Regional Australia Institute gets tough

The RAI was established with seed funding out of the $10 billion deal for regional Australia struck by independent federal MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to form government with Labor in 2010, in the hung parliament.

RAI Chair Mal Peters has positioned the organisation to be an independent think-tank to fill knowledge gaps that can assist policy-makers and to evolve over time towards financial autonomy, in a model similar to the Australian Farm Institute.

But the regional policy think-tank has struggled to carve out a clear niche in backing the concerns of its rural constituents, despite publishing several important research reports and developing a useful regional competitiveness index.

Mr Archer replaced inaugural RAI chief executive officer Su McCluskey last July but with its $8 million seed funding almost evaporated, his group wants to up the ante in strategic political debate and commentary, to defend and attack regional issues.

Mr Archer said it was about time his organisation stepped up and delivered genuine impact for regional advocacy - with the alternative outcome being a sharp descent into extinction and irrelevance.

“We need a stronger debate about the future of what’s happening in the bush,” he said.

“It’s a critical period with economies turning back to the cities, even though there are strong opportunities in agriculture.

“It’s important we get the next bit right.

“We’ve got a choice between good growth in cities, stabilising and growing the situation in rural areas and getting those communities back on track, or just this continual slow decline that everyone’s had for so long.

“We’ve got a chance to turn that around but if we keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing for the last 20 to 30 years it won’t happen.”

Mr Archer said the RAI was extremely passionate about regional Australia’s future and understood the solution was about embracing opportunities rather than just “whinging about the down sides”.

“It’s time for us to step up and have an impact on public debate and apply all of the work that we’ve done over the past four years, putting the substance behind what we say,” he said.

“I really want to start a different conversation about what’s happening in the bush and lift the conversation up to the next level, about what the future looks like.

“We need to tell it how we see it.

“We want to be that frank and independent voice for the bush.”

The RAI’s change of attitude to become more outspoken and hawkish is due to its gradual maturing, Mr Archer said.

He said the concept of a regional policy think-tank was unfamiliar to stakeholders at the start.

He said the RAI didn’t have a long digestion period and came about quickly but after spending four years capacity-building and gathering policy evidence which previously didn’t exist, it was now time to take the next step.

“When we talked to people about what the organisation can do to make a difference we didn’t get a clear answer but now we have one,” he said.

Mr Archer said agriculture was “crucial” to the RAI’s agenda especially communities that depend on farming for economic and social prosperity and employment.

He said projects the Institute plans to focus on in the new parliament include leadership capacity building and being proactive to help regional businesses getting “up on their toes”.

“We need smart businesses and people in the regions being successful and growing and if that happens a lot of other things will come into line,” he said.

In terms of digital connectivity, Mr Archer said the government’s pending decision on its universal service obligation policy would be one of the biggest made for the country, in the past 10-20 years, to see if they got it right and improved the standard of regional communications, or a “story of neglect” would continue.

He said the not-for-profit Institute’s seed funding was “pretty much exhausted now” but it had other financial support from businesses like Bendigo Bank and NBN Co and some state governments with more needed, to survive and prosper.

Mr Archer said regional Australia had two options governing its survival.

He said in other countries like the US people were disaffected and “pissed-off” with politics and casting “angry votes” which was also the case at the recent federal election where One Nation had success.

Mr Archer said regional Australia could go down that pathway of the public voting for chaos and being annoyed or it could pull together, work harder and ask what the future looked like.

“I think we’ve got all of the evidence we need to look at these issues but the public discussion around how many more people we could have living in the regions and how much more vibrant it could be is not really there,” he said.

“We want to put that on the radar and lift the quality of debate and hopefully see better policies coming through at the national level and also have leaders in the bush feeling more confident about what they can do, to make a difference.”