The Regional Australia Institute last week launched its National Population Plan for Regional Australia.
It includes five key recommendations to better balance growth, take pressure off capital cities and offer benefits to the rest of the country.
The recommendations include rebalancing of national and state infrastructure spending to enhance liveability in regional centres; the need for further analysis of the economic impacts of increasing urbanisation for only cities; and targeted support for economic diversification and jobs in slow growing regional areas.
C4GS chief executive Sam Birrell said for Shepparton, infrastructure spending around connectivity, rail, cultural and sporting assets and education was vital in ensuring the city was ‘‘going to be able to attract and retain a population’’.
‘‘Those pieces of infrastructure are important to attract people here,’’ Mr Birrell said.
‘‘I think we’ve got to advocate based on a narrative and a story of where we’re going.
‘‘I don’t think we should just have a list of wants.
‘‘I honestly think we’ve been trying for the last few years at succeeding and stepping up as one of major regional cities in Victoria, and we’ve got to keep pushing forward with that.’’
Mr Birrell said with its land and urban water availability and proximity to Melbourne, the Shepparton region was probably among the regions in Australia ‘‘that’s best ready to move’’, and in terms of ‘‘being able to handle the growth’’.
Improvements in education and training to address regional areas with high workforce demands and removing barriers to secondary migration of international migrants wanting to relocate to regional areas were also recommended.
RAI co-chief executive officer Kim Houghton said the paper delivered a plan of action for government and regional communities to ensure regions played a key role in the national framework to manage population growth.
‘‘Last year, we hit the 25million mark which was two decades earlier than predicted and now is the time to place regional Australia into the mix to help solve our city congestion problems,’’ Dr Houghton said.
The RAI predicts population growth in the next 40 years will mostly happen in outer suburbs of capitals.
The RAI said the plan aimed to ‘‘challenge the assumption that Australia is best to deal with future population growth through continuing expansion of our major cities’’.
The Greater Shepparton area grew by about 3300 people between the 2011 and 2016 census, when it was reported at about 65000.
An id economics analysis on census data reported the City of Greater Shepparton population forecast for 2019 at the time to be 67958.
It was forecast to grow to 83234 by 2036, changing at a rate of 22.48 per cent between 2019 and 2036.
Mr Birrell said population growth in Shepparton was already happening, but argued in the committee’s experience it was perhaps ‘‘not happening fast enough, given the amount of economic activity happening in the region’’.
