Regional Australia
Forgive me for my sins, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Tony Abbott last week when he was forced to kill stone dead a debate on the development of northern Australia just just hours after the policy was announced.
The man who has rightly been accused of turning negativity into a political artform dipped his toe in the tub of positive ideas and immediately got burnt.
The discussion paper set forward a series of ideas to stimulate growth outside established capital cites, including relocating government departments, defence facilities and investment in agriculture. It also flagged the prospect of tax incentives to attract investment and people.
Continue reading "Call me troppo but I reckon Abbott’s onto something" »
Have you ever been to Alice Springs? Well, if you have you will know that the Alice is the heart of Australia in more ways than one. If you haven’t, then you should join the thousands of overseas visitors who regularly flock to the Alice.
You will be in awe of many things in the Alice, especially when you see how a community in the middle of Australia can, in so many ways, be a microcosm of our country.
The Alice has all the great personalities you get in the big cities. There are the talk show presenters at Radio 8HA like Adrian Renzi, or “Renz” to his friends, who are great at expressing the public indignation on issues of importance to the local community. There is, of course, the local ABC Radio Station where presenters like Breakfast Show host, Stewart Brash, start the locals thinking about the day’s big issues.
Continue reading "The price of black gold is white hot in the red heart" »
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PW says:
I wish there was an endless supply of the stuff down there. But there’s not. I haven’t seen anyone anywhere argue that oil is a limitless resource. While denial might seem like an attractive alternative, it will only make the reality harsher when it does come. Preparation is needed, one… Read more »
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youdy beaudy says:
@ no more gillard.When Keating got out petrol was about 75c per litre from memory. When Howard got out it was $ 1.30 per litre. So, that’s a big increase and under howards watch. Can’t blame everything on Gillard and Co. Naughty, Naughty.!! Read more »
Have you ever driven around regional Australia and found large discrepancies in the petrol prices at different regional centres? Do you ever wonder why petrol prices are different in different suburbs? And have you ever been annoyed that the price of the same item may be different at different Coles or Woolworths supermarkets in the same neighbourhood?
Well, what you’re witnessing is the practice of geographic price discrimination. It’s common among our major supermarket chains and oil companies. At its simplest, geographic price discrimination means that consumers in some areas are paying a higher price for the same item than they would otherwise have paid elsewhere.
There are plenty of examples of geographic price discrimination. Petrol pricing is a well known example. Those who live in the city see it every day when they drive to work, school or the shops. Petrol prices will vary from suburb to suburb with the same petrol retailer charging a different price for the same petrol at their different outlets.
Continue reading "Regional Australia is being shafted at the bowser" »
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Sam says:
Clearly we need to get rid of racist tools like this fool and we will all have more Read more »
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Sam says:
@paul m Aboriginals laugh at your type of ignorance, who would want to be like you, whites can live in each others shit, the most sucessful mammal colinisers are rodents, no wonder the citys smell like a rat cage, so called civilisation my ass, no wonder you lot had diseases… Read more »
Anyone who thinks size doesn’t matter obviously hasn’t spent time with the Big Prawn in the northern New South Wales town of Ballina.
Designed in the late ‘80s by a sculptor whose research involved the time-honoured artistic technique of dissecting a tiger prawn in a café, this symphony in fibreglass and cement is one of Australia’s biggest Big Things.
At six by nine metres, it’s longer than Rockhampton’s Big Dugong, heavier than Mount Vernon’s Big Chook, and just a little bit weirder than Sarina’s Big Cane Toad.
Continue reading "The crusty crustacean creating a big stink" »
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LaDiva says:
Wasn’t it the Big Oyster in Taree which became a car yard? I know that the Big Prawn housed a seafood outlet and petrol station for many years. In fact I always made a point of stopping there to fill up with petrol and/or go to the loo when on… Read more »
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Heids says:
I have lived in Rockhampton for 7 years and I’ve never seen the Big Dugong. There are a few Big Bulls here (complete with balls) and lots of Big People…but this is the first I’ve heard about a dugong. Sounds attractive….. Read more »
When I think of regional Australia, I think of long drives, lots of wildlife and lights in the sky not on the ground. There is another thing that now distinguishes regional Australia: an absolute rejection of the carbon tax.
Senator John Williams recently conducted a poll in the seats of New England (based around Tamworth) and Lyne (based around Port Macquarie). After receiving over 9,400 responses, 89 per cent of residents are against the carbon tax.
The reason for this is not that hard to fathom. When it comes to the carbon tax, the greater the distance, the greater the cost.
Continue reading "An unaffordable tax beyond all regional doubt" »
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Honesty says:
“There will be no carbon tax under my government…..it’s time to start putting a price on carbon”....In the past five years, I have seen to most amazing things happen in Australia. Hundreds of millions of our taxes going on placating economic refugees who con their way here and refuse to… Read more »
Are we a nation of Akubra-wearing graziers? Of rough and ready carnival operators? Sponge cake bakers called Joan? Or a collection of young mothers pushing strollers festooned with Show bags ?
The truth is we are all these people and more. For the tens of thousands of people who arrive into Australia and settle in Sydney each year, the Sydney Royal Easter Show may be their first experience of the real Australia.
The Show is so big and diverse it is almost impossible to describe. But once you have experienced the Show, you know what it means - it gets under your skin.
Continue reading "Hooves, horns and helium - the Show must go on" »
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Robert Smissen, rural SA, God's own country says:
Closer to 85% live on the coastal fringe in huge bloated pointless cities, Austalia is the most urbanized country in the world. Strange that 40% of Australia’s production comes from the rural areas. The myth of tall bronzed Australians is a blatant lie Read more »
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Robert Smissen, rural SA, God's own country says:
What the hell is a pound? ? Read more »
On Monday, yet another young driver appeared in yet another court room to be punished for his role in the death of yet another innocent teenager. The victim in this case was 16 year old T.J. Hutchesson of Bathurst.
The name of the accused can’t be reported. In a sense the names don’t matter: for those of us looking on, this is just another episode in a long and tragic storybook of life destroyed far too young.
In a statement appearing in The Sydney Morning Herald, mother Rachael Hutchesson did not shy away from identifying the problem: boredom and booze. This is a known issue in regional Australia, and yet there is a real paucity of frankness when it comes to solutions.
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A twelve-hour round trip is a fair distance for a weekend in the country, but there are few things you won’t do for good friends when they get married.
And that includes the threat of a locust plague.
It was a stifling thirty-something degrees across the New South Wales’s Central West last weekend.
Continue reading "Top Aussie traditions we’ve left to the country" »
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Heather says:
Does it really matter whether we prefer the city or the country. Both have their good and bad sides. The point is that we are so lucky to live in this beautiful country. We have an abundance of fresh food, great health facilities, schools of all nationalities, no war, available… Read more »
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Dave-o says:
Being able to drive to the pub and leave your car there for three days while your wallet and keys are on the bar. Being able to walk across town in under 15 minutes. Meaning that no matter how bad the “walk of shame” it will be at least brief.… Read more »
When people ask me where I am from I know I’m likely to receive one of two responses when I say Craigieburn. “Sorry, I don’t know where that is” seems to be the predominant one, in which case I begin naming the surrounding areas.
As I relay my list – Roxburgh Park, Greenvale, and Broadmeadows – I am usually confronted with increasingly bewildered expressions, and I realise that these people are unfamiliar with the northern suburbs.
The second response, which on occasion is prompted by my answer to the first, usually encompasses the words “gangs” or “violence”.
Continue reading "Bored youth breed violence in North Melbourne" »
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Jake says:
I am from Craigieburn and the violence is simply that the youth are so heavily influence by American gang culture that they see it as a glamorous lifestyle. It is not about boredom, now in 2013 the suburb has developed greatly, it is much larger and has far more facilities… Read more »
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Scotty says:
why ban hoodies like in the uk, when you can just as easily wear a beanie, balaclava, stocking on your face or just pull your shirt over your head? banning clothing items will never stop people from hiding their identity or them for being idiots. I moved to melbourne from… Read more »
Done right, Australia’s imminent renewable energy boom could provide the biggest boost many regional communities have seen in decades, providing secure, skilled, well paid work in areas where many youngsters are forced to move to the ‘big smoke’ to make a decent living.
Done wrong, the next decade could see chronic skills shortages that slow development, cripple roll-out, hamper productivity, and result in skilled jobs being taken by an army of fly-in-fly-out workers or overseas based tradies.
The question is not ‘if’ this shift towards sustainable energy will occur, but when, thanks in a large part to the fact that Australia has the potential to generate vast amounts of renewable energy due to an abundance of natural resources distributed around the country.
Continue reading "Renewable energy can zap some life into regional Oz" »
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Scot says:
The Badger. NO we are NOT in favour of the NBN. For the past 6 years we have been working on WiMax installations to millions of people in Asia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan and India to name a few. Delivers phone, WiMax, WiFi, broadband and more. At one quarter of… Read more »
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Scot says:
Northern. We are already paying the right price for coal. Ask China, they build enough power plants in one month equal to the total power capacity of Australia. Get real. As for CO2 if we reduce it in the environment plant life will die not flourish. I am not sure… Read more »
The question of whether city or country is best has been an ongoing debate for a long time. I heard it often as I worked in Brisbane for thirty years and prior to that as I lived and worked in various regional, rural and remote locations in Queensland for extended periods.
In the 1200’s Marco Polo a merchant and great traveller declared cities were best. For twenty-four years Polo journeyed to and from Venice to China along the Great Silk Road. On his travels he encountered many great cities including Constantinople, Baghdad and Beijing and he realised that cities were far more important to the economy of the Silk Road than the country areas through which it passed.
In 2010 in Australia the independent federal politicians are about to “turbo-charge” regional and rural Australia according to their spokesperson Rob Oakeshott. They have secured a new $10 billion regional investment fund in return for their votes and they seek to prove Marco Polo’s assessment wrong. For them the country is at least as important as the city.
Continue reading "Fixing the failed state that is regional Australia" »
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Nick says:
How many times have the Sydney Cross-City and Lane-Cove tunnels gone into recvieership now? ‘User-pays’ in such context just means the redistribution of wealth upwards from the pockets of suburban joes commuting to work on toll roads from Kellyville, into the pockets of, well, share holders and investors of the… Read more »
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acotrel says:
I lived in Melbourne for 57 years - I don’t want to be there now, and I regret not having moved earlier. Some things I miss include the opportunity for further tertiary education, and being stuck in the traffic isn’t one of them. Neither is being crammed into a crowded… Read more »
Labor has lost its majority but it would like us to believe that it has found regional Australia.
Well, at Labor’s election launch Bob Hawke said that you have to judge a horse by its form.
It was good advice. Labor ignored regional Australia through its first term in Government.
Continue reading "Labor still looks at the regions through metro eyes" »
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Timothy says:
I’m sorry, where are we getting all of these health professionals from? Are they just going to magically appear when the NBN is up and running? I’ll be sure to tell my family who have spent a lifetime working in an under-staffed, under-funded health system that utopia has come! Read more »
Two weeks ago we were being told by the federal independent MPs that regional Australia had been neglected and was run down after years of not getting back a fair share of the riches it creates for the nation.
Today an alliance of regional towns is out spruiking themselves as alternatives to metropolitan life, by virtue of their great housing, cheaper living costs and an abundance of career and investment opportunities.
They can’t both be right. So which is the real regional Australia?
Continue reading "Would the real regional Australia please stand up" »
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KatherynRichardson27 says:
People in every country get the business loans in different creditors, just because it’s comfortable. Read more »
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rodger says:
It is an ill-thought out re-hash of a 30plus year push for decentralisation; this has been dusted off by a public servant who needs a job or a promotion. It is a gross waste of money I like Orange - Come and walk back 15-20 years. It is the country… Read more »
This cannot be happening, I thought as I filled in Centrelink’s Newstart application form.
How could I have sunk this low?
I’m well educated, resourceful and have been a language teacher, conveyancer, legal secretary and newspaper journalist.
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Claire Struthers says:
Claire here - thanks very much to all who commented for your sympathy, which really touched me, and your constructive comments. I certainly don’t expect to be subsidised by the taxpayer - I’d far rather be a productive member of society, as I had been since I left university. So… Read more »
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