‘City-centric’ policymaking is not just a problem of the political process. It is also supported by views held by city media and some parts of corporate Australia, especially in relation to farming and the environment. Notwithstanding the decline in political significance of rural towns, the sustainability of rural industries is a national issue.

When it comes to quality decision-making by government, some of the clearest challenges can be seen in issues of infrastructure. If the agricultural sector and regional Australia is to grow and compete in the global environment, regional economies must be connected with the rest of the country and the world. This requires infrastructure to connect roads to railways to ports, telecommunications, energy and water. Much publicly funded rural infrastructure is in decline and needs urgent upgrading. In many metropolitan areas, this is being addressed through the emergence of public-private partnerships. However public-private partnerships are not viable for many projects in rural areas for a number of reasons, including apparent lack of political will, regulatory impediments, and difficulties in collecting tolls.

The freight task for Australia is estimated to double by 2020. Transport infrastructure must be improved, or triple the current number of truck movements will be occurring on our roads. In NSW, four rail lines have ceased operating in recent months. This alone means an additional 79,000 B-double truck movements on country roads in order to transport grain. But, according to the Shires Association of NSW, there is already a $156 million shortfall in funding for local government roads. Closing rail lines therefore only adds financial pressures on local governments, exacerbating what Percy Allen recently said about third world councils. The state of major highways is not simply an economic issue for the nation, but a safety issue. More than 15 years ago, the investigation into the deaths of 55 people in two bus crashes recommended that the Pacific Highway should be made dual carriageway along its entire length. Only 30% has been completed.

An efficient telecommunications system is critical to agricultural production. From a social perspective, telecommunications are also a lifeline for rural people, keeping them in touch with each other and the world. A sub-standard telecommunications system means isolated people, and is a life and death matter in emergency situations. As governments retreat from direct investment in this infrastructure, and increasingly leave telecommunications to the market, there is an abiding lack of political understanding of the relative impacts in rural areas. However if regional communities themselves wish to reinvest in infrastructure, they do not currently have the political autonomy, financial resources or regulatory authority to do it.

A major issue that maintains a sense of regional divide in Australia – or more particularly, city-country divide – is debate over the management of natural resources. One of the main (and obvious) differences between urban and rural areas is the landscape. Our whole society values the environmental qualities of rural landscapes, their biodiversity, what they provide in water quality, and the opportunities they provide for recreation and leisure. The challenge is to find ways to ensure that government funding maximises the wider benefits of the countryside and ensures that that they are shared as equitably as possible. But it is an open question whether investment in sustainable natural resource management, under current structures of government, have any real chance of being effective (see Bellamy this volume).

The issue of equity becomes even larger when it comes to the challenges of social sustainability in rural areas. Throughout rural areas there are vulnerable groups who are at particular risk of exclusion. Children and young people, lone parent families, those with disabilities and older people are obvious examples. Their needs are often harder to identify and it can cost more to deliver the services they need. Government has a responsibility to ensure equitable access to quality public services and to ensure that everyone (especially the vulnerable) can access them.

Two recent studies highlight the social problems confronting rural Australia. The first by Mission Australia was titled Rural and Regional Australia: Change, Challenge and Capacity. The study revealed a ‘diverse story of disadvantage’ for the 36% of Australians living outside metropolitan regions. It showed that that country young people are less likely to finish school and 1.7 times more likely to suffer an alcohol-related death than those living in metropolitan areas. Inequalities in health, job opportunities and quality of life for rural Australians can be seen in income levels in non-metropolitan areas, which tend to be lower, with almost 17% of non-metropolitan households living on a weekly income of $300 or less compared with 12.8% of city dwellers.

The NSW Farmers’ Association’s ‘Building Rural Community’ survey, carried out in mid-2005, revealed major concerns about the availability and quality of services in health, education (highly variable), transport, banking, police, child care, and aged care. We know from our work with the Rural Mental Health Alliance that the rural suicide rate is roughly twice that of urban areas. Rural communities rely on a high level of ‘volunteerism’, but this is not necessarily sustainable, with burn-out a significant problem which affects cultural, sporting and recreational activities.

Employment is also a major concern in rural areas. At least until the drought began to have its impact, employment in the farm sector itself was strong. Using ABS data, Herreria et al (2004) provided a review of the social profile of people employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing industries between 1996 and 2001. The data was classified according to whether the employees were located in ‘metropolitan’, ‘regional’, ‘coastal’, ‘inland’ or ‘remote’ regions.^[2] Employment in the farm sector increased in all regions of Australia, with the exception of coastal regions, which experienced a 0.5% decline (most prominent for females with a 1.8% decline in employees in coastal regions). The number of indigenous people working in the sector also increased in all areas (this ranged from a nearly 60% increase in metro areas down to a 2.8% increase in regional areas), with indigenous people now accounting for 1.3% of people employed in the farm sector in Australia. Reinforcing the social issues, over 9% of farm sector employees now live alone – an increase of 18% in inland areas and approximately 20% in remote areas.

However the employment picture in rural areas is now not so optimistic. On one hand, rural areas continue to suffer major shortages of professionals and skilled labour. On the other, they now also exhibit relatively high levels of unemployment. The reasons are not just the drought, but other structural shifts in the economy. The age and qualification profiles of workers in rural NSW suggest substantial skill gaps, making many unemployable. Training has not kept pace with the transformation of agriculture in the last two decades, and a large proportion of the rural population do not have the necessary skills to perform the job. According to Herraria et al (2004), 23% of farm sector employees across Australia had less than 10 years of schooling, and only a little over 6% had a bachelor degree or higher qualification. The lower figures came from inland (5.5%), coastal (5.1%) and remote (4.5%) areas. The greatest change in the number of employees with bachelor degrees or higher education was among women, where the number increased by almost 50% over the five years to 2001.

Other well-known reasons for the decline include companies relocating from smaller towns due to worsening infrastructure, and rationalisation by government departments, banks and other large companies including closure of smaller branches and offices. Table 4.1 shows the overall picture, based on the number of unemployed and unemployment rates in NSW for the March quarter 2004 and March quarter 2005. While unemployment overall is at historically low levels, it is clearly not so low in rural Australia. In March 2005, a staggering 43% of all of the unemployed people in NSW were in non-metropolitan NSW. The unemployed in country NSW made up 14% of the entirety of unemployed people in Australia.

Source: NSW Farmers Association 2005

Solving these employment problems, and larger social issues that surround them, is not simply an economic challenge. It is a more general challenge of governance, because much of the key to attracting and retaining skilled workers in rural industries hinges on a broad understanding of regional development, including developing more attractive and sustainable living environments.

With no other level of government properly placed to lead the charge, many local governments have tried to use strategies to retain and attract skilled workers. These strategies, aimed at offering the best possible quality of life and environment for all local citizens, based on principles of social justice and equity, as well as best practice in planning for land use, infrastructure and services. This includes providing appropriate protection and enhancement of heritage character and cultural identity; designing and implementing programs that are ecologically sustainable and provide for the retention of important features of the natural environment; providing the choice of housing sought by communities; and offering varied and accessible employment opportunities. Some of the broad programs and projects undertaken by local governments include:

The problem is that local government, as it currently exists, still cannot do enough. Despite the effort to attract and retain suitably skilled labour, these strategies and programs do not seem to be working, and people continue to leave rural areas for metropolitan areas. The reasons were highlighted by the NSW State Chamber of Commerce or SCC (2000) in its submission to the Commonwealth Government’s Regional Business Development Analysis. According to the SCC, the difficulties in attracting and retaining skilled labour in rural areas also relate to:

According to the SCC, regional businesses identify lifestyle as the most important factor in attracting skilled workers to regional areas. The fact that regional areas afford more relaxed, slower pace of life in country surrounds, can be synonymous with an improved quality of life. However people are not prepared to sacrifice everything for these particular qualities. One Chamber member commented as follows:

Local government simply does not have the capacity, legal power or financial resources to influence the more structural conditions for this kind of development, even when it has the vision. However, neither can the state and federal governments do it, because they are not fundamentally rooted in the region, and are inevitably dominated by metropolitan concerns. As a result, they simply do not have the commitment to the type of medium and long-term changes needed, even where they have the knowledge or understanding. In NSW, government policies to address the problems faced by rural areas are not working because government has failed to understand the dynamics of the social profile of the farming sector and the rural community in particular. While the problems experienced by people living and working in rural areas are often the same as those in urban areas, the solutions often have to be tailored to take into account issues such as remoteness and higher costs of travel (in both time and money). In addition, the diversity of rural areas means that different delivery solutions and priorities may be needed in different areas.

After many decades of trying, it is clear that the broader approach to regional development needed to make rural communities sustainable, is not achievable under our current system of government.