The big cities are still magnets for tourists, but often they find the smaller towns offer a more satisfying taste of local life. It’s why rural tourism can be ‘the perfect small town business idea’.
It’s not the first time Australia has grappled with concerns about affordable housing. History offers insights that can help inform contemporary debates and policies.
The Elvis Express travels from Sydney to Parkes for a festival, now in its 25th year, that has transformed the town.
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Outside the capital cities and the coastal fringes, the towns and people of rural and regional Australia have had to be inventive to get through the tough times.
A lack of differences in major policy areas such as agriculture and trade means local project funding – for roads, boat ramps and the like – reinforces the adage ‘all politics is local’.
AAP/Alan Porritt
On the big national policies affecting non-metropolitan Australia, such as agriculture and trade, the major party differences are minor. That’s why the election focus turns to local projects.
While politicians like Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce do the traditional photo-ops, fewer people than ever are taking on farming, which can no longer support vibrant rural and regional communities on its own.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
What are the issues facing rural and regional Australia? The challenges are many and varied – and only some have made the national political agenda – but these areas deserve better than neglect.
Farming land in New South Wales.
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Growing population, growing demand for food, climate change: Australia’s rural lands are facing a number of pressures. So how can we sustainably use them in the future?
Current policies aren’t working – it’s time to open the door to other suggestions.
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Current incentives used to recruit more teachers to work in rural and regional schools aren’t working. But could the health sector offer up some possible solutions?
Rural internet users are about to have two satellites launched as part of the nbn.
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Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull reiterated the importance of the National Broadband Network (NBN) for regional and rural Australia in an address to the NBN Rebooted conference in Sydney last week…
There is a higher density of gun ownership in country areas in Australia relative to cities. Does this explain recent homicides on farms?
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The recent multiple homicide in a small Victorian township, coming barely a month after a mass shooting in rural New South Wales, may give the impression that firearm-related murders in rural Australia…