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Regional Development Minister Jaala Pulford launched the state government’s Regional Futures Summit on population growth at the Ulumbarra Theatre on Wednesday morning, emphasising the challenges and “tremendous opportunities” available to regional communities.
Ms Pulford pointed to recent positive employment figures as a positive sign, while acknowledging levels of inequality and disadvantage remained disproportionately high in areas outside Melbourne.
“In the last three months regional Victoria recorded the strongest increase in both total and full-time employment, with full-time jobs increasing by 4300 people – regional full-time employment is now up by 16,300 people compared with the three months to November 2014,” she said.
“But we aren’t without our challenges, we know that many of our regions experience inequality and disadvantage.
“Many of our regional communities have high levels of unemployment and socio-economic disadvantage and labour force participation rates are significantly lower in some areas.”
Ms Pulford said the government had made agribusiness and tourism a focus for future regional jobs growth, as well as the emerging service sector.
“As our economies change, we need to be able to adapt and look to the role of service sector employment, particularly in health, disability and aged care as growth opportunities for our regions,” she said.
But Ms Pulford said employment was just one factor driving regional population growth, with an existing relationship with the area and health and education facilities other significant draw cards.
“While a job will often be the thing that brings someone to a region, it’s the schools, health and other services, sporting and cultural facilities that are the things that make people stay,” she said.
“The livability is also part of the equation as you all know, so we’ll continue to work with your communities to grow them to make them stronger.”
Meanwhile, the conference’s first speaker, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu senior adviser Ian Harper, spoke on “the purpose of place and the link between place and prosperity” in regional Victoria.
Mr Harper presented a research paper, which he said demonstrated the view that technology had eliminated the importance of geography was in fact a misconception.
“In the knowledge economy into which we’re rapidly progressing as the minister just indicated, people often think ‘well that’s it for place, the death of distance, location’s no longer important, you can be anywhere in the world and connected to the internet so what difference does place make?’ – this paper argues that that logic is false,” he said.
“It seems counter-intuitive I have to concede – but you could locate yourself anywhere – well you could, but you don’t.”
Mr Harper said the summit itself was a clear illustration of the importance of place, even in a wired world.
“The department could have organised this regional summit over the internet – why is everybody here in Bendigo?,” he said.
“We know the answer to that, it’s important to get the ideas, we can get the ideas over the internet, but we want to meet our colleagues, we want to meet and greet people, build relationships.
“And it’s not just because it’s nice to have, that’s where we get our inspiration from, that’s where we get stimulus from, new ideas, different ways of thinking about things, new connections.”