Seeing two groups set aside their differences and work together for the common good makes me happy. Hearing them talk sense about what’s needed for growth and prosperity in the region makes me even happier.
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There are going to be more than 1000 new jobs popping up in the next few years and we just don’t have the people to do them. Businesses are saying they’re struggling to get staff at the moment, let alone when the ‘positions vacant’ section blows out to three pages.
What’s needed to move forward is leadership. You don’t have to be a great visionary, just someone with an idea and the desire to see it done. If council and business leaders continue to work together like this then Griffith will continue to grow.
However, they seem to be up against an unstoppable force: bright city lights. They reckon about 85,000 people move to Sydney each year as opposed to the 15,000 going to the rest of the state. That’s a Griffith and a Wagga every year, stuck onto the outside of a giant pumpkin trying desperately not to collapse under its own weight.
We’re trying to get a new hospital built here but that number of people need hospitals and schools and roads and waste management as well as jobs and so on and so on. Every. Single. Year.
Meanwhile, places like Griffith, Tamworth, Wagga, Albury, Coffs Harbour could all absorb a few more people without any additional infrastructure. All you need is jobs. That’s the radical idea discussed on the front page, just provide jobs for the jobless. That’s a better slogan than either of the big two political parties have come up with.
Look, Griffith’s a harder sell than places like Coffs or Wagga because of the distance from Sydney, but it’s not impossible. My wife and I moved here two years ago and if someone had offered a tax cut and cheaper fuel and flights we’d have been here even sooner.
These are cheap and easy incentives both the state and federal governments could pull to get people out here. You’d fill the jobs with people spending money that would create jobs and so on. You’d get good-sized regional centres around nationally important industries like farming. Then they’d start to attract people on their own. The burden eased, Sydney could plan rather than react to scores of new people.
The only problem? That kind of bold move requires leadership.
-STEPHEN MUDD