For Troy Constance, the question Yass should ask is how do we create jobs for those kids in five or 10 years time, so they don’t have to go to Canberra or Sydney?
Mr Constance lives in Yass, having left his city job a couple of years ago to kick off his own consultancy, SproutAg.
His business has grown from humble beginnings in the Yass Library, to now employ staff from Albury to Longreach,
But how does a town like Yass attract more businesses?
Mr Constance believes rural communities need to look at how they support new businesses.
“I think where I’ve seen it work really well is having an amazing advocacy group... one example I’ve seen is the TSBE (the Toowoomba-Surat Business Enterprise),” he said.
This group has KPIs such as how many businesses it attracts to town for the year, how many clicks from international businesses wanting to start up, or how many events does it attract?
“Oh, you want to run an event? We’ve got a sub committee that helps us do that; So you need an office for the day? We’ve got facilities here to run that,” are the types of conversations this sort of community is having with new businesses, he said.
“So there are some of the small things that I think I’ve noticed, previously, that really help when you’re looking to make an investment in a regional area,” he said.
Regional Australia Institute’s chief executive officer, Jack Archer, said these opportunities weren’t just about waiting for those people to come to town.
“It’s about working out where your growth opportunities are happening, what types of business make sense to be here, and actively going out and getting them,” he said.
“An example I’ve seen that’s worked really well in NSW, in the Nambucca Heads/Macksville area, was a quite successful light manufacturing hub.
“A bloke there’s worked out his market for businesses is people in Sydney who are in their late 40s/early 50s, own their factory, have established businesses and wanting to retire.”
He said this type of “Joe Bloggs” could sell their factory in Sydney for $5 million, then he could set them up on industrial land in Macksville and the council helps make that all happen.
“They work with TAFE to get employees, and (Mackville has) done that in a way where they’ve got different light manufacturing businesses that are similar sometimes in skill needs, so you’re creating an employment base,” he said.
“And what that means is other businesses then find it much easier to come because they know there’s a workforce there and they know there are support businesses who already know about the kinds of things they want to do.”