It’s all about jobs
Stuart Davie is a regular writer of letters to The Border Mail about the issue of promoting our region to city dwellers.
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I agree with him about the potential for regional areas to lure people from big cities like Sydney and Melbourne but I do not think it is fair to blame local councils in relation to the matter.
They can waste ratepayer money on all the glossy brochures in the world and spend a fortune on advertising our area to the nation but at the end of the day, there is one critical issue that will determine whether you can convince people to move from metropolitan areas to the country – and that is jobs.
It’s all well and good to say our area is great, lifestyle is good, housing is affordable ect. You can go on about the attributes of our area until you are literally blue in the face but you simply cannot ignore the fact that employment is the number one factor in drawing people to our area, or any area really.
Retirees are not the target market for recruiting newcomers – they are a demographic that are going to be influenced mainly by where their children and grandchildren live.
For all the many selling points of our area, – and I agree that there are lots of them – it’s unlikely retirees are going to consider a move here unless there is a family connection. It would be very rare for people in that age group to just decide to up and move here from the city, and start all over again in establishing connections and friendships.
And so, it is young and middle-aged persons that are most likely to relocate from cities. They are not going to be won over by local council campaigns selling their area. The fact is that the critical factor for that demographic is always going to be employment.
Maybe it’s time for governments to revisit some incentives for business to decentralise. But it’s not fair to keep blaming local country councils who have limited resources, a growing list of priorities and a shrinking amount of funding.
There is really only so much they can be expected to do.
Sarah McKay, Wangaratta
Concerns for business
Regional and suburban businesses should be very concerned about the Victorian government’s proposed changes to their voting rights in council elections.
Some of the planned changes, if they are enacted, will restrict votes for business owners and operators and will hamper their ability to vote for representatives in the local councils in which their livelihood depends on.
The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes that if you pay rates to have your place of business in a municipality you are entitled to have your say.
The Local Government Act has not been reviewed for more than 25 years and we welcome the opportunity to build stronger communities across the state.
Business is a key part of local communities in regional and suburban Victoria, and it deserves to retain its voting entitlements in council elections.
We will be strongly advocating on behalf of our members to ensure their rights remain unchanged
Mark Stone, Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive
Too many disasters
The headline in the Rural section ‘Farmers awaiting grain payments’ (The Border Mail, August 20) does not do justice to the tragedy of grain trader Andrew Leighton-Daly’s passing.
Our federal MP for Farrer Sussan Ley should take note that since the deregulation of the bulk wheat export market in June 2008 – that herself and her Liberal party colleagues were so outspoken to support – there have been far too numerous grain trading business disasters from near and far to tolerate.