By the way the independents carry on, it is easy to get the impression that things are really bad in the bush – high unemployment, low incomes, widespread despair, etc. According to Bob Katter, there are four suicides per week among farmers, while never quoting the suicide rates in the cities or among small business owners whose businesses fail.
The reality is quite different; many areas away from the capital cities have been booming – for a variety of reasons. Moreover, now the drought has broken in many parts and there are high prices for many agricultural days, the description ‘salad days’ springs to mind (laugh now).
Many years ago, I undertook a study at the Productivity Commission looking at the impact of National Competition Policy on Rural and Regional Australia. The “bush”, it seemed, were very unhappy about aspects of NCP, including the dismantling of various forms of regulation affecting agricultural products – dairy, sugar, wheat marketing, etc.
What we found at that time was that the attribution between what was happening in the bush and the various initiatives under the NCP was at best flimsy, and that there were always winners and losers. For example, dairy farming in parts of Victoria, with its natural advantages, did very well out of deregulation.
It was certainly true that the smaller towns were shrinking, with the larger ‘sponge’ cities growing instead. Think Horsham, Sale, Wagga Wagga, Tamworth, Bathurst, Port Macquarie all growing strongly, but at least partly at the expense of smaller hamlets that no one outside the districts can name. We would need to ban the car if we want these smaller towns to cease shrinking.
Sea-changers and, more latterly, tree-changers have contributed to the vigour of the bush, as cashed-up city folk seek alternative lifestyles – yes, all those advantages of living in a country town as opposed to a big city.
If we look at objective indicators such as unemployment and net incomes (housing costs are much lower in general in rural and regional Australia), there is not as much in it between the city and bush in contrast with what many seem to think. And of course, there is no direct accounting of the favourable social amenity of rural life compared with battling congested freeways, packed trams, potential social isolation, etc. that big city life can entail.
Taking recent unemployment figures, for instance, the differences are insignfiicant. The unemployment rate in Sydney 6.4 %, rest of New South Wales 6.3 %; Melbourne 5.9 %, rest of Victoria 5.8 %; Brisbane 5.2 %, rest of Queensland 5.6 %; Adelaide 5.4 %, rest of South Australia 4.3 %.
The real point is that there are always trade-offs in life – the benefits of life in the bush are offset by some costs, but surely no one can expect a public hospital on every corner. It is important that government subvention in the bush does not distort this trade-off to the point that citizens in the city subsidise their country cousins for their choice of lifestyle or vice-versa.