The push to bring people out of the big cities and into the Riverina has gone national today, with the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) launching a government-backed campaign.
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To begin the RAI's 'Regions Rising' summit in Canberra on Wednesday, the organisation launched its 'Move to More' campaign aimed at raising awareness of the opportunities available in regional Australia.
Regional Development Australia (RDA) Riverina's Rachel Whiting said her organisation was part of an alliance working to promote regional Australia through programs like Riverina's 'Country Change,' which she would be addressing the summit on this week.
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She said the launch of the national campaign provided an opportunity to get the Riverina's success stories out to a wider audience.
"It just gives us more exposure ... one of the real positives about promoting the Riverina is we have two cities, we have lots of different towns and villages of all sizes, heaps of businesses needing people, so there's options, lots of options," she said.
"We need to let more people know about those options."
Ms Whiting said the campaign was about pushing back against the negativity that could be found in cities around moving regionally and dispel some of the myths about connectivity and access to jobs.
She said the Riverina did still have issues to address in terms of the availability of housing, and while the RDA was "keen to be involved in the conversation" about improving the housing shortage it was also important to push forward in attracting new residents.
"Our businesses need employees so much," she said.
"This is part of the solution and we're really happy to be an activator."
Wagga builder Wayne Carter said the building of new homes in the city was "probably twice as fast as it's ever been" at the moment off the back of government coronavirus stimulus grants.
He said the biggest issue slowing Wagga's growth down was the process of finding and rezoning more land to build on with limited land available at the moment.
"That's our stick in the mud at the moment, the demand's there but we can't satiate the demand because of the lack of available land," he said.
"There's so many spokes in the wheel of producing a block of land, it's not as easy as we'd hope it could be."
Mr Carter said because the industry had sped up so rapidly, the workforce was not increasing at the same rate, and if more land became available there was a possibility the local industry could struggle to keep up.
He said this meant those who moved to Wagga had plenty of job opportunities.
"It certainly presents itself as an opportunity for anybody that wants to get into the trade because of the amount of work available," he said.
Ms Whiting said the hope was more people moving to the region would drive infrastructure developments.
"Everyone needs to be saying the right thing before the government tends to make that investment," she said.
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