MEDIA RELEASE

21 November 2018

Northern Australia needs a progressive population policy

Enterprise North Executive Director Kevin Byrne has called for a bipartisan approach to growing the population of Northern Australia with the urgent development of a Northern Australia Regional Population Policy focussed on growing the population numbers across the top end. His call comes as the Federal Government looks close to cutting the annual migration intake by 30,000 to relieve growth pressures in the big cities.

“We need to recognise that there are two economies out there…one for the cities and the other for the regions and they are poles apart. Ours in the North are generally economies that are struggling to survive and who need an injection of people for a decade or more to grow the opportunities”.

“The challenge for any Federal and State Government is to implement policies that makes living in, and migrating to, the regions more attractive and you do that by offering a range of financial, employment and social incentives to achieve the end result. You need a generous business taxation regime that encourages businesses to reinvest like abolishing payroll tax, generous fuel rebate schemes, training subsidies and flexible apprentice training schemes, remote area aviation subsidies and other incentives”.

“Individual incentives might include a generous number of taxation offsets that recognises a number of social circumstances where there is marked disparity between urban and regional living to include an attractive personal taxation scheme” he said.

“This is a broad ranging discussion but the time for action is now. We cannot afford to be caught up in the current debate about downsizing Australia. We want to upsize our part of the world and we do that by growing our numbers and economic activity”.

Mr Byrne said that the failure in planning was at the heart of the current level of political panic in the south and lowering the national migration intake was a knee jerk reaction that only exacerbates the problem further on.

“As a region we should repudiate that proposed Government policy position from the perspective of being Far North Queenslanders and Northern Australians more generally. To not do so would be a cop out if we are serious about where want to be headed as a fair minded progressive country”.

“The real answer is getting the planning and policies harmonised and you need an agreed growth policy to achieve that. What we suffer from is an inability of government and our political representatives to recognise the bigger issues that impact our growth, employment issues and all round community prosperity and how to fix them”.

“Recently I called for our own Designated Area Migration Agreement that has been adopted in the Northern Territory. That program should be implemented across the top so as to guarantee a streamlined pathway to accessing a skilled and semi skilled workforce. This should also be part of our growth agenda”.

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