Seven steps towards regional equity

Catholic Welfare Australia has issued seven key principles for promoting equity across Australia’s regions and for socially just regional development.

The seven principles for regional equity and development include calls for a new national framework for economic development, sustained job generation initiatives and long-term infrastructure investment. Embracing these principles would entail a meaningful response to the "decade of commitment" to the regions called for by the Regional Australia Summit.

Calling on political parties to embrace these principles in their policies for the forthcoming election, National Director Toby O’Connor said: "Catholic Welfare Australia’s fundamental concern is the growing concentration of disadvantage in our distressed regional communities.

"Few national policy issues require such urgent and on-going attention as do regional equity and development. Entire regions, especially those traditionally dependent on manufacturing, remote rural areas and some coastal regions, have missed the benefits of national economic growth and fallen behind. These regions endure rates of joblessness several times the national average, while core metropolitan regions enjoy full employment."

"That atrocious disparities of this sort should persist after a decade of much vaunted economic growth is an indictment of governmental neglect and a failure of policy vision. Our political leaders must now intervene in decisive and innovative ways or risk national disintegration."

Catholic Welfare Australia is convinced that current national economic policy is hostile to regional equity and that the development of the nation cannot proceed without regard for the development of all regions and their communities.

Mr O’Connor said: "National economic policies have been implemented with no regard for their regional impacts. The disparities that have emerged cannot simply be accepted as the price of economic ‘reform’ — to do so would consign families and regional communities to poverty, risk undermining national cohesion and most probably hinder the long-term growth and prosperity of the nation.

"In this election year, we call on all political parties to articulate their visions for regional development. Based on its research and publications in this area, Catholic Welfare Australia proposes that the following principles be used to inform the policies of political parties."

Contact: Mr Toby O’Connor 0419 417 563

7 Steps Towards Regional Equity and Development

1. A national framework for economic development in which regional equity and development become central objectives of Federal Government. Regional policies have been incoherent, piecemeal and on the margins of the ‘main game’ of economic policy. National economic policy must be revisited to take the regional experience of poverty seriously. All policies and programs bearing on the regions must be better co-ordinated and linkages across portfolios improved. Institutional arrangements of Government must be reconstructed to have a truly ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of region’ focus.
   

2. A focus on the destructive impacts on regions of microeconomic reform, particularly the National Competition Policy. The distributional consequences of economic reforms, particularly for those who most directly bear the costs, must be integral in designing policy – not considered as an afterthought to be dealt with by ad hoc and politically expedient structural adjustment assistance.
   

3. Development planning ought to occur at the regional level, where location-specific policies are best formulated. The principle of subsidiarity ensures that those who are closest to the challenges facing a particular region - the local community and other stakeholders - have the right and responsibility to develop responses. However, in view of the challenges posed by globalisation and the consequences of structural economic reform over recent decades, the Federal Government now has a greater responsibility to ensure that depressed regional communities and their local development organisations are effective and adequately funded.
   

4. A stronger policy focus on those regions in greatest need. Regional equity demands that all communities receive a fair share of national prosperity, and must not be accused of fostering a ‘culture of dependence’ where there are significant impediments to ‘self-reliance’. Rather, persistent and localised disadvantage requires preferential policies for the most disadvantaged regions. The Federal Government is best positioned to ensure that those communities that have least are afforded most through regional development policies.
   

5. Sustained private and public sector job generation initiatives linked to regional development strategies. The costs of the scourge of regional unemployment on individuals, families and entire communities are simply devastating. With rates of unemployment many times higher than the national average, job creation in these regions must be made the highest priority of national policy. There must be a renewed commitment to fostering conditions which are conducive to private sector job creation. As the drivers of economic activity, both Government and the private sector have an obligation to ensure that a ‘jobs dividend’ is paid.
   

6. Significant and long-term infrastructure investment targeted towards a sustainable increase in regional employment and incomes. Reduction in infrastructure spending over recent decades has retarded the ability of distressed regions to restructure and support new and emerging industries. Investment funding targeted to generating jobs and improving community facilities must be dramatically increased. Planning for such investment ought to occur in co-operation with other levels of government, the private sector and in consultation with the regions concerned. It must also be fully integrated with other regional policies.
   

7. Minimum wages must be protected in any strategy for regional development. A market income which meets the daily costs of living and the longer-term needs of individuals and families remains the surest means of preventing poverty. Disadvantaged communities must not be required to endure any reduction in basic wages and conditions for the sake of their community’s economic development. A just distribution of opportunity in our nation demands that minimum wages be protected in any process of development.