Communities across the New England Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) are being asked to host what Armidale ecologist David Carr describes as the largest infrastructure investment in regional Australia’s history. The question many are asking is whether the region will be better off when it’s finished.
For regional communities like Uralla, the challenges are real: local road impacts, workforce housing, water security, waste management and loss of precious remnant vegetation.
The NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into renewable energy zones recently recognised many of these concerns, calling for a more coordinated approach to planning, infrastructure, services and cumulative impacts. Communities consistently say the energy transition should happen with them, not to them, but the ground reality doesn’t always reflect that (as the findings acknowledge).
David, the founder of Stringybark Ecological, is clear about what he wants from the REZ: “When the REZ is finished, we want biodiversity to be better off, not worse.”
And he believes it’s not just possible, but critical: “Nearly all the vegetation in Uralla Shire, particularly in the central and eastern parts, is gone or degraded. What’s left are threatened ecological communities: Box-Gum Grassy Woodlands, Ribbon Gum forest, and New England Peppermint communities,” says David.
Local rivers and streams are home to endangered turtles and other reptiles. Critically endangered Regent Honeyeaters visit the western part of Uralla Shire and Koalas are found across the region.
“Pretty much everything we’ve got left now is significant.”
Mount Yarrowyck, Credit: Uralla Shire Council
Giving nature a voice
When the REZ was announced, David could see it could come at the cost of precious remnant vegetation, but he also knew climate change posed a greater threat, and renewables are one of our greatest weapons to tackle it.
“I decided to try and walk this fine line: being a strong supporter of renewable energy projects but wanting to see them done in the proper way, in the right place, and minimising their impact where possible.”
To put that principle into practice, David joined forces with Community Power Agency to establish a Biodiversity Reference Group. The initiative provides an independent voice for nature around renewable energy developments – particularly EnergyCo’s transmission lines – fostering constructive engagement and positive local outcomes, including their joint publication, Building Better Biodiversity on Solar Farms Guide.
Good renewables development
For David, good renewable energy development means taking the time to engage with regional communities to identify high conservation-value sites and avoid them. This includes threatened species habitat and corridors.
Where impacts are genuinely unavoidable, the focus shifts to robust, strategic offsetting.
“We’re pushing for no net loss of biodiverse areas, so when they clear 1,000 hectares for renewable energy projects, somewhere nearby has at least 1,000 hectares of high-quality revegetation established,” says David.
“In 20 years, I would like to see all impacted areas offset with equivalent areas of revegetation throughout the region. That can be done strategically: improving connectivity between existing remnants, buffering smaller patches, enhancing ecosystem services on farms through shelterbelts, and improving riparian filter zones.”
David says there’s also an opportunity to protect and improve the most significant sites through direct investment linked to offsetting. Where possible, he says it’s preferable to co-locate renewables with agriculture, as you can farm under solar panels, along transmission lines and around wind turbines.
David encourages developers to be proactive: “It’s about bothering to spend the time to do this preliminary background work that is really important. Don’t just do the minimum consultation you can get away with; don’t do the bare-minimum environmental box-ticking exercise; work out what’s important and protect it.”
He says misinformation is a challenge, but good community engagement, including real listening by trusted organisations and individuals, can help cut through.
What Councils can do
Mount Yarrowyck, Credit: Michelle Savill
While they don’t have veto powers, Councils can play a particularly important role, says David.
He says Uralla and Armidale councils “have used their platforms to represent their communities constructively”.
“They haven’t just thrown up barricades; they’ve engaged with the real challenges – local road impacts, workforce housing, water security, and waste management.”
He says the University of New England has also stepped up, providing analysis on local issues.
David was one of more than 150 local community members and stakeholders who contributed to Uralla Shire Council’s Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan, which The Next Economy supported to bring together.
He says a clear blueprint is essential: “Without a plan, you are purely reactive.” Now, “when a developer arrives, Council can clearly articulate community expectations and co-investment requirements from the outset.”
Find out more about Uralla’s Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan:
As the small community of Uralla prepares for once-in-a-generation investment through the New England Renewable Energy Zone, local landholders are at the centre of conversations about what ‘good’ renewable energy development looks like.
For sixth-generation farmer Hugh Sutherland, the energy transition is not an abstract policy debate or an issue dominating his newsfeed.
It is unfolding on his family’s land, where a proposed 320 MW solar farm, capable of generating enough electricity each year to power more than 100,000 homes, could sit alongside new transmission infrastructure. All while generating additional income for his family.
Hugh’s experience reflects many of the priorities identified through Uralla Shire Council’s Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan (RESAP): protecting productive farmland, ensuring communities have a genuine voice in decision-making, and making sure the benefits of renewable energy are shared fairly across the region.
We spoke with Hugh for an honest take about what renewable energy development means for his family, his farm business and the future of the Uralla community.
Can you tell us about your connection to Uralla Shire and your role in the community?
I’m a sixth-generation farmer. My family has been here since the 1830s, and my wife Cathie and I raised four kids here. We run a mixed livestock enterprise on 3,400 acres with our son Charlie.
Can you tell me more about the developments planned for your place and how they came about?
The energy developers were persistent, so we sat down for a chat. Initially, a couple of developers’ ideas did not fit our long-term goals, but after four years of negotiation we signed up for solar. We chose solar over wind because solar can be more easily tucked away where we won’t see it.
After the drought in 2019, we signed a formal agreement to lease about 1,600 acres in total for solar development across two parcels of land.
We have also now started the land acquisition process with EnergyCo for the transmission infrastructure. This will be for the backbone transmission line linking the New England REZ to the existing network, as well as for sharing the hosting of a substation.
How will this benefit your farming business and productivity in the short and long term?
It provides a diversified income. It is not completely guaranteed, but it is far more dependable than normal farm income. Following the 2019 drought, which saw us spend nearly $1 million over several years just feeding livestock, Cathie and I started thinking about slowing down. This diversified income gives us the opportunity to retain the entire farm asset. Without it, our succession planning might have required selling off part of the land.
Once it’s up and going, the farming operations that are not part of the solar farm will actually benefit. At the moment, the cash flow isn’t always there to do the things you want to do when you want to do them. This will add another layer of income certainty to the business. From an investment perspective, that will improve our overall productivity.
How will hosting these projects benefit the broader region, and how can Uralla secure an enduring legacy?
During construction, there are hundreds of workers requiring accommodation. Local businesses benefit: during previous builds for example, the local butcher benefitted from a large boost in demand and mobile coffee vans from local coffee shops went on-site for the workers. In a town of 2,800 people, a single project might bring in 400 construction workers. If you have two projects at once, the town is noticeably busier. Workers and their families rent accommodation, visit local shops, and use local trade services like electricians.
These are large projects requiring substantial funding, and our hope is that developments will leave lasting improvements behind. We’d like to see basic services addressed that are beyond the capacity of local government to deliver, especially around water, wastewater and housing
Also, having significant projects and workforces around Uralla provides further justification for an ambulance station or improved health services.
Add to that the community benefit funds and sponsorships for local sporting teams, and it provides a genuine boost across the community.
What is the support like locally for the renewable energy projects?
Locally in Uralla, most people are fairly ambivalent or quietly supportive. A lot of the vocal opposition is highly coordinated on social media which can make it appear larger than it is, whereas most locals take a pragmatic view.
Opposition picked up when changes were made to the transmission line route, which concerned farmers facing potential compulsory acquisition. Others worry about local road wear from heavy traffic and potholes.
Overall, the slower pace gave people time to learn and once neighbours see the actual project footprints on maps, much of the apprehension settles down. At a recent open day for a potential project, a neighbouring landholder came in to look at the map, asked where the boundary would be relative to his place, said “Good, no worries,” and went on his way. Overall, while there are valid risks that must be managed, the development presents a substantial positive opportunity for our region.
From your perspective, what does a good relationship with a renewable energy developer look like?
What this arrangement actually looks like will be different in every single case. When dealing with a number of farmers each will be at a different stage of life and their business objectives and priorities will also vary. For this reason, a development that encapsulates a number of neighbouring farms is more complicated.
When you look 10 to 15 years ahead, what does a strong, resilient economy look like for Uralla shire?
I hope it looks like a bigger version of its current self. Growth comes with risks, but the alternative is stagnating or going backwards. Managed well, Uralla can retain its close community feel while supporting a larger population.
People are already moving to Uralla because it is an appealing place to live. It has vibrant cafes and strong community spirit. In 10 to 15 years, good development would mean more essential services: a local ambulance station, additional doctors, thriving retail, and well-funded sporting clubs, rather than just population growth without supporting infrastructure. The critical factor will be how that growth is managed.
Any final words?
Renewable energy developments have brought attention back on regional communities. Historically, regional and rural communities haven’t received equitable per capita government funding compared to major metropolitan centres. The Renewable Energy Zone has put regional Australia back in focus, and hopefully the community can leverage that.
Uralla’s Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan
Two years of listening, testing and co-design have led to this: a practical plan for how NSW’s Uralla Shire can host large-scale renewable energy development on its own terms – protecting what the community values while sharing the benefits of the transition fairly.
Uralla’s RESAP was developed by Uralla Shire Council with the community with in-kind support from The Next Economy, as part of the national Striking a New Deal (SaND) collaboration.
This article was originally posted on The Point, an initiative of the Australia Institute.
For this installment of ‘Building the economy we could have’, our Economic Change lead Dr Katherine Trebeck explains the concept of ‘Failure Demand’ and how with the rising costs of climate change, loneliness, homelessness and poverty, we must instead redesign the economy for people and planet.
Every disaster season, Australia pays another bill for an economy that isn’t built to work for people, places or the planet. And the bill keeps growing.
This month, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) added another figure to the growing financial cost of pushing the planet beyond what she can handle. The ICA have been tallying up the costs of climate-related disasters for several years, and this year highlighted the growing cost of ‘rebuilding and repairing homes damaged by extreme weather [that’s also] diverting the materials, trades, and construction capacity needed to increase housing supply’.
Such spending is an example of the massive fiscal price tag associated with an economy that is not designed to serve people, place, or planet, but instead is wreaking damage on communities, ecosystems, and, as the ICA explain, infrastructure.
Splitting the bill
There are certain terms folks studying these patterns use to describe the price tag of what are largely Band-Aid solutions. Once you know them, you will see examples everywhere.
Defensive expenditure
The first, as the ICA’s statistics show, is ‘defensive expenditure’. This refers to the money spent repairing, rebuilding, and recovering after events such as extreme weather or other harm to the environment.
For example:
According to The McKell Institute, Commonwealth expenditure on disaster relief and recovery between 2005 and 2022 came to nearly $24 billion.
Australian governments spend over a hundred million dollars every year in efforts to recover threatened species (much less than what experts say is needed).
According to the Make Big Polluters Pay Alliance, climate disasters cost the wider economy $38 billion each year, equivalent to $3,800 per household on average.
Failure demand was first coined by John Seddon in the context of company call centres and councils, but it has much wider applicability when you think of all the government budget lines that exist because of poverty and inequality: debt, stress, illness, stigma, and so on. They all risk generating downstream demand on schools, courts, emergency departments, homeless shelters, food banks, and child protection. Here are some examples of that spending:
Because of childhood poverty, each year Australian governments spend at least $16 billion in the form of services like child protection, health services, costs in the legal system, homelessness services and education services, and since adults who experienced poverty as children are more likely to rely on support payments such as JobSeeker and Family Tax Benefit.
Consolation goods
Finally, there’s even a term that describes the spending undertaken by those of us fortunate enough to be able to treat ourselves after a heavy week or stressful day at work: consolation goods. These are peddled by advertisers, who tell us that retail therapy or a fancy spa week is an antidote to the rat race of modern life.
Economically inefficient
Today’s economic system is one that rewards those at the top and kicks too many environmental costs onto everyone else: a lot of things are artificially cheap because they don’t pay for much of the harm they cause. It’s an economy that treats people as ‘just in time inventory’ and assumes that producing more and more is the solution to all our problems. It creates divisions and ecological breakdown.
Governments are compelled to spend financial resources (often on inadequate responses), instead of addressing the root causes. In fact, while the human and ecological cost is all too clear, the potential benefit to government budgets in building an economy that serves people and planet underscores the economic inefficiency of today’s economic system, even in its own terms.
The extent of spending on defensive expenditure, failure demand and even consolation goods means that when people talk about the cost of changing our economic system – usually in a tone that implies it is too high and things should simply stay as they are – we can point to these numbers as the possibility of a substantial fiscal benefit of upstream economic change.
The point is, of course, to work upstream, creating an economy designed and delivered to meet the needs of people, place and planet, the first time around. The point is to attend to the social determinants of health such as income security, housing, work, connection, which far outstrip the contribution of hospitals and clinics.
That means investing in the sort of lives people deserve by building an economy which creates good jobs, where ownership is shared, where people can afford the basics, and where the environment is regenerated and protected, rather than treated simply as a costless input and a fee-free waste dump.
In that way, an economy that works better for people and planet can inoculate against the harm that drives failure demand and defensive expenditure. That’s the goal of the wellbeing economy agenda: to do better than just paying the bill for the damage caused by the current system and instead redesign the economy that keeps creating it.
Check out our series, ‘Building the economy we could have’ for more case studies, explainers and interviews that show what is possible in Australia.
At The Next Economy, we are excited to team up with Erinch Sahan for his Australian tour to share ideas, provocations, and proof of what is possible in the world of business and investment.
Businesses and investment matter in Australia. They have a significant role in shaping economic, ecological, and social outcomes – for good, and sometimes for ill.So how can business and investment ensure that their activities and ways of working contribute to an Australia that future generations will be proud of?
Erinch is a globally renowned thought leader with expertise in business design and investment. Join us to hear from Erinch and widen the discussion about the critical role of business and investment in building the economy we could have. This is a rare opportunity to hear him speak in Australia and not to be missed!
Melbourne:
Transforming Business and Investment into a force for good. Erinch Sahan, with special guests from Regen Melbourne and Social Traders.
Join Erinch in conversation with special guests Tara Anderson, CEO of Social Traders, and Josh Devine, Collaboration and Investment lead at Regen Melbourne.
Together they will explore how Melbourne can become a place where purpose-led business is not the exception, but the new business as usual.
🌍 Hosted by: The Next Economy and Greater Melbourne Foundation with special guests from Regen Melbourne and Social Traders
🎟 Tickets: This event has passed.
Webinar hosted by The Next Economy:
Global lessons, regional opportunities: A special conversation with international thought-leader Erinch Sahan and The Next Economy’s Economic Program Director Katherine Trebeck and Land Program Director Jacqui Bell.
📅 Date: Thursday 8 October 2026, 10-11am, AEDT (9-10am AEST),
🎤Speakers: Erinch Sahan in conversation with Dr Katherine Trebeck and Jacqui Bell
Webinar hosted by ANU Planetary Health Equity Hothouse:
Redesigning business and finance to unlock economic transformations: Australian National University Saving the World Webinar.
📅 Date: Thursday 8th of October, 12.30pm-1.30pm
📍 Location: Online webinar
🎟 Tickets: This event has passed.
Sydney:
What would business look like if it worked for everyone?
Global thought leader Erinch Sahan will share ideas, provocations and real proof of what’s possible – followed by a panel discussion with Melina Morrison, CEO of Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals, Dr Belinda Russon, CEO of Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative Ltd, and Nathan Robertson-Ball, Founder of Finding Nature.
📅 Date: Wednesday 14 October, 2026
🕰️ Time: 6–8pm
📍 Location: Blue Gum Hall, Yirranma Place, 262 Liverpool St Darlinghurst
🌍 Hosted by: The Next Economy and Paul Ramsay Foundation
Uralla’s Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan is here
Two years of listening, testing and co-design have led to this: a practical plan for how NSW’s Uralla Shire can host large-scale renewable energy development on its own terms – protecting what the community values while sharing the benefits of the transition fairly.
Uralla’s RESAP was developed by Uralla Shire Council with the community with in-kind support from The Next Economy, as part of the national Striking a New Deal (SaND) collaboration.
Communities like Uralla in NSW are on the front line of Australia’s renewable energy transition – facing real opportunity alongside real disruption.
Two years ago, Uralla Shire Council and its community set out to shape the impacts of the New England Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) with a practical, community-informed Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan (RESAP). The result of that process was endorsed last month.
As the New England Renewable Energy Zone develops around us, our region is entering a period of significant change. This will offer a once in a lifetime opportunity. However, how that change is managed will impact generations to come.
Uralla Mayor Robert Bell
Only just released, it’s already showing results: stronger community voices in decision-making, and improved trust between Uralla Shire Council, community and developers.
In May, councils across the REZ joined the University of New England, Regional Development Australia, Regional Economic Development NSW and EnergyCo to shape a REZ build that benefits the community and delivers lasting regional infrastructure.
The New England REZ forum, supported by The Next Economy (TNE), delivered on two of the actions identified in Uralla Shire Council’s RESAP: actively engaging in coordination forums to spot gaps in responsibility or sequencing; and convening the right parties to close those gaps.
Further afield, insights from RESAP are already feeding practical guidance to government and industry, including being shared by The Next Economy at the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the impact of renewable energy zones on rural and regional communities and industries.
During engagement, locals told us again and again that water was their biggest concern. ‘Improve Water Security’ is a key strategy in the RESAP. We needed all government and industry stakeholders to really appreciate that concern. And I think we achieved that. No one who attended the NE REZ forum left without a clear picture of the regional water security challenge. We now have strong and ongoing regional collaboration on water security.
Emily Sims, Strategic Planning Officer, Uralla Shire Council
There’s no shortage of toolkits for renewable energy development – what’s missing is a full picture that puts it into practice on the ground.
The Next Economy’s Saideh Kent, who led the work with Uralla Shire Council to build RESAP, shares her top six insights, developed with commentary from Uralla Shire Council Strategic Planning Officer Emily Sims and Group Manager Infrastructure Services Myles McLindin.
They contain valuable lessons on how communities, industries and governments can work together for shared value outcomes across the country.
Buy local with Uralla Bucks. Credit: The Next Economy
1. Communities are partners, not stakeholders to manage
Good development is built with communities from the outset, not delivered to them. Done well, this doesn’t extend timelines or budgets but does improve outcomes all round. This means moving beyond social licence toward genuine, shared-value relationships – development done, as the nearby Hay community puts it in their Economic Transition Roadmap: “with the community, not to it”. In Uralla, that’s taken shape as a simple guiding principle: minimising impacts and maximising benefits.
The Renewable Energy Zone will offer a once in a lifetime opportunity, however how that change is managed will impact generations to come. We have a responsibility to help our community be ready for what is coming and to make sure local voices are heard
Mayor Robert Bell, Uralla Shire Council
A shared community vision is a good starting point, setting out what matters most, and where the opportunities for mutual benefit might lie. This could be attracting investment in roads and housing, or welcoming new people into the community to grow the town and the local economy.
From the conduct of workers on the ground to policy, siting and land access negotiations, respectful engagement – backed by communities and councils with the capacity to engage as equals – builds trust. Its absence erodes it fast.
For example, land access is often a community’s first contact with a project, and openness – transparency, legal advice, free and informed consent – builds cohesion, whereas individual, non-disclosure agreement-bound deals, for example, breed suspicion between neighbours.
In Balala, landholders formed their own group to engage collectively with EnergyCo and a wind farm developer, rather than negotiating one-by-one. They worked collectively with a lawyer to review the terms of the agreement.
Legal advice should be as close to free as possible to landholders. This can be a real barrier for many and also stretches limited legal expertise in the region.
Myles McLindin, Group Manager Infrastructure Services, Uralla Shire Council
Farmers in Balala are working together to engage with developers and share their priorities. Credit: Cr Sarah Burrows
3. Benefit-sharing is collaborative, not transactional
Communities and developers work together across the full benefit spectrum, from community grants through to legacy infrastructure like housing to joint enterprises that create lasting shared value.
For example, the Armidale Regional Council and Uralla Shire Council have been working together to address the water needs of their communities. The Renewable Energy Zone infrastructure also requires large amounts of water for development. By working together to increase local water storage capacity and supply networks, the Renewable Energy Zone can improve the water security of the region.
We see it as a regional opportunity the REZ provides a chance to bring in those major infrastructure developments and provide a legacy outcome that gives our communities safe and secure water in the future.
Good siting supports multiple land uses and actively protects and enhances both farming operations and local ecology efforts.
In Uralla, a sixth-generation farming family is negotiating with EnergyCo and a developer to host solar on part of their land. They believe development around Uralla Shire must enhance the township’s character and deliver lasting local benefits. Construction-phase impacts are a key concern – particularly truck movements affecting road conditions and blocking highways used to move stock to market. Uralla Shire Council has already recommended alternative transport routes to protect local assets like the avenue and bridge near Gostwyck Church.
The Uralla Shire Council, is also working with local biodiversity experts to provide advice on how to protect and enhance biodiversity as new energy infrastructure is developed.
New England is a unique bioregion. Over the years of intensive grazing practices, tree clearing, drought and eucalypt die-back, the region’s woodland ecosystems have become increasingly threatened. Locals told us very clearly that what remains is precious. They want to see that, at the end of this renewable energy rollout, the environment is in a better place than before.
Emily Sims, Strategic Planning Officer, Uralla Shire Council
A pilot study undertaken by the University of New England on the ACEN New England Solar Farm is demonstrating ways to improve biodiversity within the region.
Useful resources:
Hay Inc.’s Rural Education Program – a hands-on training initiative to provide pathways for young people including on the importance of food and fibre production co-existing with renewable energy production.
University of New England’s pilot study into how renewable energy zones can double as valuable habitats for wildlife
Balala Brushgrove Landcare Group conduct landholders walk. Credit: Southern New England Landcare (SNEL)
5. Coordination is the multiplier
Strong governance – linking developers, government and community, managing benefit funds, and investing in enabling infrastructure like water, housing, transport and telecommunications – turns individual projects into regional benefit.
For example, the Uralla Shire Council Strategic Planner worked with the University of New England to host EnergyCo and the other councils to coordinate infrastructure planning and investment as part of the NE REZ Forum.
There is an understandable perception in the community that ‘the REZ’ is an entity that can be held accountable. We often hear things like ‘The REZ should pay for upgrades to local roads before they start construction’. In fact, the REZ is being shaped by multiple tiers of government, state functions, and private industry. EnergyCo doesn’t hold all the levers that need to be pulled. Collaboration is necessary to ensure that our community doesn’t fall through some of the cracks.
Emily Sims, Strategic Planning Officer, Uralla Shire Council
Those Councils with expertise and more resources can engage developers on equal footing, they can spot where projects meet roads, water and housing, and negotiate collaboratively. Councils, often facing multiple projects at once, or without appropriate funding or governance structures, can quickly be outmatched.
In Uralla, a funding agreement with EnergyCo for $750k over three years has been used to fund a strategic planning role that lifted local capacity to coordinate and respond to activity associated with the renewable energy development in the Shire. This approach has been adopted by nearby Tamworth and Walcha councils.
There is no chance Uralla Shire Council would be in the position where we are able to advocate effectively for our community without this funding and support.
Myles McLindin, Uralla Shire Council’s Group Manager Infrastructure Services
7. Construction is an economic opportunity, not just a disruption
Managed well, construction builds local business capability, attracts and retains workforce, and strengthens social cohesion rather than straining it.
For example, in Uralla and across the surrounding region, local Aboriginal cultural heritage practitioners are working on the ground as renewable energy projects take shape. Steven Ahoy, a local Anaiwan man, carries out cultural heritage assessments for multiple solar, wind and transmission projects and manages a heritage maintenance crew at an operating solar farm. He has also helped set up an Aboriginal work crew that employs both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Good renewable energy development is not theoretical – it’s already happening, in Uralla and elsewhere across the country. The task now is to learn from it and scale it.
To read more inspiring examples beyond Uralla, check out these recent projects The Next Economy has collaborated on including place-based, co-design projects over multiple years in nearby Hay (Economic Transition Roadmap) and the South West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils’ Future Economy Strategy.
A version of this article was originally posted on The Point.
Many policy discussions centre on how to spend more and spend better, patching up after the fact. But this investment framing misses a crucial third pillar of prevention: stopping harmful activities from happening at all or before their impact gets even worse. Check out the latest reflection for our series ‘Building the economy we could have’.
Gambling advertising is a hot topic in Australia right now, with a range of groups and political players calling for more to be done to stop ads popping up on our screens.
Taking action to stop an activity known to be causing so much harm to so many Australians and their families is not really in question: the push and pull between the parties is more how much action to take and how firm government needs to be.
Banning gambling ads is a great example of how important stopping bad things is. Yet it seems to be the exception that proves the rule: so often policy discussions instead swirl around spending to patch up after the fact. It is rare to focus on stopping bad things from happening in the first place.
Compared to how and how much to spend and on what, far less attention gets paid to avoiding costly repair and remediation, and yet this can be much cheaper than the vast sums of public money spent fixing the damage caused by policies that allow, and sometimes even subsidise, harmful activities.
There are so many examples. Think about the ‘direct costs from extreme weather events, which are estimated to grow by 5.13 percent each year (before inflation) and reach $35.24 billion (in 2022 dollars) by 2050.’ Or what about the health impacts of pollution in the air from truck and bus exhaust, which costs about $6.2 billion each year. Children at childcare centres on busy roads are exposed to air pollution that is equivalent to eight cigarettes a day, according to scholars at the University of Melbourne.
In relation to chemical pollutants, the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) reports that if they had ‘been regulated early, the enormous cost of clean-up – and the impacts on human health – could have been prevented’, but now, as the CPD explains, the ‘cost of remediating Australia’s approximately 160,000 contaminated sites is impossible to quantify, but a thorough clean-up would almost certainly amount to hundreds of billions of dollars’.
And because of child poverty, various Australian governments spend at least $16 billion annually on government services like child protection, health services, legal system costs, homelessness services and education services, and the need for Jobseeker and Family Tax Benefit in later life.
These costs are illustrations of failure demand: demands on public services and budgets that arise because various systems, institutions, policies, and practices fail to prevent harm in the first place, let alone create the conditions for people and planet to thrive.
What is needed is upstream prevention that stops problems before they start. This is 3-4 times more cost-effective than treating them later. This is further evidence of the very real fiscal benefits to be obtained from creating an economy that better aligns with what people and planet need. Preventing harm would deliver benefits for communities and the natural world (most importantly), while also reducing avoidable public expenditure: a potential prevention dividend.
Taking prevention upstream to the economy
Conversations about prevention tend not to go as far ‘upstream’ as the economy. Yet how the economy operates and for whom matters to people’s ability to thrive, and that of the planet. Going as far upstream as the economy makes it necessary to ask which activities are enabled; who benefits from them; who bears the costs; and how are resources treated and distributed?
There is ample evidence of the environmental impacts of how we produce and consume, and inequalities within them. The socio-economic determinants of health are not disputed, but what is seldom acknowledged that much social policy is necessary because of economic policy that does not share our wealth and resources effectively.
Acting on this evidence requires investment spending and early intervention, which is all well and good. But the investment framing misses a crucial third pillar of prevention: stopping harmful activities from happening at all, or before their impact gets even worse.
Currently, many laws, taxes, and subsidies still permit or actively encourage activities known to cause harm, creating downstream costs for government and society (incidentally, these downstream costs align with the International Monetary Fund’s definition of ‘implicit subsidies’).
Stopping the bad
Addressing the fact that our economy actively encourages harm and causes downstream costs would require governments not just focus on adapting to shocks, but become more proactive in stopping the causes of harm in the first place.
The first task is to identify what is permitted, but which is proven to:
Damage health, the environment, or economic security
Shift costs onto the public while profits remain private, or
Persist only because they are familiar, not because they work.
Then legislators need to regulate out activities and behaviours that create more harm than good via bans, phase out, tax hikes, subsidy removals, tighter licensing, restrictions and limits, or withdrawing other forms of government support.
Crucially, this would be accompanied by transition plans and support to avoid unfair burdens or unintended hardship for affected groups. Alongside nurturing the new, the task is to let go of the old and no longer necessary: ‘hospicing the old’ in systems thinking terms.
Fairness: to individuals and enterprises doing the right thing
Taking steps to ‘stop the bad’ would shift the onus away from blaming individuals and avoid infamous ‘lifestyle drift’: a phenomenon ‘where policies tend to recognise upstream factors in their rationale but drift downstream to “life-style factors” when recommending action and defining impact measures’.
It is also about fair competition: if a practice is profitable only because its costs are borne by the public, that’s implicit subsidies, not efficiency nor genius entrepreneurship.
Already happening
The biggest quality of life improvements often come not from new spending, but from deciding that certain harmful practices are no longer acceptable.
Around the world there are examples that show the effectiveness of stopping bad things happening:
New Zealand’s restrictions on zero-hour contracts.
Sao Paulo, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and the Australian Capital Territory are restricting the use of outdoor advertising (either outright or for certain goods, such as SUVs).
Scotland’s smoking ban twenty years ago has seen rapid reductions in heart attacks and respiratory admissions (including reduced admission for child asthma by 18 percent), and healthier workers.
Asbestos is banned in new buildings in many countries.
Brazil’s “Dirty List” of firms using forced labour.
France has banned short haul flights for journeys where there are suitable alternative train options.
Wales has a moratorium on building major new roads.
Conclusion
If efforts to stop the bad were to become more deliberate than simply sporadic, debate would move from the Treasurer’s calculator to the auditor’s assessment, and ultimately to the legislator’s pen. We’d spend less time and money fixing preventable damage, and more time building an economy that doesn’t create the damage in the first place. The gambling advertising debate shows that when the case is clear enough, stopping the harm becomes common sense. Imagine if we applied that same common sense across the board.
The ideas that have informed this piece were first mooted at an event hosted by NESTA Scotland at the Edinburgh Futures Institute in early 2026.
The economic development framework, Community Wealth Building, is receiving increasing attention worldwide after Scotland passed a law that brings the framework to a whole country and our last instalment of ‘Building the economy we could have’ explored the history of the concept and how it works (See our explainer here). To better understand what it looks like in practice for Australia, The Next Economy’s Economic Change Project Officer Josie Foster sat down with Annie Smits and Bill Mithen, Co-CEOs of Neighbourhood Economics to discuss how they’re applying the framework to Norlane and Corio in Victoria.
Their motto? A fair economy isn’t impossible, it’s overdue.
Josie from TNE and Annie and Bill from Neighbourhood Economics
What is Neighborhood Economics all about?
Annie: Neighborhood Economics is committed to places of disadvantage and thinking about those places and re-imagining those places through an economic lens. Part of our theory sits in the idea that places of disadvantage often get looked at through a health lens, or an education lens, or a services lens, but rarely through an economic lens, and if we don’t think about local economies, we won’t shift the conditions of places like Norlane and Corio, which is where we’re working,
Why did you pick Norlane and Corio as the location to pilot Neighborhood Economics?
Bill: Norlane is the most disadvantaged place in the state for Victoria, and Corio is the fourth most. I’ve worked in Geelong for a long time, it’s where I grew up, and I currently live. We both worked in places where disadvantage is prevalent and have seen that things in places of entrenched disadvantage just don’t shift, it doesn’t matter the amount of capital or labour or time or effort that people put in, the conditions stay the same.
Norlane and Corio are two of those places. There’s also been a significant amount of work done in Geelong on entrenched disadvantage, so we feel like starting in a place where the preconditions are already set and organised, made sense.
Can you tell us about the industrial history of Norlane and Corio?
Bill: Norlane and Corio have a story that is similar to lots of places that have been left behind, where they powered the industrial transformation of the Australian economy and the manufacturing part of the Australian economy, and as that has changed over time to become a more services-based economy, these places have often been left behind. They were typically working-class places that had – in Norlane and Corio’s circumstance – large manufacturers; Ford being one. There’s an oil refinery that still exists in Corio [and] International Harvester had their head office there too.
Going back a bit further, there was a whisky distillery as well. There were big manufacturing organisations and businesses that employed lots of people. And as globalisation came in, as trade conditions changed within nations, and tariffs shifted, as a country we really became unviable in those industries, and so they shut down. This meant a whole heap of jobs left with them, and the nature and identity of those suburbs changed forever.
What drew you to Community Wealth Building?
Annie: Community Wealth Building is a practical economic development framework that has five levers that can be pulled to shift the economy in a place. The reason we go to the economy is because fundamentally the economy is the starting point of disadvantage and inequality, and if we don’t start at that place, we won’t get to actually shift the conditions of a place. We’ll do good things for people or with people, but people will remain locked in or locked out of participation in an economy and continue to be left behind.
Bill: The levers are essentially; land, labour, ownership, finance and procurement. So that’s using land for local benefit, having a finance system that supports local institutions and local organisations, doing more socially beneficial procurement, having greater plurality or democratic ownership and having a just labour market.
Annie: One of the other things within Neighbourhood Economics that Bill and I talk about all the time is what we call “our matters” – the things that matter in economic development that have been left out of how we talk about local economies. They are democratic ownership, shared value, distributed power, and human connection.
Democratic ownership is important because if we don’t go to the heart of ownership – who owns what and how wealth is concentrated – we will never push back on this sense of extraction and wealth accumulation.
Shared value goes to this sense of whoever creates value in the system is rewarded at that place, including the environment and First Peoples. Distributed power, which sits right alongside democratic ownership, is how do we distribute power and decision making differently and closer to the action or the people. Then human connection – if we’re well connected as human beings and see ourselves in the other, it’s less likely that I’m going to extract from you or take from you in inappropriate ways.
How has this idea been received in the local area?
Bill: We’ve just released a suite of reports, and in the production of those we’ve talked to lots of people. We talked to just under 20 business owners in Norlane and Corio, from very small corner shops and retail stores to large manufacturing businesses. We’ve spoken with nine “anchor” institutions – these are larger organisations that have economic power and can really control the economic trajectory of a place. We sat down and interviewed nine CEOs of those organisations, and then we also had these kitchen table conversations with about 40 odd residents of Norlane and Corio to really understand what life’s like and how the economy actually works and what they experience in the day-to-day life.
Community Wealth Building is not necessarily new for Geelong, because there’ve been organisations and people have talked about it for a little while, although it’s having a bit of a moment. There is a good sense of goodwill from those bigger organisations and civic and business leaders to try and do something, and this is another reason why we chose Norlane and Corio. What they’re not sure about is what to do and so to have a framework that is different – and there’s an acknowledgement that we have to do something different – that has got some proven capability internationally, there’s a bit of interest and excitement about that. Harnessing that and turning intention into action is going to be part of our trajectory.
Who is responsible for making community wealth building happen?
Annie: All levels of government, but it can’t be left to just one. What we’re finding is that there’s lone voices within government that are supportive, and that will hopefully grow momentum. At all levels of government, there is conversation around the fact that we need to shift things around how our economy functions. Sometimes other groups are using the term “wellbeing economy”, which is not exactly the same, but it’s parallel and heading in the same direction.
Bill: The connection with the wellbeing economy is important. The way I articulate it or see it is that a wellbeing economy is the thing we need. We need an economy that places wellbeing at the centre. How you do that is through using the framework of community wealth building. There is more to it than that, but that’s one of the reasons why we chose Community Wealth Building, because it’s really practical.
Annie: We would say also that there’s this sense at all levels of government it can’t just be left to local councils, it can’t just be left to federal government, it can’t just be left to state government, and it’s not just Treasury, or it’s not just the Premier’s office. It’s got to be across government that there’s a buy-in on this, and it’s really interesting that, like, in Victoria, for example, that the Victorian Department of Health and VicHealth have really led the conversation around wellbeing and the connection of wellbeing and economy and a healthy functioning economy. So, this doesn’t just sit with Treasury, or with the economic and finance people; it sits right across government and at all levels of government and other places as well.
What are you hearing from some of the people who may have been left behind economically?
Bill: A range of things. Mostly ambition. The people we spoke to want all the same things that we all want. There were stories of neighbours connecting with each other and helping each other and supporting each other. There were stories of regeneration and people finding a place to be in Norlane and Corio that was really helpful to them. But there were also heaps of other stories that aren’t anywhere near as positive. These were about the difficulties of unemployment and the fact that systems – disability, employment, health, housing or otherwise – almost feel like they’re actively working against their well-being rather than trying to support them. But people were incredibly grateful to be heard, which was humbling.
What would you like to see happen to bring community wealth building to areas in Australia?
Bill: Community Wealth Building is still relatively unknown, which is a challenge, so the more people that know about it the better. One of the things we talk about is: what stopped Community Wealth Building from becoming either the dominant or a dominant practice of economic development? What are the barriers to it? Probably the biggest barrier is the status quo of power. How you break and shift that is really difficult. But people knowing about it, what it is and what it isn’t, is really important. People seeing that it actually is an economic development framework that is legitimate and reasonable, and can work, and is able to be used to build people’s wealth and their wellbeing is really important that it’s not just a fringe idea. It can be done by mainstream economic development. It’s just a choice.
And your final thoughts?
Bill: The big thing about Community Wealth Building for me at the moment is that it’s so much more than three words that you put in a sentence, even though that’s how many people will understand it. It’s actually an economic development framework that has five levers that you need to pull and shift and change all at the same time. There’s a lot of work in it, and we will do ourselves a great disservice if we don’t hold ourselves true and focus on exactly what it is.
Annie: I agree. For Bill and I in creating Neighbourhood Economics, part of our frustration was that both of us had done a fair amount of work in economic development, and we probably potentially worked in one, a single lever, but then found the frustration of ‘why hasn’t this shifted something’, and so the really important piece is that we’re pulling multiple levers to reimagine local economies.
Two years of listening, testing and co-design have led to this: a practical plan for how NSW’s Uralla Shire can manage large-scale renewable energy development on its own terms – protecting what the community values while sharing the benefits of the transition fairly.
This is not a plan for or against renewable energy. It’s a plan to make sure development happens with the community, not to the community. Our residents have been clear: Uralla’s character, farmland and way of life must be protected, and any development must deliver lasting value for our Shire.
Mayor Robert Bell
When regions are faced with large-scale renewable energy developments, local leaders face a choice: drive the change or get swept up in it. Uralla Shire Council chose to lead, successfully applying for transition support from The Next Economy under the Striking a New Deal project*.
That move laid the groundwork for the community-led Renewable Energy Strategic Action Plan, endorsed by Council after a lengthy feedback process with community.
Here we look behind the scenes at how this journey unfolded, what we learned from our experiences working with the Uralla community and what this means for the transition more generally.
Uralla Shire sits inside the New England Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) – one of the areas key to decarbonising Australia’s energy system. Solar, batteries and transmission projects are already shaping the region. With multiple wind projects planned, Uralla will be the centre of construction activity. It is already gearing up to host the largest share of temporary construction workers within the REZ.
Uralla’s location within a REZ brings real opportunity: investment, jobs, training, building lasting infrastructure. But also, real pressure: from housing, water, roads and services, through to the very social fabric of Uralla that locals are proud of.
While Uralla Shire Council can’t make the decision on whether these projects go ahead – that sits with the state and developers –they can, and have, worked with the local community to decide how the Shire prepares, what it asks for, and what ‘good’ looks like in its own patch.
The role of The Next Economy
Together, The Next Economy and Council worked with members of the Uralla community to understand what it takes to proactively shape the roll-out and impacts of the New England REZ, not just respond to them.
The process included interviews, workshops, school sessions and surveys with more than 150 locals between December 2024 and July 2025. Landholders, business owners, young people and community leaders across the Shire were engaged.
When people are involved early, it’s easier to identify concerns, and ensure new development strengthens what the community values.
Saideh Kent, project lead, The Next Economy
Local insights were brought together with national best practice and expert input to build a plan that is grounded in the local context and priorities, and not a cookie cutter model brought in. The result is a renewable energy strategic action plan that:
Sets out what good development looks like, in Uralla’s own terms
Gives Council a clear, evidence-based basis for its conversations with government and industry
Identifies where the Shire needs to act now to stay ahead of construction pressure, including on housing, water, roads, services and nature
Points to how renewable energy investment can leave a genuine legacy, not just short-term disruption.
Real-time results
Already, the work has brought real-time results, with Council:
Identifying potential sites suitable for housing development and seeking community feedback
Collaborating with other councils and EnergyCo to coordinate infrastructure investment
Working with Armidale Regional Council to improve water supplies and drought proof townships
Partnering with the University of Newcastle to set up a recycling hub for solar panels.
From one Council’s experience to a national conversation
There’s no shortage of toolkits, guides and case studies for renewable energy development. What’s often missing is something that pulls it altogether and puts it into practice – a clear, tested picture of what success can look like when a regional community leads its own transition.
Project lead Saideh Kent, is collaborating with colleagues at Uralla Shire Council, to identify the practical, place-based insights for what good renewable development requires – and what makes it possible – to share with other regional councils. Stay tuned.
Why this matters beyond Uralla
The energy transition is one of the biggest drivers of economic change across regional Australia right now. It is more than just the construction of poles and wires, it is a major national investment in a new industry located in regions that have not been part of the system before, and with that comes broader social, economic and environmental considerations and impacts.
Left unmanaged, it can strain the things communities value most and rely on for their livelihoods and way of life. However, if managed well, with community at the centre and positioned as a strategic partner to development, the energy transition can not only move at a scale and pace that is required but can help to build resilient and thriving regions whose economies are working better for local people and their place.
This ground-up, place-based approach to regional economic development and managing local economic change, is underpinned by The Next Economy’s broader work on macro-economic systems change and wellbeing economies – driving an economy that works for people and the planet, not the other way around.
The work in Uralla is a real-world example of that thinking in practice – demonstrating what good development looks like for Uralla Shire, how the community can shape local economic transitions (and the economy), and the imperative for government and industry to get behind them when they do.
*The Next Economy works with government, industry and community across Australia’s regions to shape a transition that strengthens – rather than undermines – local identity, resilience and shared prosperity. Striking a New Deal (SaND) is a national collaboration between The Next Economy, RE-Alliance, the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR), Projects JSA and host councils including Uralla Shire.
The Hay Economic Transition Roadmap is a practical, locally driven plan designed to strengthen the regional economy, build on agricultural and transport advantages and secure long-term local benefits from renewable energy developments underway.
Developed by the community and convened by Hay Shire Council with support from The Next Economy, it brings together community, business, industry and governments around a common direction for coordinated action.
In April, we got to catch up with a few of the Hay community members who contributed to the Roadmap, and to hear what they had to say about the opportunities, challenges and momentum already building on the ground.
Check out our main Roadmap video, then dive into what members of the Hay community had to say below.
“We’re looking at what we can do that uses renewable energy to generate things that our farm and local industry need. A part of that is looking at a hydrogen plant.”
“The roadmap is important to Hay because it secures Hay’s future. Knowing that there’s jobs and opportunities for future generations. We’ve got to keep up with the times and Hay has to do that as well.”
– Gary Brown, business owner, Hay Newsagency and Alpha1 Property
“The Roadmap will help support our endeavours in agriculture here, because if we can bring secondary income to a lot of these primary production properties it gives us the benefit of having a sound other income stream.”
“Hay’s history to date has been on predominately agriculture returns. Now going forward we’ve got that opportunity to pick up secondary industry … If the region wins, then we all win together and that’s a great outcome.”
– Jasen Crighton, Owner and Operator, Crighton Engineering
“The roadmap has been really important to see some of those opportunities in agriculture, and I think if we have another opportunity to embrace an industry that might be able to safeguard us from some of the highs and lows that the ag community faces then we should embrace it.”
Visit Hay Shire Council’s economic development page for more information about the region, the Roadmap and how to get in touch with Alison McLean, Executive Manager, Economic Development, Tourism and Energy for opportunities.
This instalment of ‘Building the economy we could have’ explores Community Wealth Building and how this approach can bring health and social benefits while building resilient communities to better weather turbulent times.
A decade ago, one in twenty Australians rated their life satisfaction as very low. Today it’s one in ten: nearly 2.2 million people now living below what statisticians call the “wellbeing poverty line. It happened while the economy, by its official scorecard, kept growing. But growing for who?
It’s clear Australians want healthy and thriving local economies that work for people and our environment, not profit alone and a different approach is needed to make sure wealth is shared and kept locally.
It’s in this environment that the economic development strategy of Community Wealth Building has started attracting increasing interest. But what is it? And what can it offer us here in Australia?
What is Community Wealth Building?
Community Wealth Building is an alternative to the trickle-down assumptions of a growth-first model of economic development. It puts people at the centre of the decisions made, with a focus on predistribution of wealth, ownership and resources, making sure it is designed from the start to genuinely work for people and provide long-term, lasting changes in the economy, addressing the root causes of inequality and poverty (See Predistribution).
Progressive procurement of goods and services 💸 (Spending): Using anchor institutions, such as local government and big employers like hospitals, universities and other public institutions, to harness their procurement to bolster local supply chains and support local business development, spending, and investment.
Fair employment and just labour markets 👷♀️(Workforce): Using these same anchor institutions and worker-owned cooperatives to ensure employment practices and wages are fair, pay a living wage and create more opportunities for equitable and local economic participation and control over work.
Socially productive use of land and property 🏡(Land and property): Public land and property assets are used to create shared wealth for people, bringing local land and development under community control.
Making financial power work for local places 🏦 (Finance): Wealth and savings are harnessed and reinvested for the local community using public and community banks and credit unions as well as targeting superannuation investments.
Plural ownership of the economy ♻️ (Inclusive ownership): The promotion of different business ownership models to build wealth for local communities, such as cooperatives, social enterprises, public ownership.
History
Community Wealth Building emerged as an economic development model in 2005, through the work of The Democracy Collaborative, who describe themselves as an ‘Action-oriented Think-Do Tank’ in Cleveland, USA and in the work of The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) in the UK.
In 2008, Evergreen Cooperatives was set up to bring Community Wealth Building from concept to reality in Cleveland, with Evergreen’s founders and local ‘anchor institutions’ helping to set up worker-owned cooperatives with the aim of creating high-quality jobs, making neighbourhoods vibrant and sharing economic ownership with the community.
Evergreen acquired small and mid-sized businesses, converting them to employee ownership, creating living wage jobs, training new employee owners and then providing ongoing business support to the worker cooperative. Evergreen Coops now include a commercial laundry, insulation services and a coffee roastery and cafes.
Across the Atlantic in the north of England, following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, Preston Council was facing severe cuts to the budget after the loss of over a billion pounds in government grants. The business-as-usual approach would have been to slash council services and supports, pushing more people into poverty and economic disadvantage without doing anything to support people to have employment and options for good quality jobs.
However, a Preston City Council representative attended an event in London with The Democracy Collaborative and one of their co-founders, Ted Howard. Ted was then invited to Preston to discuss Community Wealth Building, and from there, Preston worked to implement the pillars of Community Wealth Building via local anchor institutions.
In 2025, they celebrated ten years of the ‘Preston Model’, with outcomes that clearly demonstrated how aligning the economy with local need can be a mechanism to deal with other problems such as mental health, life satisfaction and wages.
In fact, The Lancet, the world-renowned medical journal, studied the model and found a reduced prevalence of depression, lowered antidepressant prescriptions, and improved life satisfaction. Plus, it raised the median wage 11 percent!
Preston proves something that most of us would have an idea about already: that a thriving local economy that keeps wealth flowing in the community provides economic improvements as well as health and wider societal benefits.
It also proves that an approach to mental health without addressing some of the root causes, such as economic insecurity and poverty, will simply be treating the symptoms, allowing the problems to continue (See Lifestyle Drift, The Economy We Could Have, Upstream Briefing)
Scotland brings the idea to life across a whole country
Scotland has recently passed a groundbreaking piece of legislation that introduces the benefits of Community Wealth Building across an entire country. The Community Wealth Building Act requires Ministers to publish a Community Wealth Building statement setting out the measures they intend to take to implement the pillars. Across Scotland, local authorities (local governments) will work with relevant public bodies to create and implement action plans for their area.
Neil McInroy, a leading expert working with CLES and The Democracy Collective who has also been an advisor to the Scottish Government on Community Wealth Building, states that the power of this is that it moves Community Wealth Building from something that is optional or opt-in, to something that is system-wide.
What is the potential for Australia?
Many regions in Australia are starting to ask how they can look at economic development differently, including those in which we have worked such as Hay in NSW and south west Queensland. The economic blueprint we worked on with the South West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils, includes a possible first Community Wealth Building step: meeting with key anchor institutions in Roma to identify spending or contracts they could commit to prioritising local suppliers or First Nations organisations.
In Geelong, Annie Smits and Bill Mithen from Neighbourhood Economics are working to bring the concept to life in a place hit hard by previous waves of economic change where resources left. Norlane and Corio, two suburbs of Geelong, were once home to the Ford factory and auto industry, and today are two of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia.
Neighbourhood Economics joined with SGS Economics & Planning to launch a suite of new reports in May this year, including Community Wealth Building: What will it take? This report explores what’s standing in the way of adopting Community Wealth Building as a model of local economic development in Australia.
Other Australian Community Wealth Building activity includes:
The City of Sydney, which released a discussion paper at the end of 2021 as a first step in the policy development process
SGS Economics & Planning prepared a working paper on how Community Wealth Building could benefit Melbourne’s eastern region or the Victorian Government and the Eastern Region Group of Councils in 2024.
Our next instalment in this series will be an interview with Bill and Annie from Neighbourhood Economics on their work in Geelong and what is needed to bring Community Wealth Building to life in Australia.
To build the economy we could have in Australia, changes must be made to the housing market as access to and ownership of housing is a huge driver of inequality. Currently the way the housing system operates seems to be a far cry from one designed to provide housing that is socially and environmentally friendly, at affordable or accessible prices. Instead, Australia has become a place where ‘investors’ look to make a profit.
Melbourne’s Nightingale Housing offers a different model. As a not-for-profit, Nightingale doesn’t add a profit margin, delivering homes ‘at cost’. Apartments are sold not to investors, but to residents and housing providers, and caps are set on resale prices. One-fifth of apartments are prioritised for key workers, people with disabilities, First Nations people, and single women.
They also have a focus on minimising resource use and building strong community ties. Social connection is fostered via shared spaces, such as rooftop gardens, BBQs, and laundries. Recycled, natural, and local materials are used where possible, with energy-efficient features, like double glazing and insulation. Rooftop solar and water harvesting support the gardens, while the complex includes bike parking and are deliberately based near public transport to avoid the need for a car.
Our Economic Change Project Officer Josie toured one of the Nightingale apartments in Brunswick, then sat down with Toby Dean, the Head of Community at Nightingale Housing.
Toby works to ensure there are foundations for friendly relationships with existing and future residents. He also focuses on engagement with Community Housing Providers to help more people access to quality and secure housing. The conversation covered what Nightingale does and changes we need in the housing market in Australia to build the economy we could have.
Our Economic Change officer Josie, touring NightingaleThe interior of a 2 bedroom apartmentIntegration is a priority, with plants and trees planted and cafes and retail.
Can you tell me a little bit about who Nightingale is and what you are trying to do?
We’re a developer, essentially, so we operate in a system that’s primarily driven by profit, but we’re a registered charity and a not-for-profit. We buy blocks of land and build housing that puts community and environment first.
What are some of the ways that you put community and environment first?
At the core of our project, we typically sell to owner occupiers, we sell at cost, and we sell a portion of our building to community housing providers to have affordable housing mixed into the building. We care about everyone that’s living in the community, and we hope it’s a mix. We typically build small footprint homes, which is one of the first steps to a more sustainable living system, to have smaller homes and more efficient homes as well, with things like solar panels, 100% green power, and well insulated.
What are the sorts of ways that Nightingale aims to create more of a connection between neighbours?
In a typical Nightingale apartment building, there are studios, and one-, two-, or three-bedroom apartments, and then on top of that, there are shared spaces that are designed to have both a practical function and a community driven function. So, bike parking, laundries, sometimes a guest house, a bath house, and rooftop garden spaces. All those areas are designed for people to do their washing or to garden, but also to get to know their neighbours and share resources as well.
Bathhouse that can be booked by residentsCommunal bike parkingShared play area for children
Where are the Nightingale projects? There are lots around Brunswick in Melbourne, but where else?
We have a rental project in Sydney, projects in Fremantle, Adelaide, Ballarat, Melbourne. Our next few projects are local, one in Preston [Melbourne]. We’re also continuing to do some townhouse projects in Alphington and other suburbs. We hope to do another project in Adelaide, and then it’s uncertain what will happen after that.
We are Melbourne-focused but hope to expand that out, not only to capital cities, but typically we target areas that have good transport infrastructure, so that people can live without a car, like Wollongong or Newcastle. We aim to build close to public transport, close to amenities, and close to things like schools and education and jobs and infrastructure as well.
What are the things that are core to Nightingale?
We always use 100% green power, we prioritise shared spaces, good internet, sustainable buildings. And then on car parking; we just don’t believe we’re in a car parking crisis, we’re in a housing crisis, and for us to build homes and then add a private car park onto it, it adds a considerable cost. For us, we think the biggest barrier is getting people into home ownership.
What do you think is the hardest thing about being a developer in the housing market that we have in Australia? What are the barriers that Nightingale faces?
I think it’s always tricky to challenge the status quo. Typically, development is a profit-driven industry, which we’re obviously kind of sitting outside of that.
We want our buildings to perform well, and for it to be sustainable financially and environmentally, but it is tricky. There’s limited access to concessional finance in Australia, and there are a lot of barriers that can make development tricky. And construction costs are expensive, land is expensive.
Have things gotten easier or harder since you’ve started in 2013?
I think it’s probably been a mix. We’re still a small organization, there’s only five or six people that work here full time, and we’ve been through the ups and downs of the development industry. I think in some ways it’s got easier, people know who we are, people understand what we’re trying to do. There’s also been a big shift in planning laws that encourage medium-density or high-density developments and understand that not every home has to have a car. We’ve got past some of those battles. I think conversely, construction costs have increased so that it’s hard to build homes that people can afford to buy. You can build luxury apartments, but to build apartments at cost, typically for first home buyers, it’s gotten expensive.
Absolutely, and when you’re in inner city suburbs as well, where the median house price is high, “affordable” for the area, might not be affordable for a lot of people.
Yes. And “affordable” is a tough metric. There are proper definitions of it, but I think it’s more important for a home to be affordable on a person’s income rather than relative to market, which is what some people use.
Diverse spaces built in like art studios and a meditation centreGrassy rooftop area for sittingVeggie gardens on the roof and BBQ space
Do you see the not-for-profit developer space getting better in Australia, or do you see a lot of examples of ‘ethical washing’?
I think it’s gone both ways. There has been a shift to appreciate good development, and to appreciate good density, with the rise of kind of the YIMBY movement, and the changes to planning laws, and everything like that, which encourage development. I think, conversely, there’s still a lot of poor development, or density that’s not appropriate for the place. I think the general population now have greater expectation around sustainability requirements, about insulation, about acoustics, and comfort, and non-flammable cladding.
What else has changed for the better since you first started out?
The building codes have changed for the better, the energy requirements have changed for better. I think in general, we’re moving in a better direction, I just wish people would be more concerned about sustainability, affordability, and making respectful places to live where people enjoy living there. I also live in a Nightingale project, you get to know your neighbours, you feel cared for, and there’s a sense of connection that is important.
What do you think about the situation in general in housing in Australia?
I think it’s about acknowledging that it is tough for a lot of people; for renters, for first home buyers, even for those downsizing. I think that a lot of Australians are kind of wary or cautious of change, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that you can make changes in the housing system. Nightingale still finds it difficult, we’re not just cruising through as an organisation, things aren’t easy. I wish we had greater access to concessional finance and there were more not-for-profit developers operating in our space, so we weren’t one of the few.
What do you see needing to change from a government approach?
People talk about housing affordability, I think that’s a good term, but it’s relatively abstract for a lot of people. I think that housing in Australia is too expensive, and the cost of housing needs to decrease, or our wages need to increase. I think that the recent changes by the federal government were supportive.
The changes to capital gains tax, and other changes that they’re bringing forward, I think are positive. I think that they will see housing perhaps get closer to wage growth, not increase as exponentially as it has, and for property not to be seen or viewed as a tool for wealth creation. We always wish for more, but I’m super appreciative of those changes. I think it was brave to do some potentially not popular decisions.
I think there needs to be a strengthening of tenancy laws, for renters and anyone out there in the housing market, and I think there should be support for first home buyers. I also wish there was an increase in public and community housing funding.
Thanks for your time, Toby. And thanks for showing me around!
Thanks for coming. It’s nice to share with people what we do here at Nightingale Housing!
Too much focus on individual action and change puts responsibility for change at the feet of individuals, as if they were separate and not touched by the wider dynamics wrought by policy and economic dynamics.
In public health this is called ‘lifestyle drift’.
This lets the economy – and those who shape it – off the hook, while individuals bear the brunt of wider economic trends.
Rather than blaming individuals for ‘wilting’ when the conditions around them don’t enable them to thrive, it is those economic trends are where change is most urgent: including decent work; businesses that harness profitability is a means, rather than a goal in its own right; and economic activity generated from the local up via community wealth building.
The economy is a major upstream cause of many of the problems Australians face downstream. The economy creates the causes that compel certain behaviours, invoke certain reactions, and deliver harmful impacts.
Yet often the emphasis of policies and programs is choices and changes individuals needs to make. In the public health sphere, this shift in emphasis from the wider context to individual lifestyle choices has been referred to as ‘lifestyle drift’. Here Dr Katherine Trebeck shares her thoughts on the need to move beyond it.
What lifestyle drift means
Firstly, let’s look at what lifestyle drift actually means. It’s a term used by public health scholars and, as you may have suspected, it’s not as fun as it might sound. It’s what happens when those designing policies might understand the external conditions (upstream factors) that drive health inequalities, such as the quality of work and access to decent housing. However, when it comes to action, the focus drifts downstream to questions of lifestyle, where the individual is in the frame, rather than the economy.
Another way to think about the problem with such an approach is ‘wilting-plant-syndrome’, a concept described by poet and clinical psychologist Dr Sanah Ahsan.
Ahsan wrote: ‘If a plant were wilting, we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome”; we would change its conditions’.
‘Wilting-plant-syndrome’ is seen all too often in policy and economic thinking today, where downstream individual action is seen as the problem, not the wider conditions causing the problems. The consequence of the thinking inherent in both lifestyle drift and wilting-plant-syndrome is that the onus of action is placed on individuals, as if they were separate and not touched by the wider dynamics wrought by policy and economic systems.
What lifestyle drift looks like
Health is an area where it is hard to avoid seeing the lifestyle drift phenomenon play out.
As Kriznnik et al say ‘the main assumptions underpinning interventions to address health inequalities … remain focussed on individual responsibility’. For example, when people are struggling with their mental health, they are offered therapy or antidepressants. This might help someone manage, but it won’t address the challenges they face in their lives such as poverty, a hostile workplace, the stress of being unable to pay bills, or the anxiety of precarious housing. You can see a focus on individual action in a recent briefing about tackling obesity, where the suggested changes mostly revolved around mechanisms that supported or compelled individuals to act differently.
Lifestyle drift is also evident in a 2025 Australian Productivity Commission report calling for a National Prevention Investment Strategy. In all 95 pages of the report, the word “poverty” appeared only twice (once in a reference), and the word “inequality” only three times. To its credit, its list of primary prevention measures included economic support for families (while important, arguably transfers are also an after-the-fact response downstream). But in the same vein, it also described parenting education (where the onus is on the individual parents to change).
We Aussies aren’t the only ones at risk of wilting plant syndrome and lifestyle drift:
A few years ago, the World Health Organisation published a list of ‘best buy’ interventions on non-communicable disease, which positioned the individual as the unit where change needs to happen (through education, taxes on unhealthy food etc). Poverty was mentioned only in passing and inequality ostensibly ignored.
These individualised framings cut through. For example, poor diets are often attributed to bad individual choices. Research found that in the UK Victorian-era notions of deserving and undeserving poor prevail, with the researcher observing that some providers of foodbanks depicted food charity as a ‘choice’, seeming to endorse ‘the classic deserving/undeserving divide while individualising food insecurity and obscuring the systemic issues’.
Shifting the blame for environmental harm
Shifting of responsibility to individuals, often by large corporations, is rife in environmental issues, from litter to the concept of a personal ‘carbon footprint’. For example:
An ad launched in the US a few years ago showed an actor canoeing through polluted water, then walking toward a highway, only to see someone throwing rubbish out of their car window. The end of the ad states that ‘People start pollution. People can stop it’. This was part of the Keep America Beautiful campaign, an initiative designed and funded by packaging business, such as American Can Co, Owens-Illinois Glass Co, Coca-Cola and Dixie Cup.
The problem with all this focus on individuals is that overly emphasising individual action lets the real culprit off the hook: the economic system itself and the rules and players within it that create a misalignment with what people and planet need. It ignores the political decisions and deep-seated assumptions that have carved out the shape of the economy of today.
Well-known epidemiologist Professor Michael Marmot and colleagues warn that:
an ‘individualistic approach to health … is a convenient mechanism for those in and with power, and wider society, to abrogate responsibility for creating the conditions for a healthy society’.
Time to put the spotlight on the economy
The reality is that it is the economy that drives many of the challenges Australia confronts today, from people’s sense of grievance and lack of hope for the future to species loss; from homelessness to increasingly chaotic weather. The economy is a major upstream cause of the many problems Australians face downstream. The economy creates the causes that compel certain behaviours, invoke certain reactions, and generate harmful impacts.
Take the unhealthy behaviours, such as lack of exercise or reaching for processed food. Many are not so much a matter of free choice, but options taken when agency is bounded and curtailed. Sometimes people simply do not have the extent of autonomy and choice that the prevailing economic discourse, with its emphasis on individuals maximising their own self-interest, might imply.
‘Causes of the causes’ is how Professor Michael Marmot describes the social pressures that drive harmful behaviours: such as reduced physical activity due to safety concerns, or stress leading to smoking or overeating.
A leading authority on the social and economic determinants of health, Professor Sharon Friel, documents the various evidence of how and to what extent the economy matters to health. Socio-economic inequalities are critical factors: it was recently reported by health scholars Dr Sarah Hill and Dr Edward Jegasothy that one-fifth of ill-health in Australia could be avoided if everyone had the same socio-economic conditions as the top 20 per cent.
So, where to from here?
The story that needs to be told is how many economic policies are deepening inequality, and how deliberate policy choices – like tax concessions for the wealthy, weakened unions, and the emergence of precarious work – have shifted wealth upward and eroded protection for workers, while increasing insecurity and instability for many.
When policy and decision makers are discussing outcomes, they need to take account of how market logic and profit motives have reshaped access to basic needs in areas such as housing, education, and often health and care provision. This transfers risk from institutions to individuals and undermines collective support, and spurs an understandable response: people turning to personal insurance for support when sick and to their homes and share markets to provide a decent livelihood in their old age.
Conclusion: what would be better?
‘An indigenous analysis of the same thing would look more at the context to try and find out what actually happened’ – Tyson Yunkaporta, Indigenous scholar
The alternative to lifestyle drift and wilting plant syndrome is looking upstream to how the economy operates: the terrain of jobs, what sort of work is paid for, ownership of firms, costs of goods and services, and provision of core services. Instead of just instructing and coaxing individuals to change, it means turning to the realm of the economy as a critical arena for prevention. It is the economy where risks such as poverty, precarious work, and homelessness, can be truly addressed, as opposed to simply patched up.
The economy we could have means implementing policy instruments that ensure, for example:
People are paid enough, have job security and conditions that support a healthy life
Profitability is a means, rather than a goal in its own right
Economic activity is generated from the local up via community wealth building, rather than hoping in vain for it to trickle down
Basic needs such as food, shelter, education, and health care are affordable
Sources of unearned wealth, such as inheritance and rent and land values, are taxed more than income
Economic activities which make money from people’s struggles or profit as a result of doing harm to the planet are, if not banned, at least minimised
Prices of goods and services reflect their true cost in terms of what it took to make them, both in environmental terms and via people involved being compensated for their efforts
Success is measured in ways that reflect what people and planet need.
The economy we could have means grappling with the purpose, design, and delivery of the economy and resisting lifestyle drift.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of ideas and practices that show what is possible.
At The Next Economy, we are excited to team up with Erinch Sahan for his Australian tour to share ideas, provocations, and proof of what is possible in the world of business and investment.
Businesses and investment matter in Australia. They have a significant role in shaping economic, ecological, and social outcomes – for good, and sometimes for ill.So how can business and investment ensure that their activities and ways of working contribute to an Australia that future generations will be proud of?
Erinch is a globally renowned thought leader with expertise in business design and investment. Join us to hear from Erinch and widen the discussion about the critical role of business and investment in building the economy we could have.
Who is Erinch Sahan?
Growing up in Sydney in the 1980s and 1990s to Turkish immigrant parents, he began his professional life in the corporate sector, and from there, has increasingly focused on making businesses a positive force in the world.
His experience is varied: he has been CEO of the World Fair Trade Organization, a senior associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and recently the Business and Enterprise Lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab. He is currently leading the investment portfolio at the UK’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), driving its move to mission-related investing.
TNE’s Economic Change Program Director, Dr Katherine Trebeck, has worked with Erinch over the years and is constantly inspired by his ability to question what business can do and how it needs to change to enhance its positive impact. She describes him as “not just one of the boldest thinkers in business design, but someone who shares incredible case studies and stories of innovative business leaders delivering tangible impact”.
To build the better economy we could have in Australia, we need to think differently. Dr Katherine Trebeck, economist and Economic Change lead, is a big fan of predistribution. Here she explains why.
I often use a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ as a metaphor to explain the array of shifts in policy and practice needed to build an economy in service of people and planet. No single piece is sufficient on its own, but together, enough changes have potential to build towards to an economic system that gets things right for people and planet first time around.
To grapple with this array of actions, it can help to loosely cluster the pieces into the four corners of that jigsaw puzzle: the ‘4Ps’ of purpose, prevention, predistribution, and people power.
Here, I want to offer a few notes on the predistribution corner as it is so often missing from the conversation about the economy, with focus instead on taxation and how to better fund programs for those who are impacted by the inequalities built into our current system (‘compensating the losers’ as a report from a US think tank rather bluntly puts it).
Australia used to do fairly well in terms of predistribution (that is, for white, able-bodied males). But no longer; we’ve become an ‘assetocracy’ where access to assets tends to be what shapes peoples’ life chances and life choices.
‘It is not enough to…try to balance the inequalities generated in the market through retrospective tax and transfer. It is necessary to transform and democratise the institutional content of the market economy, rather than just compensate for its inequalities.’ – Gabriella Ramos et al
Origin story
The term predistribution was coined by the American scholar Jacob Hacker who describes it as ‘market reforms that encourage a more equal distribution of economic power and rewards even before government collects taxes or pays out benefits’.
Predistribution’s political moment in the sun came in 2011 when Ed Miliband, then leader of the UK opposition Labour party, was in the audience for a speech that Hacker gave in Oslo. Miliband returned to the UK and – briefly – championed the idea.
But predistribution is one of the most important ideas that should be high on the political agenda. Let’s look at why it matters, what it is, how it plays out in practice, and the implications for policy.
What does predistribution mean?
The essence of the idea of predistribution is ensuring that the market economy does more of the heavy lifting in delivering a more balanced divvying-up of resources. British scholar Martin O’Neill explains it as ‘the particular ways in which the economy can be shaped to disempower the privileged and to empower the disadvantaged’. Its focus is on market mechanisms that determine the distribution of wages, profits, and other flows and stocks of money.
Government comes into the predistribution story via its role in creating and shaping markets so that the results are aligned with public goals: using rules, incentives and other levers to shape market outcomes. This includes boosting (or curtailing) the bargaining power of market players such as workers, employers, and wealth holders.
Therefore, it differs from government using tax and benefits to shape the distribution of economic resources after market outcomes have emerged: this is redistribution.
We’ll come to some specifics in a moment, but you could expect to see predistribution in the form of:
Strong standards for workers (such as regulation, procurement, support for unions, and living wages).
Regulation of the financial system and corporate governance; including provisions to stop harmful activities.
Ensuring more people have a share of capital ownership, including owning businesses via worker or commubity cooperatives.
Spending to bolster people’s opportunities and bargaining power in the labour market (think education and other public services: so they are not dependent on someone’s income) and groups like unions who can stand up for workers.
Addressing how affordable certain goods and services are (for example, via price caps, subsidies, or direct provision): rather than only focusing on how much money is in people’s pockets; also being concerned with how far it stretches.
Why it matters
Inequality arises in and can be addressed via two realms. Firstly, what is sometimes called the ‘primary’ realm of work, wages and occupational pensions, and then in the secondary realm comprising taxes and benefits. Predistribution is about action in the primary realm. Here the wages that workers earn are the outcome of ‘a complex process of implicit and explicit bargaining between workers, employers, and (where they exist) unions’: the influence of each compared to the others matters, and is a function of various rules and regulations.
This is of interest to anyone interested in economic inequality because this realm is where the bulk of the balance or imbalance of economic resources arises: the ‘biggest single factor in determining the distribution of market income is the relative shares going to wages on the one hand and to capital incomes (rent, interest, dividends, and capital gains) on the other’.
Evidence from around the world bears this out too: in global terms, four fifths of inequality stems from what was going on prior to the government getting involved via tax and transfers, with only one fifth being the result of tax and transfers. The lower levels of inequality in Europe ‘cannot be explained by more equalizing tax and transfer systems… “Predistribution”, not “redistribution,” explains why Europe is less unequal than the United States’, according to Blanchet, Chancel and Gethin.
So, there are a range of reasons which mean that predistribution is worth focusing when thinking about how to achieve a more balanced distribution of economic resources:
Redistribution is not enough. As Hacker says, taxation and benefit payments ‘cannot do the work on their own’.
Predistribution, in contrast, does not require government to spend substantial quantities of public money. Instead, in reducing inequality at source governments can generate fiscal savings by reducing the need for spending downstream (on benefits), thus freeing resources to spend elsewhere.
There are a range of real politik reasons why redistribution is harder to pull off:
Policies that are about spending (for example welfare payments) are challenging politically given concerns (reasonable or otherwise) about budget deficits and overall debt.
Governments that do seek to be proactive on the redistribution front often face resistance and even backlash, as Hacker describes. He explains that the wealthiest have a tendency to complain – loudly – about increased taxes on their income and wealth.
On the other hand, it is often easier to harness the ‘political space’ for action on predistribution measures than it is for taxing and benefits provision.
Finally, although not noted by its original proponents, predistribution also matters because of the growing recognition that economic growth-based agendas are incompatible with keeping the world’s environment within planetary boundaries. Redistribution tends to rely on the economic growth: grow, tax, and spend back via welfare. So taking the science around the environmental limits to growth seriously compels consideration of mechanisms to ensure a good life for more people without having to rely on the grow and redistribute recipe.
Implications for action
Convinced that predistribution is worth getting behind? Superb. What might you want to think about encouraging – or, if you happen to work in the right place in government, actually implementing?
Actions that policy makers need to be prepared to implement to promote predistribution include:
Support for worker owned cooperatives (for example, via reduced taxes, simplified legislation, and education of ancillary services so they are more supportive of cooperatives).
Legislation for worker rights and conditions (such as job security, being able to request flexible schedules and access to paid leave for family care).
Regulations to strengthen the position of trade unions (what Hacker describes as a ‘countervailing power’) and corporate governance that puts workers on company boards.
Enactment, and enforcement of minimum wages set at the level of living wages.
Curbing extremes of high pay (for example, increased taxes when CEO to median pay exceeds a certain ratio).
Broad based service provision that bolsters people’s endowment of human capital (such as decent education, vocational training, and health services).
Addressing affordability of basic needs (for example, via provision of affordable housing, price caps on important services, and competition policy).
Support for people who would otherwise struggle in the labour market to access good jobs (perhaps even a job guarantee).
Regulation of financial markets and promotion of financial stability: for example, of how financial institutions behave (reducing high frequency trades, for instance); shifts in corporate governance; and ensuring capital flows to productive activities (rather than subsidising harmful activities and products).
Public procurement with social goals in contracts.
Conclusion
Predistribution is a critical lever for generating a more balanced distribution of wealth. It’s an upstream mechanism that heads off inequality before it arises by shaping market outcomes to be fairer, rather than depending on government to even things up once inequality has emerged. There are a range of actions governments and other economic players can take to predistribute economic resources. Now it’s time to start talking about it more and putting the changes in place to make the most of its potential to create the economy we could have!
Six councils spanning one of Queensland’s most distinctive outback regions have launched a Future Economy Strategy: a practical, community-led plan to diversify local economies and manage change on their own terms.
Developed by the South West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (SWQROC) in partnership with economic development agency The Next Economy (TNE), the Strategy covers the Maranoa, Balonne, Murweh, Quilpie, Paroo and Bulloo local government areas – a vast region defined by deep community resilience, extreme weather events and a changing agriculture and gas sector.
The Strategy was shaped by more than 77 contributors – council staff, producers, First Nations organisations, local businesses and community members – and identifies seven opportunity areas tailored to how the South West Queensland economy actually works.
View from the Cunnamulla hot spring. Credit: The Next Economy
From converting waste to energy at the Roma saleyards, to green ammonia feasibility in Balonne to stabilise fertiliser costs, to the Cunnamulla Aboriginal Corporation for Health coordinating 33 visiting services for remote residents – the plan is grounded in what is already working and what communities say needs to come next.
“This region has capable communities that pride themselves on practical problem solving.” Simone Talbot, SWQROC Executive Officer, says. “Global changes such as geopolitics, weather extremes and the cost of living are prompting us to consider what does ‘transition’ mean for our region. Our vast distances mean we are at the very limits of energy infrastructure and are heavily reliant on road transport and so we need to think differently about future opportunities and how we participate in a future economy.”
The Strategy includes a tailored roadmap for each of the six councils, scaled to real staff and budget constraints. In Quilpie, that means exploring microgrids and back-freight opportunities to cut costs. In Murweh, it means expanding on tourism assets like the Cosmos Centre and WWII heritage sites. In Maranoa, it means managing the coexistence of wind, gas and agriculture through early community engagement on the Bottle Tree Energy Park.
“What struck us most was how much is already happening here,” says Saideh Kent, project lead at The Next Economy. “These communities are progressing local solutions that suit their context. Our job was to listen carefully about their experience of transition and change, connect the dots, and build a plan that reflects the unique assets of South West Queensland and reflects what the community actually wants and needs. Not what someone from outside thinks transition should look like.”
The publication of the Future Economy Strategy follows a significant milestone earlier this year, when a delegation of SWQROC mayors travelled to Canberra to present key messages directly to federal politicians and agencies. There, they made the case for coordinated investment in local solutions to housing, digital connectivity, freight infrastructure and workforce transition for fossil-fuel-exposed regions.
“We went to Canberra because we wanted decision-makers to hear directly from us, to understand our context and consider an approach to change that is appropriate to our economic, social and climatic environment,” Simone says, adding: “This region has always contributed to the national economy. Now we’re asking for support to back our own solutions so we can keep contributing into the future.”
Where to from here
SWQROC will now move into implementation, with councils progressing priority actions from their individual roadmaps while coordinating on regional challenges too large for any single council to tackle alone. This includes on waste recovery, energy advocacy, freight and logistics, housing and workforce initiatives.
The Strategy also sets out clear asks of industry, the Queensland Government and the Federal Government: from proactive planning for gas expansion and contraction and transparent local procurement, to rural grid upgrades, regional waste solutions, improved telecommunications and co-investment in worker housing.
“This region is already managing change and transition, adopting innovative approaches that build on their local strengths,” Saideh says. “This Strategy brings together and builds on this ingenuity looking at the opportunities to create a resilient future.”
The South West Queensland Future Economy Strategy is available here:
TNE program director Jacqui Bell joined economic development practitioners from across NSW this week to explore what a wellbeing economy looks like in practice – and what the Hay community’s approach to transition can teach the rest of us.
Earlier this week, TNE program director Jacqui Bell presented to economic development practitioners from across NSW local and state government at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s 2026 Regional Economic Development and Investment Attraction event.
Her session took a slightly sideways look at the economy: exploring what a wellbeing economy looks like and grounding this big-picture conversation in the practical work Hay Shire Council and the Hay community have been doing to think differently about economic change.
Across the broader event, a clear theme emerged: councils and regions are navigating increasingly complex conditions, from renewable energy development and industrial growth to shifting investment patterns, housing pressures, workforce demands, infrastructure constraints, planning system challenges and community cohesion. The scale, pace and constant state of flux are making it increasingly difficult for regions to manage change, plan strategically and act with confidence.
Local government is deep in the trenches of this work – trying to govern and lead through overlapping economic transitions, often with limited resources, unreasonable timeframes and imperfect information.
For us, this points to the need to rethink approaches to economic development: to redefine what “good” looks like, work with regions rather than doing development to them, and build from each place’s unique strengths, local economic system dynamics and advantages.
As Jacqui noted: “For many regions, maybe the question is no longer ‘how do we get certainty?’ or ‘how do we attract investment?’ but instead: ‘how do we organise early enough to manage the downstream impacts of our current economic system, while addressing upstream drivers and shaping new opportunities to create value?’”
“In a world where certainty is harder to come by, the challenge is not waiting for perfect conditions. It is building the local knowledge, capability and confidence to navigate uncertainty – and shape development in ways that leave regions stronger for the long term.
“As we shared in our session, the economy is not fixed. It is shaped by decisions, values, institutions and power – and it can be redesigned.”
There were many bright sparks and wonderful examples of “Lego wins” shared across the two days, says Jacqui. With the right support, local governments are well placed to do this reimagining and drive the change we need to see – building economies that better serve people, places and planet.
‘Building the economy we could have’ – A series of ideas, case studies and concepts exploring how we move to an economy that works for people and planet.
Australia’s future depends on whether we can move beyond piecemeal reforms to embrace systemic change.
Last year, we released The Economy We Could Have – a paper that looks under the bonnet of Australia’s economy: rising inequality, the erosion of the ‘fair go’, but also a story of hope. Of momentum growing across the country, and of enterprises and communities already leading the way.
The response was one of excitement, speaking to a deep desire for transformative economic change rather than the same old, tired recipes. Now, with Australia facing new economic pressures including an oil crisis, the impetus to act is greater.
So, we are doubling down. The ideas that politicians and decision makers reach for in a crisis matter. We want those ideas to be the ones that put wellbeing at the centre: dignity, purpose, participation, fairness, and nature. As a foundation, rather than an afterthought.
That’s where our new series comes in.
Building The Economy We Could Have explores the ideas, case studies and concepts that show how we get there. Right now, there are many isolated or ‘Lego wins’, the examples that show what can be done better, yet scattered and disconnected. We are turning our focus to see these as building blocks: things worth doing more of, and connecting across the country.
We’ll share examples that show another way is possible and outline the potential of wellbeing economic concepts in practice, with case studies, explainers, interviews, and of course drawing on our work in regional communities looking to build resilient and thriving communities through times of change. ‘
The series includes:
Explainers on wellbeing economy concepts and how they are showing up in Australia
Case studies of enterprises, communities and policy makers doing differently
Australian history showing we have charted different approaches before
Interviews with people bringing fresh ideas and approaches.
We are excited to uplift the work that is steadily charting the way forward, drawing on Australian’s strengths as people who back their neighbours, champion local ideas, and have a long track record of showing the world what policies that work for people and planet can look like.
This series is a starting point for deeper thinking and conversation. We’d love to hear what resonates, or what we are missing. Contact us here.
Earthworker Cooperative Network gives us a glance into a wellbeing economy in action, where workers build the things we need in a worker-owned factory in Morwell.
To build the economy we could have, we must make sure housing is designed for people, not profit. Nightingale Housing are doing just this, as a not-for-profit housing developer, building environmentally and socially minded apartments, sold at cost.
We sit down with Bill Mithen and Annie Smits from Neighbourhood Economics to chat about how they’re using Community Wealth Building to transform the economies of Norlane and Corio in Victoria.
Australia used to do fairly well in terms of predistribution. To build the better economy we could have in Australia, we need to go back to a focus on building a fairer economy by design.
Community Wealth Building is an approach to keep wealth local, build economic democracy and improve mental health. It can also improve resilience and control over our economy during times of economic turbulence and the climate crisis.
Drawn from case studies, explainers, interviews and on-the-ground experience, our new series explores what it looks like to build an economy that works for people and planet – not as an abstract idea, but as something already taking shape.
Last week the Hay Economic Transition Roadmap was launched in Hay with the people who brought it to life – Hay Shire Council and around 30 of the 250 community members who contributed in one way or another over three years of deep engagement. This roadmap isn’t just a document; it’s a genuine expression of what the community wants for its future, and we’re so excited to have supported its development and have it out in the world.
Led by Hay Shire Council with support from The Next Economy, the Roadmap brings together local knowledge, priorities and practical actions to guide the next decade of economic change – building on Hay’s strengths and preparing for what’s coming. It is designed to align investment with community aspirations and catalyse coordinated, collective action for change – with the community in the driver’s seat.
We sat down with our Land Program Director Jacqui Bell to talk about what she’s learned over the past couple of years and what this means for how we think about regional economic transitions.
Why are region-wide economic transition plans needed?
Communities like Hay are navigating compounding pressures all at once – things like housing shortages, workforce gaps, industry shifts and climate exposure. Band-aids on broken systems won’t cut it. We need upstream change that builds on local strengths and focuses on practical solutions that respond to the unique characteristics of a place. That is, change that generates value locally – not simply chasing narrow national targets or technology mandates.
Working at the regional level connects the dots between sectors and industries to tackle challenges and create new opportunities in ways no single farm, business or government agency can do alone. In agricultural regions like Hay for example, regional planning and coordination creates the enabling environment for local businesses and farmers to ‘move’ and explore new partnerships, de-risk innovation and diversify on-farm income.
For new industry proponents, a regional plan signals where opportunity exists and how shared value can be created – and in many cases, collaboration with regional stakeholders is what makes the business case for investment stack up. For farmers, it enables economies of scale, de-risked investment, opportunities to lower external inputs and new business activities that simply aren’t viable farm by farm. We see examples of this already in efforts to get good outcomes for nature – where working at a regional level, not a farm level sometimes makes a lot more sense.
Regional collaboration isn’t always straightforward – but there are organisations working out how to do it well, helping landholders, residents and Councils find the mechanisms and models to sustain this work over the long term.
So, what does this look like in practice?
Hay sits in the South West Renewable Energy Zone, a real opportunity for the region if managed well. The Roadmap process is already delivering results. From housing solutions, new agricultural industries, expanded childcare, and two renewable energy projects progressing with broad community support.
There are many more opportunities emerging. For example, offtake industries – businesses that take locally-produced energy and use it productively – preferably for the benefit of local industries and businesses. Think freight, fuel, and fertilisers. A sustainable fertiliser business using renewable energy is already under establishment, with regional producers committed to buying at the scale needed to make it viable.
And it’s not just new businesses. Existing ones are adapting too. A local engineering firm is moving into water infrastructure for energy projects – a specialisation with applications well beyond Hay.
This isn’t just aspiration –the momentum is real and work is happening already on the ground.
Jacqui shares the final Roadmap with community members at the launch in late April.
What’s the role of Local Government in all this?
Council plays an important role – facilitation, convening, connecting the dots, building the appetite for change, countering misinformation etc. Support for renewable energy development in a region like Hay didn’t happen because of some national campaign – it was because of the rigorous and ongoing communication and engagement that Council facilitated, the discussions they brought together, the open door they had to proponents, community, businesses.
Why is community involvement important?
When local people are involved and are part of a group behind a vision and supported to be champions of economic change, momentum builds. We could see this in real time last week, when one of our working group members shared how they’ve been talking to a local organisation about progressing an action in the Roadmap. This is where the magic happens – community starts to talk, and action is sparked.
Why is regional work like the Hay Roadmap important?
Regional work matters – it is the connective tissue that holds the regional economic system together and helps each individual component move in the right direction. It’s also critical for sectoral transitions – to understand how characteristics of a place shape or hinder the big shifts that are needed, such as the decarbonisation of agriculture, for instance.
The work in Hay is important because it tells a strong and compelling story about what good regional development and economic transitions can look like across Australia. Communities facing big shifts – new energy, industry change, climate pressure and workforce gaps are increasingly deciding to shape their own futures rather than wait. The ones doing it well are planning ahead, building on local strengths, and asking the right questions: What are we transitioning to? What does good development look like here? How do we make sure benefits flow locally?
Hay is one of the clearest examples of what this looks like when it’s done well, and the lessons here matter well beyond one town
But a Roadmap is just a document, isn’t it?
People sometimes roll their eyes at the thought of another planning document, but for The Next Economy, the document is simply the artefact – the process, the engagement, the coordination and local capacity building is what creates change and builds momentum for new partnerships, new opportunities and community leadership of the future.
That said, the pride that the Hay community feel for the Roadmap, and the value they see it provides them is huge. This was again demonstrated by the conversations we were part of and feedback we received from local people during our visit to Hay last week when we launched the Roadmap with the community. Having a document like this provides a strong signal to investors, collaborators and government. It’s something that everyone in the region can point to demonstrate the work they’ve done, the direction they’re heading, their priorities and what doing business in Hay looks like.
The number of queries we and the region have had even after the soft launch of the Roadmap last week is testimony to its power. The Roadmap sends a signal that Hay is a strategic partner to change with people that have the mindsets and willingness to explore opportunities and create shared value.
So, what should we take out of all of this?
Hay has and is doing something genuinely impressive – a community of this size taking the initiative to plan ahead, build consensus, and deliver real outcomes. It’s a clear example of what responsible development and economic transitions managed well can looks like across Australia. For other regions to go the distance, they need the same meaningful engagement and real backing, including funded local coordination roles that turn good plans into lasting outcomes.
Jacqui (far right) celebrating the launch with (from left) TNE Senior Project Officer Doug Ruuska, Hay Shire Council Economic Development Officer Alison McLean and Hay Shire Council Youth and Economic Development Officer Kylie Brettschneider.
Australia’s economy may appear strong on the surface, but beneath the bonnet lie deep structural challenges: from rising inequality and insecure work to ecological breakdown. These demand more than piecemeal fixes; they need upstream economic transformation.
Our Economic Change lead, Dr Katherine Trebeck, alongside Josh Devine from Regen Melbourne, hosted a workshop at Progress 2026 on going upstream for this economic transformation. Progress is the largest social justice conference in Australia, with more than 1,500 people attendees, 140 speakers from across the world and 60 sessions on how to win the change we need for people and planet. Here are some insights from the workshop.
Katherine Trebeck and Josh Devine from Regen Melbourne at Progress 2026.
The roots of the problems
The workshop opened with a provocative question from Frances Moore Lappé: “Why are we collectively creating a world that none of us as individuals actually want?”
Using upstream thinking, which is where attendees traced these symptoms to deeper economic roots rather than just looking downstream at the problems this system creates, they came up with the causes of these issues. These included corporate capture, extractive production systems, property as investment rather than shelter, deunionisation, and incentives that prioritise profits over social benefits.
The vision: naming the world we want
Rather than spending all our time on the problems of today, the group also imagined alternatives to our current economic system. Drawing inspiration from Regen Melbourne, Indigenous wisdom, and The Next Economy’s regional research, participants named what a better economy needed to deliver: dignity, fairness, connection, and ecological care.
“Lego wins” as glimmers of light
The workshop celebrated existing examples of positive change, what we refer to as ‘Lego wins’, the instances of what we need more of to build the economy we could have. Examples of these wins pointed to by the participants included:
Community ownership: Hepburn Wind, energy co-ops, housing cooperatives
Food systems: Oz Harvest, food co-ops, farmers markets, Buy Nothing groups
Environmental action: Kelp farming, native nurseries, rooftop solar uptake
Social infrastructure: Community gardens, third spaces, community toy and tool libraries
Policy wins: Social procurement policies, minimum rental standards, Medicare
These examples demonstrate that alternative economic models are already emerging across Australia.
Dominant mindsets
Yet these ‘Lego wins’ are not yet adding up to systemic change at the scale and pace needed. Pervasive myths and assumptions lock policy into inadequate downstream efforts. Some of these myths and assumptions called out by workshop participants include:
Productivity leading to higher living standards for everyone
Fiscal responsibility being more important than environmental stewardship
Humans are primarily selfish and competitive (homo economicus)
Welfare as a ‘burden’ rather than social good
Economics is a science with hard, unchangeable rules
Rising inequality, insecure work and ecological breakdown reveal deep structural problems in Australia’s economy that demand more than piecemeal fixes. ‘The economy we could have’ workshop showed that these issues are not inevitable — they’re the result of choices shaped by power and values — and that alternative economic models are already emerging across the country.
Read the report‘The economy we could have’ for more details on where we can go to from here.
📢 Stay tuned: In the coming months, we’ll be releasing a series that dives deeper into the glimmers of light we see in Australia for building ‘The economy we could have’.
The ISP runs to hundreds of pages and helps guide energy decisions across the country, yet few people read it. We chatted with climate and energy specialist Franzika Curran to break down its importance.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan, usually shortened to the “ISP”, is not the kind of document most people would pick up for a casual read. It is a large technical report full of modelling, forecasts and system planning – and it quietly shapes decisions that play out across the country.
To help unpack what it is and why it matters, we caught up with climate and energy specialist Franziska Curran, who helped contribute to our recent ISP submission and who has spent time sifting through the hundreds of pages of the draft plan.
Franziska, for people who have never heard of it – what is the Integrated System Plan?
At its core, the ISP is a very large piece of analysis that asks a fairly simple question: what is the lowest cost way for Australia to meet its future energy needs while also meeting government policy goals?
To answer that question, the Australian Energy Market Operator draws on years of data, modelling and consultation. It considers how demand might change, what kinds of energy generation are likely to be built, how much transmission will be needed, and how all of that fits together as coal power stations retire and new energy sources come online.
The result is a long-term plan that outlines what the electricity system could look like over the next two decades, and what infrastructure would likely be needed to support it.
It does not directly approve or build projects. Instead, it acts more like a map. It shows the pathway that planners, investors and governments are expected to follow when making decisions about new infrastructure.
If it is a technical planning document, how does it shape what happens in real places?
A successful energy transition requires a significant amount of new infrastructure. That includes new generation such as wind and solar, as well as the transmission lines that move electricity across the system.
AEMO has a responsibility to plan for the transmission network needed to support that system and the ISP helps fulfil that role.
By setting out the direction the system is expected to take, the plan sends signals to investors, network companies and planners about where new infrastructure will likely be required. Those signals then flow through into more detailed planning and investment decisions.
Over time, those decisions shape what gets built and where.
What changes when a project is labelled “actionable”?
Within the ISP, some transmission projects are labelled as “actionable”.
That label matters as transmission projects cannot progress through the regulatory approvals process unless they are identified as actionable within the plan. In that sense, the ISP acts as a gatekeeper.
Once a project receives that designation, the project proponent can move into the next stages of regulatory approval and planning. Future versions of the ISP then continue to check that those projects still align with what the electricity system needs.
Why do regional areas tend to host so much of this infrastructure?
Much of the renewable energy Australia needs will be built in regional areas, and this is for a number of reasons.
One reason is the quality of renewable resources. Wind and solar generation tends to be strongest in specific geographic areas. Building projects in places with strong resources allows the system to generate more energy more efficiently.
Another factor is scale. Large renewable energy projects require significant land and are often built in clusters that make the most of existing or planned transmission infrastructure.
Concentrating development in areas with strong renewable resources and suitable space can make better use of the network that connects them. If large projects were spread thinly across the entire country, significantly more transmission infrastructure would be needed to connect them all.
What tends to determine whether this development benefits a community?
For me, one of the most important factors is supporting local leadership.
Where communities are actively planning for the future they want and organising around that vision, they are often better placed to shape the opportunities that come with new infrastructure.
That kind of leadership can help ensure projects align with local development goals and that benefits are captured locally.
That is also why I think the work of The Next Economy is so important. Taking the time to understand what communities want – and do not want – in their future, making sure people have access to clear information about what is coming and how decisions are made, and helping communities articulate their priorities. This is so important in ensuring development supports local aspirations rather than working against them.
What is often misunderstood about the ISP?
For many people, the ISP can feel quite distant or abstract. It is a large technical document, and it can be easy to dismiss it or criticise it without looking closely at what sits behind it.
But the plan represents years of analysis, modelling and consultation. It attempts to map out a pathway for a very complex transition, bringing together data about energy demand, infrastructure, technology and policy.
It may not always make for easy reading, but it is a significant piece of work that plays an important role in shaping how the electricity system evolves over time.
The final AEMO ISP 2026 is expected to be released in June this year.
Australia is rewriting its national environmental laws in response to widespread recognition that the current system is failing both nature and communities. In our submission to the reform process, we shared what we’ve heard from regional Australians around how to make these laws work for people, place and the environment.
Australia’s national environmental laws (commonly referred to as the EPBC Act) are under reform, a long-awaited response to widespread recognition that the existing system has been failing both nature and communities.
Regional Australians and communities are on the frontline of economic and environmental change. Major infrastructure and industry projects are reshaping landscapes, economies and communities at a pace not seen for decades. These developments will often fall under the scope of these reforms, and how the new national environmental laws are designed and implemented will directly affect regional people, places and industries. Getting it right for the regions is key to getting it right for the country.
Lake Moondarra in Mt Isa, an important water resource for locals. Credit: Chris Grose
At The Next Economy, we made a submission to the recent national review process. Drawing on years of work alongside regional communities, we highlighted how clear and effective national environmental laws are essential not only for protecting biodiversity, but for ensuring regional communities can participate in, inform, and benefit from sustainable development.
We made a number of suggestions in our submission – including the need to involve regions as active partners in decisions around land, water, biodiversity and cultural heritage. Done well, this approach can build trust and provide long-term certainty for communities, industry and government.
Regions care deeply about the environment, and want a say in looking after it
People in regional areas have a deep connection to their local environments. First Nations peoples continue to care for Country they have for thousands of years. Farmers, land managers, and local organisations are restoring landscapes, protecting biodiversity, and trialling regenerative practices.
The clear message from across our engagement is: people want to contribute to environmental stewardship, not be excluded from decisions that shape the places they live and work in. In turn, national environmental laws should reflect and support this shared responsibility.
We’re not asking for handouts. We want the government to help us build sustainable, thriving and diverse regional communities.
Hunter Valley, NSW, resident
The pace of development is accelerating, and planning needs to keep up
From energy infrastructure to new mines and transport projects, many regional communities of Australia are experiencing a scale of development not seen before in their lifetimes. While most recognise the importance of reducing emissions and diversifying local economies, there is also legitimate concern the speed of development could damage the ecosystems they depend on.
For example, regional councils and planning bodies are under pressure, often managing overlapping project proposals without the resources or tools to coordinate them well. Proposed reforms to introduce bioregional planning could help manage cumulative impacts most effectively if the plans are developed transparently, with strong national environmental standards and meaningful community input.
National Environmental Standards set the rules and benchmarks that guide how environmental decisions are made. Embedding the intent of the Standards into the reform bill itself avoids the risk of processes being inconsistent, politically vulnerable, and failing to meet their intended goals.
What we have left in terms of biodiversity is precious and irreplaceable.
Uralla, NSW, resident
Community hopes and concerns around how renewables might impact nature and land use, Uralla NSW. Credit: Lyndsay Walsh
Community engagement is essential to building trust
Across every region we work in, from coal regions to those with agriculture and primary production as their foundation, people are asking for the same thing: early, clear and respectful engagement. They want to be involved in shaping the future, not just responding to decisions after they’re made.
Good engagement can’t be rushed and should be covered in its own Standard. It needs to be local, inclusive, and transparent – especially when dealing with complex planning issues. Structured dialogue, space for different views and clear feedback loops are essential to making engagement meaningful.
Staying informed, sharing what we are witnessing on the ground, and engaging in new ideas helps us better support Mount Isa families and individuals in need.
Mount Isa, Qld, resident
What’s needed to make these reforms work for regional Australia
Our submission to the reform process highlighted several opportunities to improve outcomes through the EPBC Act:
1. Participatory regional planning
Our experience working with regions highlights that effective regional planning considers cumulative environmental, social, economic and cultural impacts. Processes should be place- based, participatory and inclusive of diverse local voices including Traditional Owners and communities, who have local knowledge of land, water and climate pressures.
2. Safeguards around fast-track pathways
While faster assessments may be beneficial, they should not come at the cost of strong environmental standards or community input. Trust in planning systems relies on transparent, consistent rules that apply to all projects – including large and high- risk developments.
3. Local benefits from offsets and restoration
Offset mechanisms provide an opportunity to support environmental repair in the regions they affect. That means investing in locally governed land care and restoration efforts that create jobs, strengthen drought resilience, and go some way in compensating for damage and impacts to local ecosystems.
4. Embedding First Nations leadership
It is critical that environmental laws respect cultural values and rights, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Recognising First Nations knowledge, governance and land management is essential to ecological restoration and climate resilience.
5. Adapting to climate risk
Assessment frameworks must account for a changing climate, not just today’s conditions. Climate risk and future impacts on ecosystems, water and communities should be central to all planning and approvals.
We will know we are achieving a good energy transition when the environment is protected and nurtured.
Latrobe Valley, Vic, resident
Looking ahead: implementation will be the true test
Sunset on the Hay Plains, NSW. Credit: Jacqui Bell
Legislation matters, but what matters more is how it’s applied on the ground. For our national environmental laws to be effective, implementation should happen in ways that:
Deliver real improvements for the environment
Support strong, inclusive regional economies
Build public trust through transparency and accountability
Reflect the values and knowledge of local communities.
Regional Australia is where these reforms will play out – in our forests, farms, waterways, landscapes and towns. The knowledge and leadership already present in these communities is a critical part of getting it right.
In November, The Next Economy travelled through South West Queensland, meeting councils, industry and local leaders to explore what transition means for the region. In this piece, our energy project officer Lyndsay Walsh reflects on the trip and how planning can reflect its realities, strengths and priorities.
We’re working alongside the South West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (SWQROC) – a collaboration of six councils – to identify practical, locally driven opportunities that can help guide investment, attract funding, and support the region to manage change on its own terms.
We talk a lot about transition needing to be locally defined and nowhere is that clearer than here. South West Queensland is vast, roughly the size of Malaysia, but home to around 25,000 people. That scale and spread brings unique challenges, from maintaining road and energy networks across long distances, to adapting to an increasingly variable climate.
Reanna, Lyndsay and Saideh visiting Roma saleyards, in Maranoa.
As many of the people we spoke to pointed out: a policy written in Canberra or Brisbane simply can’t be copied and pasted here. It needs to be grounded in these local conditions, build on regional strengths, and help communities shape change in ways that work for them.
The drivers of change affecting us all
Right across the country, people and businesses are feeling the effects of changes happening globally. Climate extremes, shifting markets, new supply chain requirements and changing investment decisions are all influencing how regions grow and plan.
There’s growing attention on things like food security, clean energy, land stewardship and infrastructure. Net zero targets, geopolitical uncertainty, and the push for secure, sustainable supply chains are shaping decisions about what gets built, where industries invest, and who they partner with.
These aren’t abstract issues for South West Queensland. They are already showing up in tangible ways – from how weather affects freight and crops, to pressure on local infrastructure, or in rising insurance costs and supply chain expectations. This all points to the need for forward planning, not only to manage risk, but to actively shape the region’s future based on its own strengths and aspirations.
Listening to how people are making sense of change
That’s what we set out to support. Driving further west, the bitumen fading to gravel and the soil deepening from orange to red, we sat down with people in council chambers, on farms, in paddocks and over café counters.
We workshopped with councillors grappling with long-term planning in the face of immediate pressures. We stood in the dust at Roma Saleyards, witnessing the operations of the largest cattle market in the southern hemisphere. We toured cotton farms and vegetable farms, seeing how water, land, climate and policy meet in complex ways. And we spoke with business owners and community leaders in main street shops and offices, talking through the changes they are seeing on their streets, their challenges, and what they’re excited about for the future.
Everywhere we went, people were already doing the work of thinking ahead, weighing up risks and testing new ideas. The questions they’re asking are practical, grounded, and focused on one thing: how to make sure their communities stay strong, whatever lies ahead.
Reanna facilitating discussion at one of our council workshops, in Balonne.
Local perspectives on transition, and our insights on managing change well
Throughout our conversations, we heard a wide range of views about transition: what it means, why it matters, and whether it’s even the right word.
We often hear these kinds of questions and reflections in our work. They’re thoughtful, valid, and worth taking seriously, so we felt it might be helpful to share how we responded in this context.
“Transition will happen whether we like it or not, and we need to capture the benefits that relate to our shire.”
Transition is often not a choice – it’s happening. But how it plays out locally is up to the region. With a clear strategy, communities can position themselves to attract investment, support existing industries to adapt, and pursue new opportunities that reflect their priorities. Doing nothing risks those benefits being missed altogether and exposing yourself and your community to the risks of an unmanaged transition.
“Why do we need to manage change? Why can’t we just let it happen ‘organically’?”
Change is already underway and often driven by forces outside of local control. Letting it play out without planning usually means responding late, after the impacts have already landed. Planning isn’t about forcing change. It’s about getting ahead of it, understanding what’s coming, and shaping outcomes in a way that benefits the region.
“If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Things might be holding up for now, but many people are already feeling the cracks – whether it’s rising energy costs, workforce shortages or the loss of services. Waiting until it breaks makes it harder and more expensive to respond. Planning now protects what’s working and helps steer change in ways that make the region stronger.
“Don’t kill the patient by solving the issue.”
This is a valid concern – sometimes well-meaning solutions do more harm than good. That’s why local and meaningful participation is critical. This work is not about imposing answers from outside. It’s about working with people who know the place best, to find the right balance between protecting what matters and evolving where needed. A careful, practical approach can manage change without causing harm.
“We don’t fully understand what our opportunities are. What are we even transitioning to?”
There’s no single answer to this. The drivers of change – from climate and markets to policy shifts – are largely global and national. But how a region responds is deeply local, and depends on its industries, people, landscape and goals. The goal isn’t to meet someone else’s definition of transition, but planning for change in a way that’s practical, grounded and focused on managing it well. Or, in other words, transition to a future state where planning is informed by an understanding of the risks and opportunities being created by change, appropriate to local conditions, and deliberate about the outcomes the region wants to achieve.
The Cunnamulla fella taking in the sunset, in Paroo.
Developing the South West Queensland Regional Transition Strategy
This Strategy, due out in March 2026, is about helping the region plan for change on its own terms. It will set shared priorities, highlights local strengths and constraints, and identify practical actions to guide investment, shape policy and build collaboration across the region.
We recognise the real limitations that scale and distance create out west, the scale of change communities are being asked to navigate, and the limits of doing so without the right support. This strategy will aim to ease that challenge by setting clear regional priorities, identifying practical opportunities, and helping councils and communities advocate for the resources, partnerships and investment they need to respond in ways that work for them.
Watch this space for further updates on the project.
Regional Councils play a critical role in ensuring renewable energy development is fair, well managed and delivers lasting local value. Drawing on our work with regions, The Next Economy is mapping how Councils contribute at each stage of the development pathway to secure long-term community benefits.
Lisa Lumsden, Senior Project Officer facilitating group discussion with local government leaders at the Regional Leaders Summit, Newcastle August 2025.
We know our place really well and we put our communities at the forefront of our decisions
Council participant at the inaugural Regional Leaders Summit, August 2025, Newcastle
Councils across Australia are being pragmatic and strategic about renewable energy development in their region – focussing on what they can do to make the most of the situation, to minimise impacts and leverage the potential for the long-term local outcomes they want.
So, what is involved in achieving that?
In short – A lot.
Drawing on work in regions such as Uralla and Hay as well as recent workshops at the Regional Leaders Summit and Gippsland New Energy Conference, The Next Economy has developed insights into the activities Councils are implementing to improve the outcomes of renewable energy development and create shared strategic value across Australia.
In mapping these over the last few months the following two groups of Council activities have emerged:
1. Development Pathway Activities: These capture the types of actions Councils can take at different stages of the renewable energy project development pathway to:
ensure community participation and development that is shaped by local knowledge and priorities;
manage unwanted impacts on the community, local infrastructure, environment and local economy, and;
facilitate development in a way that creates lasting value.
The development pathway mapping helps to answer questions such as:
What community engagement activities, plans and documents help Councils demonstrate they are representing their region, and at what stage of the renewable energy development pathway should that work happen?
What service and infrastructure upgrades – from roads and housing to water and waste – need to be prioritised to minimise local disruptions, development delays, and to leverage improved long term infrastructure outcomes for the community?
Timing is a critical factor for these activities, with many needing to be addressed, at or before, different points along the renewable energy development pathway (spanning pre-feasibility, through to construction, operation and end of life).
2. Foundational Council Activities – These arethe essential, ongoing work that underpins the Development Pathway Activities and help to form part of the enabling environment for strong regional partnerships through development. The foundations include:
Capacity and capability building
Leadership, coordination and collaboration
Advocacy and inclusion
Regular, clear and honest communication and engagement with the community
Lisa Lumsden, Senior Project Officer, notes:
Councils can and are contributing to local outcomes from renewable energy development…these insights highlight how critical it is to resource Councils and regional leaders appropriately.
The Next Economy is continuing to bring these insights together, working with regional leaders and Councils to get feedback and explore how best to share them – both to highlight the solutions being pioneered locally and to inspire and support other regions across Australia grappling with similar changes and opportunities.
The new Striking a New Deal report highlights what regional areas need from renewable energy development. Our engagement in Uralla Shire shows how these national issues are playing out locally.
The big picture
Across Australia’s regions hosting large scale renewable energy, you will hear a mix of pride, frustration and worry. Pride in helping power the country’s clean energy future, mixed with annoyance of the little recognition from the big cities of the heavy lift they are doing to supply the nation’s power. Frustration that so much about wind, solar and battery projects feel unclear. And Worry about the pressure they could put on housing, already stretched services, and the character of local towns.
SaND project leads (ProjectsJSA, TNE, RE-Alliance, FRRR) at the Regional Leaders Forum in Newcastle
These realities are at the heart of a recent report, Striking a New Deal for Renewables in Regions, written under the Striking a New Deal collaboration. It draws on insights from leaders in communities already experiencing significant renewable energy investment and spells out what people say they need to feel confident about the shift: clear and accessible information, honest conversations about risks as well as opportunities, investment in housing, services and infrastructure before the impacts hit, and binding agreements so benefits arrive and last.
Zooming in on Uralla Shire
Much of this will sound familiar to anyone living in a renewable energy hotspot, but it is important to continue to highlight these issues so policymakers and industry can respond.
In June 2025, we ran community workshops and conversations with around 150 residents in Uralla Shire, which sits in the New England Renewable Energy Zone. We heard from a wide range of locals, and what we heard echoed the SaND report almost point for point.
One of five SaND community workshops carried out in Uralla Shire
Uncertainty and trust
How do we beat all the misinformation going around?
Uralla Shire resident
People told us they do not know what will be built, when, or how projects will fit together. This lack of clarity fuels anxiety and leaves room for rumours to grow. We have collected a long list of community questions which shows that most residents know little about the details of development and are not sure where to turn for reliable answers.
When people are not given timely and accurate information, they fill the gaps themselves, and the risk of misinformation rises. People told us they want developers and government to be proactive in explaining what is and is not yet known, rather than letting people find out in fragments over time.
Balancing benefits and risks
The report calls for “risk and opportunity accounts” which are plain language summaries of what is promised, what is at risk and how it will be managed. People in Uralla want exactly that. They also want to see the full picture, including cumulative impacts. Many asked how multiple projects together will affect local water supplies, road networks, housing, and biodiversity.
Housing was the most urgent concern. Residents fear rising rents and fewer homes for locals as temporary workforces move in. Health and aged care services are already under strain. Roads, water and waste systems are under similar pressures.
At the same time, people see opportunities such as upgrading infrastructure, training local young people for good jobs, revitalising community spaces and restoring nature.
I can see things have got to change. But my concern is the soul of Uralla.
Uralla Shire resident
Some of our younger participants at another community workshop
Securing a fair deal
Both the SaND report and Uralla locals are calling for certainty in agreements between developers and communities, not just handshake promises. People want commitments that survive a change of project ownership. They want these commitments to cover things like job pathways for local youth, healthcare investment, housing solutions, and protection of farmland, biodiversity and the Shire’s heritage.
If we cannot fight it, make it better.
Uralla Shire resident
Building from strengths
In Uralla, we have taken a strengths-based approach. This means starting with what works and what people value. The active volunteer networks, the character and creativity of main street Uralla, the entrepreneurial spirit in its many independent shops, and the strong sense of neighbours looking out for one another as seen during the recent snow event. Building on these assets is essential if renewable energy development is to enhance the community rather than erode it.
Legacy is the name of the game, no two ways about that.
Uralla Shire resident
And what came out clearly is that residents do not want business as usual planning if benefit funds flow in. They want legacy projects that make life better for all residents, not just a few.
Watch this space for the full output of our engagement work with Uralla Shire Council in the spring.
TNE SaND project delivery team in Uralla: Saideh and Lyndsay
What is Striking a New Deal (SaND)?
Striking a New Deal is a collaboration between The Next Economy, RE-Alliance, Projects JSA and the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal. It brings together local voices, regional leaders and national policy discussions to make sure communities hosting renewable energy get a fair deal.
SaND has three interconnected strands:
Regional Leaders Network: bringing together leaders from across renewable energy regions to share experiences, challenges and solutions.
Place-based work: partnering with Uralla Shire Council to test ways of engaging communities and planning for long-term benefits from renewable energy investment.
Policy influencing: sharing insights from communities and leaders to inform governments, industry and the public. The Striking a New Deal for Renewables in Regions report was released under this strand.
The Next Economy is proud to partner with Great Barrier Reef Legacy on the Forever Reef Project. Our contribution will support the co-design, launch and operation of the project’s First Nations Living Coral Biobank Hub Network—an ambitious initiative to protect coral biodiversity and strengthen regional economies through First Peoples leadership and innovation.
A New Chapter in Reef Conservation
As the climate crisis intensifies, the need for bold, collaborative action to protect the Great Barrier Reef has never been more urgent. Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, yet they are also among the most vulnerable. The Forever Reef Project, led by Great Barrier Reef Legacy (GBR Legacy), offers a powerful response: a living “Coral Ark” of coral species, safeguarded for future generations.
There is a clear window of opportunity to act immediately to secure the biodiversity of corals for all reefs, now and into the future. The Forever Reef Project will preserve the genetic biodiversity of hard coral species by collecting and maintaining living samples of over 400 species from the Great Barrier Reef and supporting reef-dependent communities to care for their corals around the world.
Dr Dean Miller, Founder and Managing Director, GBRL Legacy
At the heart of this effort is a commitment to First Peoples leadership. The Forever Reef Hub Network will be a series of purpose-built coral care facilities, managed by Reef Traditional Custodians across
the Reef’s expanse — from Bundaberg to the Torres Strait. These hubs will not only preserve coral biodiversity but also create jobs, support cultural knowledge sharing and education initiatives, and strengthen Sea Country stewardship.
The Next Economy’s Role
The Next Economy (TNE) is proud to support the delivery of Stage 2 of the Forever Reef First Nations Living Coral Biobank Hub Network. Our role focuses on supporting the establishment of the pilot Hub in partnership with Dawul Wuru Aboriginal Corporation (DWAC); and laying the groundwork for development the broader network.
This work builds on the successful completion of Stage 1, which developed the business model for the Hub Network. Stage 2 is now underway, transitioning the project from concept to reality.
We’re excited to be making a difference by preserving and nurturing the coral biodiversity of Yirrganydji Sea Country through our cultural lens for our current and future generations.
DWAC Team
Project Phases and Outcomes
The Forever Reef Hub Network is being developed in three key stages:
Stage 1: Design (Complete)
Development of the First Nations Living Coral Biobank Hub Network Business Model
Engagement, planning, and analysis (Sept 2022 – June 2023)
Stage 2: Demonstration (Underway)
Establishment of the Pilot Hub with Dawul Wuru Aboriginal Corporation
Collection and preservation of hard coral species from Yirrganydji Country
Creation of new jobs in aquaculture, facility management, and education
Generation of new revenue from biodiversity conservation and education
Demonstration of education and engagement experiences
GBR Legacy and Dawul Wuru have completed site planning, ranger training has commenced, educational material is being developed, and revenue raising options are being scoped. Construction is due to commence in August and operations shortly afterwards.
TNE is supporting the project team to develop opportunities for sustainable revenue generation like access to biodiversity markets and assisting with the co-design of collaboration and agreement making protocols that are culturally appropriate and reflect the team’s aspiration for strong, long-term collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Stage 3: Scaling (Future)
Establishment of multiple First Nations Living Coral Biobank Hubs across the Reef
Preservation of all 400+ hard coral species from the Great Barrier Reef
Creation of sustainable jobs and regional economic opportunities
Deepened cultural connection and stewardship of sea country
More About GBR Legacy and Forever Reef
GBR Legacy is a not-for-profit social enterprise with over 35 years of experience in reef expeditions, science, and education. The Forever Reef Project is their flagship initiative to preserve the genetic diversity of hard coral species—starting with the Great Barrier Reef and expanding globally.
Their parent facility in Port Douglas already houses over one third of the Great Barrier Reef’s hard coral species making it the most biodiverse collection of living corals in the world. The goal is to collect and care for all remaining species in collaboration with Traditional Owners, ensuring their survival in the face of climate change.
For the next five years, The Next Economy will prioritise partnerships within critical regions: those that hold the key to Australia achieving net zero by 2035. This includes regions with significant levels of First Nations land and sea stewardship, particularly across Northern Australia.
TNE’s role working with GBR Legacy aims to support First Nations leadership and participation in coral biodiversity conservation along the Great Barrier Reef, within a model that facilitates economic sovereignty. This project will generate new insights into how First Nations communities can be better resourced to protect and regenerate nature and achieve Australia’s biodiversity and climate goals.
At the end of May, The Next Economy visited Uralla Shire as part of our work on ‘Striking a New Deal’ (SaND)** – a place-based project delivered in partnership with Uralla Shire Council in NSW to support meaningful community engagement and develop a Renewable Energy Strategic Plan.
Uralla Shire sits within the New England Renewable Energy Zone, an area identified for major renewable energy development, and this plan will support Council to understand community priorities, surface early concerns, identify opportunities for investment and ensure accountability as the region grapples with change.
We spent the week speaking with landholders, business owners, and community leaders. It was clear from these early conversations that Uralla Shire is a place with a strong sense of identity shaped by collaboration, entrepreneurship, and care for their people and land.
Sheep grazing under the New England Solar Farm, located close to Uralla town centre. Credit: Saideh Kent
A Clear Sense of Place
We heard about Uralla’s deep volunteer culture – from the fire brigade to multiple active community interest groups – and about the pride people take in living a self-reliant, community-minded lifestyle. People spoke about looking after the land, farming in sustainable ways, and working together respectfully.
As Saideh Kent, Energy Lead at The Next Economy, noted: “Uralla has an incredible sense of place. People here are proud of what they’ve built together and want to protect that as the region changes.”
This strength is something to build on – not just preserve – as the community navigates the changes ahead.
Why Community Input Matters
Some people we spoke with were uncertain about the value of yet another consultation. That’s understandable, especially as timelines shift or information feels confusing.
“When people are involved early, it’s easier to identify concerns, make better plans, and ensure new development strengthens what’s already good,” Saideh said.
The reality is that council does not have the power to say yes or no to these large-scale renewable energy projects. But what council can do is play a key role in managing this wave of change well – by minimising potential disruptions, identifying shared benefits, and ensuring that development aligns with what the community values.
To do that, council needs to hear directly from people across the Shire. Upcoming community workshops in late June are designed to provide that opportunity -for residents to name priorities, raise concerns, and help shape how renewable energy projects contribute to Uralla’s future.
A sign showing different routes off Uralla main street, which is located on the New England Highway. Credit: Lyndsay Walsh
Choosing the Right Route
This is about more than managing change, it’s about collectively choosing the right route forward. From infrastructure and land use to investment priorities, now is the time to ask: what does good development look like for Uralla Shire? How do we make sure that new projects leave a lasting, positive legacy?
“This isn’t just about wind turbines or transmission lines,” Saideh said. “It’s about making sure Uralla stays a great place to live – with good jobs, healthy landscapes, and a vision for the future that people are excited about.”
How these projects are managed will determine the road ahead, but with the right planning and participation, that can lead where the community wants to go.
A shop front in Uralla saying ‘this is where the magic happens’. Credit: Lyndsay Walsh
Where the Magic Happens
Walking down Uralla’s main street, we spotted a sign in a shop window: ‘This is where the magic happens.’ It felt fitting. The real magic lies in the conversations we’re helping to plan and in the spirit of community that already runs strong in Uralla.
As one local we interviewed put it, “The only way I’m happy living where I am is if my community is happy and going well.” That’s exactly what this work is about, creating the space to support and grow that shared wellbeing.
The Next Economy is currently designing the next phase of engagement based on what we’ve heard so far. Community-wide workshops will run from 25–29 June 2025. You can read more about those and our work with Uralla Shire here: https://yoursay.uralla.nsw.gov.au/sand
**SaND supports regional communities as they navigate the development of renewable energy in their area. Together with Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, RE Alliance and Projects JSA, The Next Economy, supports a peer-to-peer network of regional leaders sharing insights with government and industry as part of the SaND project. You can read more about the partnership here: https://nexteconomy.com.au/work/driving-better-community-outcomes-from-renewable-projects/
This short paper introduces key ideas and real-world examples driving a shift toward a wellbeing economy in Australia.
The Next Economy is working with partners to secure a future where everyone can thrive and the natural world is cherished and protected. Achieving this vision requires more than isolated reforms — it calls for a fundamental transformation of our economic systems.
In 2024, with support from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, TNE convened a two-day gathering of change agents from across Australia. Together, we explored the preconditions for systems change and examined the opportunities and barriers to reshaping our economy.
This short paper, Heading Upstream to Tackle the Economic Root Causes, distils key insights prepared for that gathering. It introduces foundational concepts that highlight the need for upstream economic change and illustrates how our current economic structures often fall short of serving people and planet.
We frame this transformation through the lens of the 4Ps:
Purpose: Reorienting the economy to serve wellbeing.
Prevention: Tackling root causes rather than symptoms.
Predistribution: Designing fairness into the system from the start.
People Powered: Ensuring communities have a voice in shaping their futures.
Dr Katherine Trebeck, Economy Change lead at The Next Economy, said: “Across Australia, inspiring examples of these shifts are emerging. “For example, the ACT’s wellbeing framework, the appointment of a Minister for Prevention in WA and efforts by businesses to make their production processes more circular. And even enterprises like Honorbread in Bermagui becoming employee-owned and communities working together to benefit from the rollout of renewable energy.”
“However, these examples remain the exception, not the norm. This paper serves as a primer for those curious about what upstream economic change looks like and why it matters.”
📢 Stay tuned: In the coming months, we’ll be releasing a broader research project that dives deeper into the state of the Australian economy and how we can reimagine it to support collective wellbeing.
In the heart of NSW’s Riverina region, the town of Hay is asking big questions about its future.
Over a week in April, The Next Economy met with more than 30 local landholders, business owners, and community leaders to explore how the regional economy works—and how it can adapt to the challenges and opportunities ahead.
“We’re working with the Hay community to build a rich picture of the local economy—how it operates, who’s involved, and what’s needed to make it more resilient and future-ready,” says Jacqui Bell, Project Lead at The Next Economy.
This work is part of a broader effort to co-develop a regional economic roadmap—a guide to help Hay navigate dynamic social, environmental, and economic change. The process is grounded in local knowledge and shaped by the lived experience of those who call the region home.
This work follows on from the development of a set of principles for successful renewable energy development in Hay (in partnership with Re-Alliance), and the Regional Resilience Plan (in partnership with TNE and the Australian Resilience Centre) in Hay over the past two years.
Asking the Right Questions
The conversations in Hay are centred around a series of powerful questions:
What does our economy look like, and why does it work the way it does?
What trends—local and global—are shaping our future?
What can we do together that we can’t do alone?
How do we ensure that the wealth generated here benefits the whole community?
These questions are helping to surface both the strengths and vulnerabilities of the region’s economy, and to identify opportunities for collective action.
A Sector Under Pressure
Hay, like many regional communities, is facing cascading pressures: rising costs of living, workforce shortages, climate impacts, and uncertainty around the energy transition. These challenges are compounded by confusing policy signals and complex market mechanisms—particularly in the agriculture and land sectors.
“There’s growing interest from global markets and investors in low-emissions, nature-positive products,” says Jacqui. “But those signals often aren’t reaching producers on the ground—or they’re too weak or confusing to drive meaningful change.”
This disconnect is contributing to scepticism and fatigue in communities already being asked to take on significant risk to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
No One-Size-Fits-All
The Next Economy’s work in Hay reinforces a key insight: context matters. A one-size-fits-all approach to agricultural transition won’t work in Australia. Each region has its own assets, challenges, and aspirations.
“How transitions are managed locally will shape the future of entire regions,” Jacqui explains. “Strategic planning and coordination are essential—not just to respond to change, but to shape it in ways that are fair, effective, and grounded in place.”
What’s Next
The roadmap being developed with the Hay community will help guide investment, policy, and local action. It’s part of a growing movement across regional Australia—where communities are stepping up to lead the transition to a climate-safe, regenerative, and socially just economy.
“This isn’t just about adapting to change,” says Jacqui. “It’s about creating the conditions for communities to thrive in the next economy.”
The Next Economy, together with Mount Isa City Council and Climate-KIC Australia, is proud to launch the Mount Isa Future Ready Economy Roadmap.
Mount Isa, like many other industrial regions, is at the crossroads of major economic change. The region has a rich asset base, including the North West Minerals Province, but faces the imminent closure of the Mount Isa Mine’s underground copper mine operations and copper concentrator.
This closure will impact approximately 1,200 workers from mid-2025 and the future of the local copper industry, a change that needs to be managed alongside increasing demand for critical minerals, affordable and reliable energy generation and storage options, and innovative logistics solutions. Global trade uncertainty and climate impacts further complicate this picture.
Whether Mount Isa successfully navigates these changes will be critical to the success of Australia’s net zero ambitions, and global decarbonisation goals.
The Mount Isa Future Ready Economy Roadmap provides a clear and ambitious vision for the future of Mount Isa against this backdrop of regional change, global uncertainty, and new opportunities.
In this future, Mount Isa thrives. The regional economy enables Australia’s net zero transformation, contributing to the next generation of clean energy and critical minerals exports and processing . Local industry and the community lead innovative solutions to long-standing and emerging challenges, benefiting from a focus on circular economy approaches, decarbonisation, environmental sustainability and regeneration, and social wellbeing.
This vision is underpinned by the application of the Future Ready Economy Framework. This Framework has been designed by The Next Economy and Climate-KIC to assist decision-makers in regions like Mount Isa to assess economic opportunities against six key dimensions of positive and resilient development.
Along with regional stakeholder engagements and expert input, the Framework has informed the development of future ready development pathways, strategies and potential actions for Mount Isa’s five key economic sectors—energy, mining, transport, agriculture and tourism—and the foundations of a thriving community.
By adopting a future ready lens to regional economic development, Mount Isa is ensuring that today’s planning and investment decisions position the region for long-term success.
With the right planning and investment from key partners, including the Queensland Government and Australian Government, and industry, Mount Isa can pursue these pathways and become a global player in a decarbonising world.
Mount Isa has a proud history of innovation and mining excellence which can continue to thrive with the right investment and collaboration between industry, government and the community. Photo: Chris Grose.
This week, the Hay and Carrathool Shire Councils launched the Hay and Carrathool Regional Drought Resilience Plan. The Plan is designed to identify strategic focus areas and priority actions to strengthen regional resilience. Convened by both councils, the Plan is the result of an extensive seven-month collaboration involving more than 300 community members, industry representatives, and government stakeholders.
The Plan envisions a future where, by 2035, the communities of Hay and Carrathool are equipped to navigate climate, environmental, social, and economic challenges while remaining strong, connected, and vibrant. It sets out a strategic path for ensuring safe and thriving places to live, work, and raise future generations.
Hay Shire Mayor, Carol Oataway, acknowledged the immense community effort behind the Plan and the commitment of local people to shaping their future.
“This level of community engagement reflects the leadership and strengths of this vibrant region and demonstrates the passion that local people have for its future,”
Carol Oataway, Mayor of Hay Shire
With five core strategies—Inclusive & Empowered Communities, Future Ready Businesses, Reimagined Care Economy, Placemaking with Purpose, and Coordinated Action for Climate Resilient Economic Development—the Plan identifies 26 priority actions, each with partners to lead and drive progress.
Key actions include setting up community hubs where people can connect, working groups so businesses can “share” employees, innovative ways to provide care to groups that need it, an initiative to collect and use environmental data, a housing strategy, and a roadmap to diversify and strengthen the regional economy.
Already, the Plan has sparked action across the community. To really bring its vision to life, collaboration between local government, businesses, and residents will be essential in addressing risks and capturing emerging opportunities.
“We’re the ones who know what our region needs… State and federal governments need to support regionally led solutions like ours.”
Carol Oataway, Mayor of Hay Shire
The Next Economy and the Australian Resilience Centre worked with the Hay and Carrathool Shire Councils and local communities to deliver the Plan. It has been developed as part of the Regional Drought Resilience Planning Program, which is jointly funded by the Australian Government and NSW Government under the Future Drought Fund.
Hay Shire Councillors John Perry and Geoff Chapman, along with Mayor Carol Oataway and Alison McLean, Executive Manager for Economic Development and Tourism, are pictured with Jacqui Bell and Doug Ruuska from The Next Economy.
