The idea of decentralising government departments or parts of them to western Victoria got a very positive reception from a slew of local governments on Tuesday.
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Warrnambool City Council (WCC) chief executive Bruce Anson said federal regional development minister Senator Fiona Nash received an enthusiastic response when she raised the prospect of decentralisation of federal departments at a local government round table meeting at Lake Bolac.
WCC, Moyne, Corangamite and councils further north were among the local governments at the meeting.
Mr Anson said there was a real appetite by all the councils to boost their populations and decentralisation offered them a way to do so.
He said federal departments were looking at what parts of their services could decentralise and councils needed to work with the departments to find out if their municipalities could host those services.
“It’s clear not everyone is going to get everything and in many cases the towns do not have the capacity,” Mr Anson said.
He said councils had to do a lot of work to get selected for decentralised services but most of them were already working on their applications.
Mr Anson said Warrnambool had many attributes that would make it attractive for decentralisation including Deakin’s Warrnambool campus, South West TAFE and Warrnambool Base Hospital.
Co-locating some government services at Deakin’s Warrnambool campus could create opportunities for research and technology synergies, he said.
Senator Nash visited the Deakin Aquaculture Futures Facility at Warrnambool on Monday with Federal Member for Wannon Dan Tehan to see some of the research it was doing into nutrition for farmed salmon.
Senator Nash said the federal government was “serious” about decentralising more of the work of federal departments to country areas.
“Regional people deserve the benefit of public sector jobs just as much as city people,” she said.
“It provides career paths.”
Senator Nash said she wanted to see not only the public sector decentralise to regional areas but also the private sector.
Regional people deserve the benefit of public sector jobs just as much as city people.
- Senator Fiona Nash