Latest news with #regionalAustralia
News.com.au
28-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
What Geelong needs to build to support booming population
Geelong has been crowned the king of regional Australia but local leaders say the city's greatest challenges lie ahead. As a new Regional Australia Institute report shows one in 10 people moving to the country settled in Geelong in the year to March 2025, Victoria's second city is confronting the challenge of housing that level of growth in the future. The Regional Movers Index saw Geelong record a 9.3 per cent share of net internal migration, overtaking the Sunshine Coast. Adding the Surf Coast, Queenscliff and Golden Plains council areas pushes the region's intake to almost 11 per cent. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said Geelong is a world-class city, a fact many people from Melbourne only discovered since the pandemic, but the challenge was accommodating growth without wrecking the city's advantages. 'Geelong is really so much better than even I think we all appreciate,' Mr Marles said. 'It's the north-facing bay, the proximity to the Surf Coast, its really wonderful amenity. It's a fantastic community and you've got the Bellarine Peninsula with all those amazing views.' Geelong major Stretch Kontelj said the figures highlight the challenge of planning for a future population of 500,000, and a state government target to build 128,600 new homes by 2050. 'I've said consistently that it's managing success. Geelong is the fastest-growing region in Australia and these numbers are a testament to that,' Mr Kontelj said. 'The challenges are accommodating all those new arrivals, whether it's in greenfield development, or urban infill. 'You've got the legacy assets that we need to renew, such as the (100-year-old) stormwater drains and roads and other infrastructure to accommodate that.' That's a $500m bill facing Geelong, Mr Kontelj said. 'The biggest challenge is going to be transport. Working out how to move people north, south, east and west and through the city because the road network is getting more congested.' G21 chief executive officer Giulia Baggio said transport and housing need to be 'turbo-charged'. A metro-style transport system including local and linear bus routes taking people where they want to go, along with a shuttle increasing trains running between Waurn Ponds and Lara would help move people, as G21 modelling shows the city's roads would come to a standstill by 2041, if nothing is done. Two bus reviews identified in the budget for Geelong and the Bellarine 'can't come soon enough', she said. Building more apartments around the CBD would reactivate the city's heart and deliver more affordable housing, she said, but means renewing the ageing network of sewers and drains to cope with the additional pressure. 'We need federal help to activate that, because we know the state government is cash-strapped,' Ms Baggio said. 'The federal government has got a big mandate on housing, which is a very big issue right across the country. Everyone's got to put their shoulder to the wheel.' Urbis Geelong director Nat Anson said the city needs to identify activity centres that provide well-connected apartments and townhouses as well as continuing a strong supply of greenfield housing. 'A strong infrastructure pipeline is the biggest threat to delivering 'good growth' – new and upgraded transport assets including Avalon Station, Bellarine Link, Torquay transit corridor and a renewed Geelong Station will be vital to the city's future success,' Mr Anson said. Investing in alternative water, an open space network, arts and cultural assets and central Geelong underpins the city's existing value proposition that is so attractive to future residents, he said. Mr Marles said the city's health networks, including Barwon Health, St John of God and Epworth hospitals, would need to keep pace, but growth also offered economic opportunities. 'GMHBA Stadium is the biggest piece of sporting infrastructure in regional Australia, it underpins the biggest sporting club in regional Australia and the ability to continue to have that is underpinned by the growth in the region,' he said. 'The future development of Avalon Airport as an industrial precinct is happening, but developing it as an airport will underpin the population growth around this region.' Mr Marles said the benefit of being a smaller city was the ability to achieve a higher degree of co-operation between the three tiers of government. Though rising blue and white collar jobs – from advanced manufacturing to the businesses surrounding the head offices of NDIA, WorkSafe, TAC and Cotton On – was behind the growth, lifestyle was the real drawcard, McGrath Geelong director David Cortous said. 'It's a more affordable lifestyle here – execs and professional people can still pull the same type of income and probably live a bit more affordably,' Mr Cortous said. Property investors are seeing the benefits again, with Sydney buyers snapping up more suburban homes, spurred on by low prices and the opportunity for growth and rental demand. Geelong's $720,000 median house price is still 4 per cent down year on year but indicators show the city has passed the bottom of the market. 'We're just starting to see the needle move with a couple of interest rate cuts and more migration,' Mr Cortous said, referring to more people looking at properties, including up to 30 per cent out-of-town buyers. But there are growing pains, such as development pressures and the high cost of building, higher property taxes and competition for tradies with the state government massive projects in Melbourne.
ABC News
21-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
National and Liberal backroom push to reunite parties, just a day after divorce
Just a day after they filed for divorce, there is a backroom push underway to get the Liberals and Nationals back together. Senior Nationals MP Darren Chester has told the ABC he is talking with colleagues "across the political divide" about trying to find a way for the two parties to reunite within weeks. Mr Chester is not part of the Nationals leadership team but previously sat in the former Coalition government's cabinet. "My concern is that we will be giving Labor a free pass if we go back to parliament some time in the next month or so as two divided parties," he said. "We owe it to our supporters to have another crack at forming a coalition in the interests of providing a strong and stable opposition … if we want to deliver for regional Australia as Nationals, we need to be in government." Mr Chester said he still supported all policy positions advocated by the Nationals. But he said former Liberal prime minister John Howard had been right to raise concerns about the Coalition's split. The Nationals leadership team of David Littleproud, Kevin Hogan and Bridget McKenzie were feeling buoyant on Tuesday night after orchestrating one of the most monumental moments in recent political history. They sat in Mr Littleproud's office, reflecting on the day over a beef burger. Senator McKenzie had no regrets. "It's about next steps and about being able to speak about legislation and policy on behalf of regional Australians in a very unconstrained way that affects our values. It's a huge opportunity for us," she told the ABC. Last Wednesday, Mr Littleproud travelled with the party's federal director Ben Hindmarsh to Albury, to meet with Liberal leader Sussan Ley the following day. He had made the journey because her mother was terminally ill and the pair needed to discuss the Coalition agreement. She had put a deadline on the shadow cabinet announcement of Sunday. At the meeting, Mr Littleproud told her the Nationals wanted guaranteed support for four key policy areas: nuclear, a $20 billion regional Australia future fund, better phone coverage in the bush, and supermarket divestiture powers. But Ms Ley refused to give an iron-clad commitment, arguing every policy would be on the table as part of the Liberal Party's impending election review. As one Nationals MP put it: "She told him to shove it up his jumper." Mr Littleproud drove back to Canberra and spoke with his leadership team. They arranged a party-room meeting via Microsoft Teams for the following morning — on Friday, at 8:30am. At that virtual hook-up, he told colleagues that the policies he had argued for would be "wiped" and "part of a review". "They didn't even get as far as talking about shadow cabinet positions," one Nationals source said. There was scepticism that those policies would resurface after the Liberals' review. Over the weekend, Mr Hindmarsh's staff wrote to Ms Ley's office, requesting again that she commit to honouring the Nationals' policies. The written response, Nationals say, did anything but. The response said that all sorts of policies would be up for review. "That argument didn't slide," another Nationals source told the ABC. By Tuesday the Nats were meeting again — also via Teams — and the mood to blow up the Coalition had boldened. MPs and senators voted in solidarity on leaving the Coalition, despite there being some opposition. The Nationals, however, publicly banded together and came out in force — supporting Mr Littleproud's shock announcement. Ley, who had been given a 30-minute heads-up by the Nationals leader, told reporters that afternoon that the sticking point was the Nationals desire for their shadow cabinet ministers to be able to speak out freely against Coalition policy. But Nationals MPs and senators have disputed that, with one describing it as "total bullshit". Despite the unified front, there has been concern from some internally about the split. On Tuesday, a Nationals MP, who did not want to be named, said they thought the move had not been properly thought through by the party's leadership team. "I'm glad they're not running our army because in a war we'd have no ammunition," they said.
