According to the Australian Newsroom Mapping Project, there have been 200 contractions of news operations since March. But ‘news deserts’ were a growing problem long before coronavirus.
Small newspapers across Australia are closing or going digital-only in the economic fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic. This is what we need to do to save them.
Attraction and retention: the key issues to get more immigrants to settle in regional Australia.
Flickr/Toowoomba Region
Migrants who’ve settled in regional Australia find jobs, get on with the locals and feel safe. So the government wants to know how to encourage more migrants to move there.
Tongans gathered in the Sunraysia centre of Mildura to celebrate the Tongan team’s victory over Lebanon in the Rugby League World Cup in November 2017.
A greater focus on the well-established migrant populations and second-generation youth is crucial when planning for the social and economic well-being of rural and regional areas.
Newcastle, Australia’s second-biggest non-capital city. Research confirms just how important a local newspaper is to a local community.
Darren Pateman/AAP
In the early 20th century, voters in rural Australia began to organise politically for the first time – and proved crucial to the ousting of the reformist Labor government in 1913.
The Morrison government’s population plan looks to reduce the concentration of growth in the big cities and to raise the benefit-cost ratio of population change more broadly.
Andrew Taylor/AAP
Population growth has pros and cons, and the Morrison government’s plan is less about a change in immigration numbers than about increasing the benefits and minimising the costs.
Melbourne is a favourite destination for migrants from overseas and elsewhere in Australia.
TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock
Capital city populations are growing twice as fast as the rest of Australia, because of the employment and business opportunities and lifestyle on offer to both new migrants and long-term residents.
Mingoola resident Julia Harpham has led the way in welcoming African migrant families to revitalise the tiny NSW township.
Regennovate/YouTube
Encouraging migrants to move to regional areas could be a win-win’ scenario, as long as policymakers pay attention to five key factors.
While farmers are the familiar face of rural Australia, most jobs are not in agriculture or mining.
Dan Peled/AAP
After waiting eight months for the government response to a major report on regional Australia, the outcome has been underwhelming, sticking to the same old ideas.
Old mine sites suffer many fates, which range from simply being abandoned to being incorporated into towns or turned into an open-air museum in the case of Gwalia, Western Australia.
The industrial patterns of mining shaped many Australian towns, which found varied uses for disused mine sites. The mining boom ensures the challenges these sites present will be with us a long time.
Grey nomads are champions of a radical type of portable urbanism as they travel to far-flung places like Lake Ballard in Western Australia.
Image courtesy of Tourism Western Australia
Grey nomads travel Australia because they have the desire and the means to do so. Could future generations end up following in their footsteps because they can no longer work and stay in one place?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for a rethink of the ‘top-down’ approach to immigration in Australia, allowing states and territories more input.
Shutterstock
Efforts by governments to redirect population growth to regional Australia have never worked. Even if such policies could be made to work, they probably wouldn’t be worth the costs.
The TV drama SeaChange had a huge public impact, which made the town where it was filmed, Barwon Heads on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, a highly desirable destination.
Diana Plater/AAP
We read about and watch other people moving to the coast or country and, in doing so, sometimes we’re persuaded to join the seachangers and treechangers ourselves.
The essence of local newspapers is that they are a mirror of the small communities that produce them.
Author supplied
A new parliamentary report has taken an informed and sensible approach to developing regional Australia, without simply focusing on the contentious issue of decentralisation.
Federal and state government representatives descended on Geelong when a memorandum of understanding for the latest City Deal was signed on January 17.
Ellen Smith/AAP
With the emerging emphasis on regional City Deals and Smart Cities funding, perhaps Australia is beginning to find its way to a national cities policy, rather than just a big cities policy.