Population growth projections suggesting more than 35% of Australia’s future popula­tion growth will occur from Coffs Harbour to Hervey Bay, driven mainly by the retiring, life­style seeking, baby boomer generation. This has significant impact for all regions, and from our perspective the Tweed in particular, with our research indicat­ing 38% or 45,600 persons of the Tweeds projected population of 120,000 people being over 65 years of age by 2031.

Research by Tweed Economic Develop­ment Corporation (TEDC) has identified the Tweed region as having a current Work Participation Rate (WPR) of 42% compared to Northern Rivers (NR) at 55%, NSW at 62%, SEQ at 62.7% and Hunter Valley at 59%. From the Tweed’s perspec­tive this suggests the need to generate some 25,000 new jobs by 2031 if the Tweed is to achieve a moderate 50% WPR.

Addressing the challenges associated with managing and facilitating new and exist­ing job creating business and investment growth and management issues associ­ated with future high age demographic health and ageing, is very much depend­ent on having access to appropriate Tele­communications Infrastruc­ture, as in optic fibre, and hence the critical importance of this NBN submission.

In terms of business and investment growth, there is good opportunity in the eco­nomic/business sectors identified by the case studies namely; agriculture, knowledge indus­tries, tourism and the creative industry sec­tors. These sectors are all part of a suite of solutions which also need to include technol­ogy which encour­ages the relocation of com­mercial offices and head offices of major cor­pora­tions to regional lifestyle regions like the Northern Rivers, where they have ready access to essential infrastructure such as, International Airports (Gold Coast Airport), The Sea and Air Ports of Brisbane and Tele­communications Infrastructure.

A Telecommunications Infrastruc­ture Action Plan that identifies the urgent need for high speed broadband has been developed and adopted by the Tweed Eco­nomic Devel­opment Corporation in conjunc­tion with the Tweed Shire Council with support from Justine Elliot, the Federal MP for Richmond.