If you are wondering what the current drive for the Riverina Intermodal Freight and Logistics Hub is all about and what it has in common with a widely different venture like Wagga's Stone The Crows Festival, let's go back to an edition of this column on July 13, 2012.
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It principally was about congratulating the proposers, Grant Luhrs, Jim Haynes and their supporters, on the bold project they planned to bring Grey Nomads from around Australia to Wagga each Easter for a five-day festival.
The fourth festival has just been held and apart from the enormous injection the hundreds of people who attend these festivals have made already to the local economy, it exemplifies the important but vastly under-played strategic and location factor Wagga has; its centrality to South Australia, Victoria, NSW and the ACT.
It is why former MP Kay Hull this week said the hub was crucial and "absolutely essential" to the city's future; why Councillor Julian McLaren said it was (potentially) "the single biggest driver of economic growth for the next 30 years".
Crucially, as Cr McLaren explained, the freight hub could double the GDP of Wagga (and spin-off to the rest of southern NSW) each year for the next 20 years and beyond.
As he correctly points out, the 21st century method of transporting freight is rail and the proposed hub is “something Wagga and the Riverina needs”.
Further, the 2012 column reflected on the comments made by the then Federal Government's Minister for Regional Development, Simon Crean, (who was responsible for committing financial support to the Wagga hub) that future development in the nation would be about all three levels of government committing to ensure things like the freight hub were built in regional areas.
It's a no-brainer, really. In addition, with a PM like Malcolm Turnbull finally showing some dinkum enthusiasm for a Very Fast Train project from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Wagga, and not to forget the development of the internal freight rail link from Melbourne to Brisbane, it is essential the state government comes immediately to the party, as McLaren said, for the Wagga project.
Projects like freight hubs and railway developments in regional Australia, even international freight airports like the one developed privately at Toowoomba, are not just about ensuring regional development, but where else in the nation can (in the short-term future) we offer affordable population development and economic growth?
This is where the nation's food production bowls will develop.
Which brings me again to the subject of water to regional inland Australia and the Murray-Darling Basin, in particular. One of Turnbull's positives was to combine the water and agricultural portfolios under one minister, a plan the new Assistant Minister for the combined portfolio, SA Senator Anne Ruston (Liberal) said is supported by river communities and irrigators.
Ruston is a breath of fresh air. “My view has always been, and it will continue to be, the best thing that government can do for the agricultural sector is get out of its way”.
This is why the NSW Government must stop procrastinating on the Wagga freight hub. Stump up the money now, Mr Baird, and stop those phoney projects like moving the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta and the costly replacement of the Entertainment Centre in Sydney.
Regional Australia is Australia's future, not Western Sydney.