The good life. What it means and how it looks varies considerably depending on who you talk to. In the BBC’s 1970s sitcom, The Good Life, self-sufficiency was key for Tom and Barbara Good, with vegetable growing and livestock rearing favoured. In the 1980s iconic Australian song, Home Among the Gumtrees, John Williamson longed for a place with a clothesline out the back and a verandah out the front. In 2024, the parameters have shifted significantly and for many people, the answer is often tied to being able to earn a livable income and get on a realistic path to home ownership.
There’s a common link amongst all those scenarios. Whether you’re after home grown produce, a balcony or just something affordable, regional Australia can deliver.
This month, the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) launched its Good Life Guide, This online tool allows regionally curious users to compare a selection of liveability metrics in Local Government Areas (LGAs) across Australia. Measures like median income, median home price and the distance to the nearest beach or national park.
One of the starkest comparisons the Guide’s data yields is the comparison in both median income and median home price between outer metropolitan suburbia and larger regional centres. Take Fairfield in Sydney, where the median income is almost $53,000 and the median home price is $1,000,000. In the city of Albury, the median income is a touch over $58,000 with a median home price of $525,000. This is not an isolated example. In Manningham, on the north-east outskirts of Melbourne the median home price is $1.3m, with a median income of around $61,000. In Ballarat, you’re looking at a median income of $60,000, and a median home price of $515,000. Do a deep dive into the figures and this situation is repeated across the country.
Numbers only tell part of the story though. Many of the residential subdivisions that now straddle Australia’s largest cities are eerily uniform. Copy and paste designs, big floorplans on small blocks, greenery often noticeably absent. This is where regional Australia comes to the fore, because it offers more. More space -- 900m2 blocks still exist! More time -no more 45-minute commutes! More financial freedom- because if you can earn a similar, if not better wage, and halve the amount you’re paying for a house, why wouldn’t you?!
Add in regional Australia’s easy access to nature, its evolving and maturing economies and its coveted sense of community and you can see why thousands upon thousands of people have voted with their feet in recent years and ditched the urban sprawl for life in the regions.
But housing, particularly in regional Australia, isn’t a straightforward issue. In fact, over the last 12 months throughout my many conversations with politicians, policy-makers and everyday people, it’s been one of the most discussed topics. Further, given this era of regionality is upon us and not looking likely to disappear anytime soon, it’s a conversation that must be had.
Many across regional Australia have been talking about housing and the need for more of it, for years. Research the RAI undertook in 2021 identified that regional house building had not been keeping pace with population growth for decades. In fact, when regional Australia’s population grew by an average of 76,500 people per annum in the decade to 2020, the number of homes approved for construction declined in five out of those 10 years.
We know this has been compounded by that increased movement to regional Australia in the last few years, and this is where it becomes complicated – because many places in regional Australia need more people. This year alone, there have been more than 70,000 jobs advertised online across the regions each month.
Federal, state and local governments have recognised this and are increasing housing supply across the country. Work on the National Housing Accord’s target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 is underway, but it concerns me greatly that there remains no mandate enforcing, a proportion of those properties to be located in the regions. Ideally, the RAI would like to see 40% of the Accord’s homes established in regional Australia, which is reflective of the percentage of the population that lives outside the bounds of our major metropolitan centres. This is an issue I continue to work with stakeholders on addressing.
However, in Australia, government is not wholly responsible for housing. Institutional investors, the corporate and property development sectors also have a role to play. For many years, the regions have been ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for developers as they’ve not had the market share, nor provided the profit margins they were seeking. That is changing.
At the National Regional Housing Summit, which the RAI co-hosted earlier this year, we heard countless stories of regional councils stepping into this space, simply because there was a desperate need and no commercial response. The Pyrenees Shire Council’s residential sub-division in regional Victoria has proven so successful, it’s embarking on a second development. It proves there is a market, ripe and ready, for those who look beyond the limits of the big cities.
The regions offer such a good life, and it is vitally important that continues. It is why governments, industry, business and community need to keep working together. A combination of collaboration, cooperation and creativity will ensure we can address these complex issues. And it’s that spirit of cohesive, concerted change that also drives our Regionalisation Ambition, which is aiming to deliver a more inclusive, more prosperous regional Australia. If you’re ready to stand with forward thinking organisations, to drive improving the quality of life in the regions, then we’d love to hear from you – let’s ensure the good life continues, together.
Liz Ritchie, RAI CEO.