Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Regional policy
interrelated causes. 22 First, the neoliberal reforms’ contribution to regional socioeconomic
disadvantage was becoming apparent, and second, the government was
forced to consider the adverse implications of their reforms on the 1993 federal
election. 23 Government was increasingly challenged by regional voter dissatisfaction
as services and infrastructure were rationalised or withdrawn and local
capacity in the regions was compromised.
The Hawke and Keating governments prepared numerous regional development
reports between 1990 and 1993, emphasising bottom-up, local entrepreneurship
but with limited funding support. The Kelty Report (Developing Australia:
a regional perspective) on regional economic development 24 was launched in
December 1993 by the federal government, with high hopes that employment
difficulties and low incomes being experienced in many regional communities
would be addressed. The report proposed the establishment of Regional Economic
Development Organisations (REDOs) (later Regional Development Organisations
[RDOs] and Area Consultative Committees [ACCs]) across Australia to develop
individual regional strategies, promote regional development and improve policy
co-ordination between federal, state and local governments, a strategy that was
subsequently taken up in the federal government’s Working Nation program in
1994.
Working Nation was a departure from previous approaches as it viewed
‘government as facilitator, rather than the driving force’, 25 but the overarching
message was still self-reliance. Australia’s geography, its spatial imbalances and
the high concentration of its populations on the coastal fringes raised particular
problems for government. In the absence of a coherent national policy for urban
and regional development, jointly implemented by federal and state governments,
there was limited manoeuvrability for the redress of regional inequality.
The agricultural sector was particularly hard hit by the transition from a
favoured, government-supported industry sector to one that was expected to
compete internationally without government subsidies or other protection.
Economies of scale, technological primacy and increased harnessing of scientific
and economic efficiencies demanded capital investment, and inevitably caused
the failure of inefficient operations. These changes, over a relatively short period
of time, accelerated a process of decline in parts of regional Australia that had
historically been economically and socially dependent on agricultural production.
22 Tonts and Haslam McKenzie 2005, 187.
23 Tonts and Haslam McKenzie 2005.
24 Taskforce on Regional Development 1993.
25 Kelly, Dollery and Grant 2009, 181.
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