Responding to regional disadvantage: what can be learned from the International Experience?

Summary

This research identifies three key features of policy frameworks that support the coordination of housing and regional policy: recognition that housing assistance can be productive, rather than unprofitable, for regional well-being; recognition that universal programs which provide the same assistance to all regional areas need to give way to greater targeting of programs to regions which have the greatest need; emphasising regional cohesion rather than trying to prioritise the needs of rural areas over cities or vice versa.

Project Number: 70030
Research Theme: Social_Wellbeing
Project Leader: Randolph, Bill
Funding Year: 2000
Research Centre: UNSW-UWS

Description

In Australia, recent national debates about problems of regional disadvantage have sometimes echoed with calls for a shift in public policy emphasis from cities to regions. By contrast, whilst the EU is very concerned about the plight of lagging regions, this has not engendered a sense of 'anti-urbanism' in its political and policy outlook. While there exists a groundswell of new support for regional assistance policies in Australia, the current debates make little reference to overseas policy experiences, which constitute a potentially rich resource for learning about strategy innovation, cross program integration and the relative effectiveness of policy alternatives.

The potential for learning from other Federal systems, such as the EU, is especially strong. For example, the recent House of Representatives (2000) report on regional policy options is an extensive document that makes many recommendations for the future of regional assistance. This document nonetheless makes no reference to overseas regional policy experience. But there are potentially profound lessons for Australian regional policy in the EU approach which emphasises 'regional cohesion' rather than trying to prioritise the needs of cities over rural areas or vice versa.

This project aimed to provide a much needed resource for policy discussions about the future of Australia's regional assistance programs. It should be noted that the EU's guiding principle of 'subsidiarity' means that its policy frameworks rely heavily on multi-level and multi-agency co-operation for their implementation. The study therefore intended to reveal information that would be relevant to all policy makers at the major governance scale in Australia: local, State and Federal. This project aimed to examine the European Union's policies to address regional disadvantage and consider their relevance to the Australian context.

Three issues were central to the investigation:

The relative merits of spatially targeted versus universalist regional support frameworks.
The extent to which increased emphasis on 'regional disadvantage' reduces public policy focus on cities.
The extent to which housing support can be integrated with regional assistance policies.

This study aimed to: examine the relative merits of spatially targeted versus universalist regional support frameworks, through reference to the recent policy experience of the EU; evaluate EU regional assistance policies that encourage city-hinterland partnerships and consider their relevance to the Australian policy context; review the housing policy components of EU regional assistance programs; and outline ways in which the EU policy experience might inform the development of new approaches to regional assistance in Australia, with an emphasis on the potential for housing-regional policy integration.

More Information

Final Report: No. 001: Thinking regionally, acting locally: lessons for Australia from overseas housing and regional assistance policies
224 KB PDF Document

Positioning Paper: No. 020: Responding to regional disadvantage: what can be learned from overseas experience
448 KB PDF Document

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