MEDIA RELEASE

17 October 2018

Greather emphasis required for Northern population growth

Enterprise North has welcomed the Annual Statement on Developing Northern Australia delivered yesterday by Senator Matt Canavan, the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia but warned that much work needs to be done in the policy area aimed at increasing the population across the North.

“We naturally welcome the emphasis on roads, dams and airports and the progress in rolling out collaborative projects involving a greater take-up of technology particularly in the agriculture sector however we need to grow the economic engine rooms and that means we need more people” Executive Manager Kevin Byrne said today.

“The polarising debate on capping population increases in our larger urban areas will continue, but here in the north we need to focus on encouraging people to come here with a suite of measures enticing people into our regional communities”.

“This includes employment opportunities via a flexible Regional Skilled Migration Scheme program that encourages employers to employ more and to grow businesses and a company/business and individual taxation regime that rewards the challenges of remote living to include extensive taxation offsets. This is the minimum requirement I would think” Mr Byrne said.

Mr Byrne said that he predicted the current difficulties faced by employers in getting the right staff and workers into Cairns and other regions will become a major issue as business struggle with an immigration system that cannot cope with the current demand and is found to be onerous, way too slow to respond, expensive and frustrating with response times now exceeding 12 months.

“We need policies that address the regional needs rather than the blanket national need, as one size in this game does not fit all. So the great challenge is to keep rolling out the infrastructure for a steadily growing population to create the self sustaining economy in the North as described in the 2015 Growing Northern Australia Agenda”.

“We need to understand what the right policies are and implement them. Unfortunately Governments place an unwarranted emphasis on process to the detriment of efficiency with the result that projects are delayed and opportunities are lost” he concluded.

About Enterprise North

Working in collaboration with other like groups, Enterprise North is an economic infrastructure and policy advocacy group driving a fresh agenda to grow the city and region within the Northern Australia growth framework. Our agenda is double the city and region population numbers in the next 30 years.

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Media contact: Kevin Byrne 0447 280 923 exec@enterprisenorth.org.au