In April 2019, the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) convened the historic Regions Rising national summit in Canberra. This summit brought together business, government and community leaders from across rural and regional Australia to discuss the future of regional development. As a result of the hacks...

The NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has reviewed how we share costs between rural water customers1 and the NSW Government (on behalf of other users and the broader community) when setting maximum prices for the Water Administration Ministerial Corporation’s (WAMC’s) water management services and...

The current statistics regarding agriculture and farming indicate rising numbers of people are leaving rural areas and changing their lifestyles. In 2012, Australia celebrates the Year of the Farmer, a chance to pay tribute to the important role that farming and agriculture plays in our...

The role of the Australian Public Service (APS) is to support the Australian Government in responding to economic, social and environmental challenges, through effective policy development and service delivery. It needs to employ the most up-to-date thinking and approaches to deal with increasingly complex issues...

Thirty-two percent of Australians live in the non-metropolitan areas of Australia. This report looks at the development of community committees in rural and regional areas. The desire for rural and coastal lifestyles, advances in communications technology and positive market conditions for industries such as mining...

This Final Report is delivered in accordance with section 12 of the Bushfires Royal Commission Implementation Monitor Act 2011 (the BRCIM Act). The report records the State’s progress on approximately 300 implementation actions outlined in Implementing the Government’s Response to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal...

This visualtion report asks the question of what water sustainabilty and catchments plans are for the future.

. This e-brief presents a brief history of land access provisions in NSW: first in relation to minerals, and secondly in relation to petroleum (which includes coal seam gas). This paper also briefly examines land access provisions in other States.

This paper seeks to reanalyse the Mabo case from the point of view of non-discrimination. It argues that the Mabo judgment may have been discriminatory in finding that pre-existing entitlements in surviving native title are restricted to the limited range of activities that can be...

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 3% in 2011, reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes in 2011. In 2011, China’s average per capita carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions increased by 9% to...

Many nations including China, India, Brazil, the United States and New Zealand have foreign investment regimes that provide more regulatory oversight and greater transparency than ours in terms of land holdings. We believe proper oversight can provide greater certainty to investors and ensure there is...

This report is the first output from this project and presents the findings from the initial stages of the investigation. Later reports will present a fuller picture as the outputs of additional stages of analysis are presented. There is a growing consensus in the community...

This paper describes the patient journey mapping tools and frameworks used in the Managing Two Worlds Together (MTWT) Project. We sought to explore the barriers and enablers, gaps and strategies in relation to country Aboriginal patient journeys from rural and remote locations to city hospitals...

Climate change and water management are two of the most important public policy issues facing Australia. Adding to existing water management challenges is the fact that climate change, and policies aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, can strongly affect water management outcomes. The...

In Australia the body of knowledge of likely scenarios of climate change impact over the next few decades has increased significantly in both its robustness and level of detail. The Climate Commission’s (2011) report on The Critical Decade: Climate Science, Risks and Responses summarises the...

Australian governments are under constant pressure to intervene to support the economies of particular regions, particularly those that grow more slowly. The most prominent recent example is the Commonwealth Government’s “Commitment to Regional Australia” in September 2010 1 that promised $10b over eight years, partly...

This draft report was released to assist participants in preparing a submission to the public inquiry into Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation. Climate change adaptation is action by households, firms, other organisations and governments to respond to the impacts of climate change that cannot...

This project has three key aims. The primary aim is to investigate the role of informal community resources in promoting stable housing outcomes and enhancing social inclusion for young people recovering from a mental illness. The second aim is to identify the neighbourhood factors that...

Since 2009, the Australian Government, through AusAID, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have been funding a project in Cambodia to rehabilitate and privatise the railway system. The project is pitched as an economic driver for Cambodia in which the poor will, in some unarticulated...

In this report Jon Altman seeks to explore the ramifications of the Native Title Act Reform Bill, a private senator’s bill introduced by Senator Rachel Siewert of the Australian Greens. The Bill seeks to amend the Native Title Act 1993 (NTA) to effect reforms that...