Terry Rawnsley, Principal and Partner, spoke at the Building Regional Australia Summit at Nambucca Heads last week. His presentation titled Infrastructure. Is it just a sugar hit? focused on ad hoc infrastructure investments made without coordination. He called for a National Economic & Population Plan which would guide development in Regional Australia:
- Acknowledge that not all centres need to grow and provide appropriate strategies for declining centres.
- Use fast transport to link together major centres within two hours of capital cities to create a European style settlement pattern.
- Each major centre should provide a hub for their hinterlands, which would focus on health, education, government and cultural services.
- Centres outside of this radius would need to focus on existing strengths (Lifestyle, Mining, Specialised Manufacturing, Agriculture, Tourism).
