Shire of Roebourne Local Planning Strategy

Shire of Roebourne Local Planning StrategyTechnical Report A1: Economic Development StrategyProspective employment (operations)Project: Skilled professional Skilled technical and semi-skilledBio-fuels Project 5 - 10 20 - 30Hi-Tech Greenhouse 5 - 10 20 - 30Aquaculture fish farm 4 10Fish processing factory 2 10 - 20Source: RDAOther projects will arise for consideration; for example a pilot high intensity horticulture facility in SouthAustralia using seawater desalinated on site shows promise and may represent a technology which couldbe utilised in the Shire at some stage in the future.Some or all of these, or variation of them have some prospects of implementation and will be importantfor the economic diversification of the Shire. However, it is important to retain a sense of scale for eachof these projects: even a very large project (e.g. the algae farm) in full production provides only a modestcontribution to employment growth. Assuming all employment multipliers are applied locally and withminimal FIFO employment the full scale algae farm or 200 workers might account for a populationincrease in the Shire of only around 500 people. A large number of these projects are therefore requiredto achieve significant economic diversification of the export driver sections of the economy away from itscurrent resources base and to significantly increase the population to the levels anticipated in the PilbaraCities program.Direct and Indirect EffectsExpenditure or local employment leads to further activity in the economy. The extent to which extraactivity circulates and stays in the economy depends upon a number of factors including fly-in fly-out andthe size and capacity of the local economy. The following employment multipliers have been calculatedby Compelling Economics and are specific for the Pilbara. The multipliers include the industrial andconsumption effect of direct employment in the Pilbara Regional Economy.54