Australia needs to seriously consider lower tax rates for workers living in regional areas as a realistic strategy to ease chronic inland labour shortages, says the head of prominent farm sector property group, AAM Investment.
Garry Edwards said a tiered rate, which effectively adjusted workers' tax costs to recognise extra living expenses and other inconveniences associated with communities located hundreds, or thousands of kilometres from metropolitan services, would help promote a more balanced and sustainable population spread.
He said macro-scale initiatives were needed to encourage more efficient use of the infrastructure and employment resources already available in country areas, including water supplies, transport, education and social facilities.
That, in turn, would be an added justification for greater infrastructure investment where bottlenecks currently restrained our export supply chain efficiency in the bush.
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Mr Edwards, the agribusiness investment group's managing director and founder, told a NSW Farm Writers Association forum on supply chain chain resilience regional Australia produced two thirds of Australia's exports.
Yet the nation was unreasonably dependent on transitional labour to do the job, including temporary overseas arrivals and armies of fly-in-fly-out workers.
Governments could instead foster more permanent employment and socially cohesive strategies which kept families and wages in rural areas and enhanced the vibrancy of regional life.
"This is not an issue for one or two states - the problems in Far North Queensland or Western Australia are the same in regional Victoria," he said.
"If we create the incentive, I feel people will naturally migrate to regional areas to live."
FIFO dysfunction
In fact, many already earnt good money in regional jobs, but spent much of their lives separated from family living in temporary accommodation camps in between FIFO commutes back home.
Regional Australia could offer them much more than a FIFO camp and they could contribute much needed population numbers, diversity, social interaction and investment in local economies.
AAM's $900 million investment portfolio around Australia includes 27 rural property operations spanning the beef, lamb, wool, grain crop, poultry, and timber sectors stretching from Kununurra in the Top End to Queensland, NSW and South Australia.
Speaking from personal experience, Mr Edwards said persistent labour shortages were actually forcing employers to seek out labour saving technology solutions to fill the gaps.
This, in turn, often only entrenched the population problem.
"We are investing in some technical options and looking for technology solutions to productivity concerns because I just don't think the workforce is there for us. We can't keep waiting," he said.
Shortages were across all industries, from truck drivers to shearers and harvest workers, with the dearth of part time staff frequently a major stress on business capabilities in the bush.
Mr Edwards, also deputy chairman of beef industry body, Cattle Australia, noted WA alone had up to 55,000 jobs available to backpackers and other casuals, but only about 5000 backpackers available last year.
A two- or three-tiered tax friendly scale for workers, based on a region's level of remoteness, could alleviate the problem.
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
