The recent plight of textile workers in the Hunter Valley, and extensive publicity resulting from the Prime Minister’s embroilment in the matter, raise many more issues than have so far captured most media attention. To date, coverage has focused on the immediate needs of the Hunter Valley workers in terms of their redundancy pay outs and other entitlements; the fact that the PM ended up in what has been described as ‘a no win situation’; and why these workers are to be assisted while others continue to be denied. Little has been said about the longer term problem, that is, these workers are now unemployed and may have no other option but to move out of the area to find another job.
Numerous communities across the nation have faced this same dilemma, where the multiplier factor resulting from mass job losses has impacted adversely on the whole local economy. Queensland’s Murgon Shire, with the recent closure of its meat works, is a prime example.
Many areas that have traditionally relied on one or two major employers have taken action to encourage greater diversity in local economic activity. In this way they hope to create a buffer should their key industries suffer any set back. Armidale Dumaresq Council featured in the supplement in this edition has done just that.
In a rapidly changing global economy, all Councils and their communities face the potential of sudden job losses due to a range of factors, often quite remote and largely outside of their control.
It is not only workers in the private sector who are at risk but also those in the public sector who are subject to Government policy changes. In Victoria, the push by the former Kennett Government for ‘greater efficiencies’ saw the downsizing or closure of a range of public sector services throughout the State. The effect of this service loss, followed by the multiplier impact on other sectors in the local economy, last year manifested itself through the ballot box, with people rejecting the former Government.
Until this electoral backlash, Victoria was generally viewed as the groundbreaker in the ‘efficiency drive’. Other Governments, and not least the Federal Government, could not, and have not, failed to take note of this sudden, and somewhat unexpected, demise. Together with the pronouncement late last year by Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, of ‘two Australias’, greater attention has finally turned to the plight of large sections of regional and rural Australia.
For a number of years individual Councils, their State Associations and the Australian Local Government Association have been pressing State and Federal Governments to take action to stop the closure of services; wherever possible to try to avert job losses; and address the issue of population drift to the major cities.
Our regions desperately need more people to stimulate growth and activity. The increasing inequity between the well to do, predominantly inner urban or resource rich regions, and the situation in the rest of Australia, demands urgent action involving all spheres of government.
