This is a lightly edited transcript of a radio interview I did on Sunday 25 August 2024 with Peter Fegan, the weekend’s broadcaster on Brisbane Radio 4BC .
The title above is taken from the 4BC web site introducing the interview. Edits have been made only to make the transcript easier to read.
Following on from Newscorp’s “Bush Summit” in Townsville last week and Croydon Mayor Trevor Pickering’s criticism of the word “resilience,” Peter Fegan picked up on the Mayor’s remarks as an entree to a wide ranging discussion about the challenges regions face when most voters live in the major metropolitan areas.
Download the interview in podcast here
Peter Fegan Radio 4BC (PF)
We’ve been talking about the Bush this morning, and I’m going to keep the conversation going.
And in case you missed it through the week Canberra’s big hitters, including Queensland Premier Stephen Miles, met to outline the challenges faced by regional communities at the National Bush Summit in Townsville.
Understandably, youth crime and cost of living were among the major points of discussion.
However, one of the other issues highlighted was around resilience and the needs of rural communities. There are some who don’t want to be called resilient and for good reason.
Enter my next guess, Professor John Cole from USQ.
John is a renowned expert in the field of resilience, particularly within the context of regional and rural Australia.
His work has shed light on the unique challenges faced by communities in these areas, exploring how they adapt and thrive in the face of adversity.
So, what are the factors that are influencing resilience and why is this issue so complex?
Joining me on the line is Professor John Cole.
Professor, Good morning to you.
John Cole (JRC)
Good morning, Peter, nice to be with you.
PF
You don’t like the term resilient.
JRC
Well, funny enough, I don’t mind it. I think it’s a useful term, but I don’t like its misuse.
I think what Trevor Pickering, the mayor of Croydon, was saying earlier in the week was that resilience is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
And yet it’s become a ‘buzzword bingo’ word, a bit like sustainability.
It’s in every government brochure. It tends to be overused.
In the process we’ve lost sense of what it really means.
PF
Do you think that we here in the city rely too heavily on people in the Bush?
JRC
We don’t understand how much they contribute compared to what we do here in Southeast Queensland, for example, and I think that’s part of the problem.
When people in in the Bush, in remote and regional areas particularly, look at what’s preoccupying us here in the cities, they just wonder how do they get their voice heard?
And it goes back to what Greg Williamson, the mayor of Mackay, said the other day.
The regions are almost a victim of democracy.
It is a little bit like Robbie Katter was talking to you about earlier this morning about how does a representative of remote communities get their voice heard when most of the parliamentarians come from the city?
I think something like 60 of the 151 members of the House of Representatives in Canberra come from just Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
PF
So, at this recent Bush Summit, was is it a case of the people in the city not really understanding the people in the Bush?
JRC
It’s not so much they don’t understand.
I think it’s out of sight, out of mind.
And this is the problem.
So long as we go on making the future of regional Australia the subject of one-off summits, the problems will remain.
I mean this is something that we should be engaged with every day of the week through ongoing media and political discussions, so that all Australians become more aware of how much of our national economy is actually generated in the regions.
Two thirds of our national exports come from regional Australia.
If I take Western Queensland as an example, there are 67,000 people out there spread across 24 rural and remote councils from the Gulf to St George.
They generate something like three times as much GDP per capita than we do here in the south east of the state.
So yes there’s still an argument to be made that the regions carry the national economy.
PF
Croydon Shire Mayor Trevor Pickering said regional communities wanted to ditch the tag about being called resilient, because it means this for people in the city or Canberra.
It says we know it’s stuffed up by you guys but you’re tough and you’ll cope with it anyway.
I disagree. I think for the most part, people here in the city believe that people in the country are resilient because they simply are tougher than us.
They get down to the brass tacks, get stuck in, and have a crack.
Yeah, they’re good, honest, hardworking people. I think that’s what most of us here in the city feel about people in the country.
I don’t think it’s that you’ve stuffed it up.
JRC
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think city people see country people as stoic, that they can handle adversity.
But as Trevor made the point, that doesn’t pay the bills, that doesn’t build the bridge.
And I think Robbie Katter mentioned that earlier.
When you have a community isolated [regularly because their bridge to the outside world gets flooded in the Wet season, Government has to focus on] the key infrastructure needed to help the community – and it is obviously the bridge.
Calling them resilient doesn’t make it make it any better.
And I think that’s the thing.
Resilience is a strategy, and I’d argue that it’s still a good word to use when you’re talking about innovation, the capacity to diversify your economy, do new things, attract new people. All of that.
But you know, bring it back to the brass tacks which remains the state of our roads and the scarcity of housing
We talk about the housing shortage here in the cities. It’s even worse in the regions.
PF
Yeah, I find it so difficult. I find this divide so difficult to understand.
And if you think about people that represent the Bush, at the moment we have the leader of the National Party, David Littleproud who is a proud bushy.
There is Barnaby be Joyce, who is a proud bushy. There are good solid National Party candidates in a lot of Queensland.
You’ve got people like Lawrence Springborg who is the President of the LNP. He’s in Goondiwindi.
So, for me, it’s difficult to understand how come governments can’t listen when you’ve got really good representatives in all these little towns.
JRC
But you must put that task into the context [of the size of regional electorates and their numbers in Parliament.]
Just take North Queensland, for example, an area the size of Western Europe, north of Rockhampton.
Now, there’s 151 members of the House of Representatives, but we’ve just got five federal seats in the whole of the top half of our state.
If you extend it right across northern Australia, it goes up to just 8 Federal seats.
So we’re talking about a massive land mass bigger than countries.
Pollies like Lachlan Millar, Robbie Katter and Cynthia Lui between them in the Queensland Parliament represent an area bigger than Victoria and Tasmania together, bigger than NSW, bigger than France and Germany together.
So how can three people with the limited resources we give them provide adequate representation across an area that size. That’s the question.
I think that goes to the heart of whether we’ve got the size of our states right.
We seem to be resorting to things like special Commissioners in lieu of the fact that maybe we need more representatives.
PF
Yeah. I think Senator Matt Canavan would agree. He says that in Canberra people are out of touch with regional communities and what’s needed is better political representation.
So what do you suggest?
I know that we’ve got a Minister for Agriculture…. are we thinking that maybe we need a minister for rural towns or maybe three or four ministers that represent sections like North Queensland or sections like Western Queensland in those areas.
JRC
Peter, interestingly that’s something that State and Federal levels could learn from local government.
When you look at the Western Alliance of Councils and the Remote Area Planning and Development Board (RAPAD), which is the seven councils around central western Queensland, you see that local government learned long ago with its limited resources it has to collaborate.
And yet we don’t see the same thing at the state and federal levels.
We don’t see the level of integration and collaboration we need between government departments, between ministers – taking accountability for these issues.
We won’t fix them by simply appointing Commissioners. That’s not going to solve the problem.
We’ve got to actually use the resources we have already and let’s do more with the private sector.
Let’s create the circumstances, the context to attract investment.
I heard you talk earlier in the morning about the stadium issue here in Southeast Queensland.
When you’re in western Queensland that stadium is about as far away from points of relevance as is Mars.
It’s not something that’s going to benefit people in Barcaldine or Croydon.
PF
That’s a good point.
JRC
In a state the size of Queensland, let’s mobilise our government resources for the things that really matter that can’t be done by the private sector.
And frankly, something like a stadium, well the private sector is happy to build it.
Let’s help them build it … [but those in Government would do better to] make sure that we are more effectively focusing public resources where they really matter [including in] the regional economies that do so much for the national benefit.
PF
Joining me on the line is Professor John Cole from USQ. John is a renowned expert in the field of resilience, particularly within the context of regional and rural Australia.
I want to pose a hypothetical to you professor, if I can.
I worked in the mining industry for many years before I was a broadcaster.
What I noticed about the mining industry at little mining towns was that companies – like Xstrata or Glencore, as it’s known now, Peabody, Rio Tinto – had a responsibility to be able to provide for each town, particularly in, let’s say, a town like Glendon, for instance, which now is going to be moved and shut down. So, Glencore has a responsibility to look after people.
I’ll pose this question to you. What responsibility should be placed on Woolworths, on Coles, on IGA, who use rural towns for their profit, who drive their big trucks through town for their profit, what responsibility do these big companies have to help rural towns?
JRC
Well, you’re talking about going back to the days when Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson and Sir Leo Hielscher provided the development [policy] for much of regional Queensland through the mining industry.
Of course, in those days a mining company didn’t get the go ahead from government unless they provided the town to go with the mine as well as the essential facilities like roads and railways.
Government has the capacity and the power through legislation to require the private sector to put in place the essential facilities that are needed to make these places viable and amenable.
Moranbah wouldn’t have existed without that kind of policy.
PF
But it’s a fair question though, isn’t it? I mean, what responsibility does McDonald’s have to help fix up cattle roads? They’re running trucks there to get beef. Why can’t they chip in?
JRC
Well, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know how you how you would condition it at the level of the McDonalds in Roma, for example.
But it goes back to this connectivity you’ve talked about at the beginning between [city and country]. We are dependent on each other.
And so together we have to do things together for the common benefit and that requires better understanding in the cities of the value of these investments in regional communities.
Because at the moment we have a competition for resources between the cities and the bush and understandably so because four in five Queenslanders live in SEQ.
It’s as [Mackay’s] Mayor Greg Williamson has said, the democratic outcome will always be that the cities will elect most of the parliamentarians.
So as communities we have to better understand what the other contributes.
And it shouldn’t be, as you say, a divisive issue.
It needs to be something that brings us together. But to do that, we need better understanding and communication.
And we’ve got to take the sensationalism out of it.
Too much media focus on the on the rural economy is around things like the droughts and disaster.
The most innovative adaptive segment of the Australian economy are our farmers. They are world class and they beat other elements in the economy hands down.
When you look at productivity, when you look at the take up of new technology, our farmers are world leading.
And yet when you think about the narrative we get, it’s often negative about struggling farmers.
We do need to spend more time focusing on the things that really could bring us together and those things would be a fairer distribution of our national resources when it comes to things like roads.
I mean at the summit in Townsville the other day, the #1 issue was the Bruce Highway – I mean a goat track from here to Cairns.
PF
It’s exactly that. It’s a goat track
JRC
Our politicians fly over it. We’ve got too much ‘fly in, fly out’ government in Australia and you know if the the pollies had to drive those roads, they’d be fixed a lot quicker I can tell you.
PF
Yeah, 100%. Trust me, professor. I’ve been advocating here for some time on getting the Bruce Highway fixed.
It seems that every election you get some politician standing on the side of the road with an Akubra getting a pic opp.
Then they jump in their car, drive to an airport, fly somewhere else.
They don’t realise that the Bruce Highway connects one end of this state to the other.
It is the lifeblood of this state. It keeps people connected and yet we don’t do anything about it.
But then I read yesterday that Anthony Albanese is putting states on notice, saying well, hey, if you want big transport hubs like in Sydney with the underground rail and in Melbourne, you got to have a good case study.
Doesn’t Queensland have a good case study with just the deaths on the Bruce Highway?
JRC
Sure, and even more because of the decentralised nature of our state [where] 800,000 people live north of north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
There’s no other state in Australia that has such a decentralised population.
But we don’t have what Tasmania has in 12 senators and five members of the House of Representatives.
PF
Yeah, that’s crazy.
JRC
Well, the thing is they have statehood that gives [Tasmania] that political power.
Most people I talk to in the remote and regional parts of Australia recognise that they just simply don’t have the political power that comes with the numbers.
That’s why Tasmania is so successful as a region.
And when you think about what Northern Australia right across to WA does compared to Tasmania, [remember that half of the country] only has 5 senators.
PF
Professor, I’ve run out of time. I reckon you’d be a great bloke to have a beer with. We’d love to catch up with you in the future and talk about the Bush.
We love the Bush here at 4BC and we’re going to continue to fight for people in the regions.
JRC
Good idea, Peter. Thanks very much.
PF
We appreciate your time this morning. There he is, Professor John Cole O AM – made some great points.
Professor John Cole 