provision of quarterly regional investment trends and future projections aligned to regional development and growth, and hence investment viability and rental/lease rates of return.
Incentives, grants, loans or taxation concessions (means tested) for all. Such a solution could also support lower income housing solutions and would lower financier investment risk considerations on loans. For example:
Concession on stamp duty
Housing buyer and builder incentives for all, not just first home buyers
FBT exemptions aligned to pre-tax rent and mortgage payments for low-income earners
Utilisation of facilities such as NAIF to support commercial housing solutions, not just development infrastructure.
We have an aging population (Baby Boomers) – provision of residential aged care facilities in GW region sees at present 5% of the age cohort 75 years and older being able to be accommodated. In other regional areas, residential aged care can accommodate 10% of the 75 years and older age cohort. Demand for residential aged care is allegedly very high, with waiting times of 12-24mths (discussion with sector). The region’s ability to provide residential aged care services to 10% of the 75 years and older age cohort would translate to an additional 1500 dwellings being developed and freeing up existing housing.
Solutions exist to see dedicated development of retirement estates or apartment blocks which allow for older parts of the population to sell/transition from four- or five-bedroom homes to smaller dwellings - thus providing larger homes to the market for purchase.