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On Tuesday 22 October join host independent economist Dr Kim Houghton to hear from the authors of some great new research into what’s attracting people to move to regional Australia, and if they will stay. Dr Akshay Vij will present research by UniSA for iMOVE CRC on “The future of Australian cities and regions in a post-pandemic world“. Dr Caitlin Buckle will present work by Sydney Uni on “Place-based drivers and effective management of population growth and change in regional Australia“.
What’s new:
Two research reports in the last year[1] have looked in depth at the drivers and prospects for the ‘regional renaissance’ reflected in an increase in the number of people moving from Australia’s capital cities to regions. Research shows that “A majority of Australians would prefer to live in a smaller regional city if they could find comparable employment” (Vij).
Who’s moving where?
The new research shows different preferences for different types of people (Vij). Retirees prefer to live in coastal regional cities and are modelled as being willing to pay roughly $1,600 more per month to live in a coastal regional city rather than an inland regional city. Individuals in the workforce with jobs that cannot be done remotely also prefer to live in a regional city, preferably large and coastal, if they can find a comparable job there. There is a more mixed picture for people with jobs that can be done remotely, as hybrid work tends to favour living in larger cities while fully remote work brings an increased likelihood of people moving to a regional city. One unexpected finding is the importance of the accessible urban lifestyle in a regional city – it is as important as the desire for a tree change lower pace of life for a proportion of regional relocators (Buckle).
Why are we moving?
The main drivers of regional relocations have emerged as work, housing (availability/affordability), cost of living and amenity (Vij and Buckle). Regions are still labour constrained, with persistent shortages of highly skilled professionals and trades (Regional Australia Institute and Jobs & Skills Australia). This has underpinned the ‘regional renaissance’, with skilled trades and professions in demand in most regional places, and still generally in shortage. Young people with these skills are critical in filling job vacancies, but they are also likely to move on to another regional area – creating a region-to-region ‘beggar thy neighbour’ problem. The availability of suitable housing is a critical determinant of where these sought-after people move to (RAI Building the Good Life).
Not all regional movers are looking for their ‘forever home’. The Buckle research found that in three case study regional cities, 44% of Broken Hill respondents stated that they were more likely than not to move away within the next five years, around 35% for Ballarat respondents and 30% cent for Port Macquarie respondents. The 18–29 age group is particularly mobile and 60-88% of respondents in this age group were likely to relocate away from one of these regional cities. The likelihood of moving was higher the shorter the period of residence in each regional city, and more of those thinking of moving on were looking at going to another regional place rather than to a capital city.
In-depth reviews in three selected case study regional cities showed that ‘lifestyle reasons’ were most often listed by people who had moved to Port Macquarie Hastings, ‘personal reasons’ for movers to Ballarat and ‘employment reasons’ for Broken Hill. Cheaper housing and lifestyle were increasingly important reasons for moving from capital cities to all case study areas within the last five years (Buckle).
Will it continue?
The findings show that regional house price increases and infrastructure/service constraints are already impacting on regional population growth patterns (Buckle). The research shows that over the longer term continued high regional population growth is expected to be small and limited to selected regional cities (Vij). Amongst Australia’s regional cities the research finds that the most important attractors of new residents are proximity to the coast and proximity to a major capital city. This means that the winners will be the large coastal regional cities near a capital city like Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Wollongong and Geelong. The picture the research portrays of smaller inland cities is very different, forecasting that they are likely to lose residents for the foreseeable future (Vij).
Regional places with preferred characteristics, like larger tourism sectors, more graduates in the workforce, increased airport services and close to the coast, are likely to keep being winners in the population attraction game. But growth is expected to slow if house prices converge and services don’t improve (Buckle).
Businesses are less likely to move to regions than people, and this will not help close the services gaps. But while there is a limited flow of city businesses to regions, those businesses already in the regions are much more likely to stay where they are. Regional businesses are in fact stickier than younger regional workers, many of whom move through from one regional place to another quite frequently (Vij).
We must get better at planning ahead
Both reports include more calls for better predictive and responsive planning, and for more coordination across public service providers to ensure that the growing pains being experienced in the high growth regional places don’t herald the end of the ‘regional renaissance’.
[1] Buckle, C., Werner, G., Marshall, N., Osbaldiston, N., Searle, G., Sarkar, S., Kundu, D., and Gurran, N. (2024) Place-based drivers and effective management of population growth and change in regional Australia, AHURI Final Report No. 425, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne, https://www.ahuri.edu.au/ research/final-reports/425, doi: 10.18408/ahuri7330301. [Drivers report]
Akshay Vij, A., Ardeshiri, A., Leishman, C., Beer, A., Goel, S., Han, HD., Horne, S., Hancock, R., Wise, S., and Washington, L. (2023) The future of Australian cities and regions in a post-pandemic world, iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre, Melbourne. [iMOVE report]
Kim Houghton 