From left field

with David Matthews

munications sectors make up a further 15.1 percent.

We need to be shouting this from the top of our painted silos. There are many great jobs here, for you and your partner.

What bothers me most is finding a way to be heard.

At a high level, RAI’s work is fantastic and they do have the ear of government. I’m hopeful we’ll see greater attention from federal and state governments toward regional policy development.

But we’re in an environment where there is a chronic skills shortage in the capital cities as well. How do small towns in western Victoria get any attention when this is a national problem?

Contemplating the answer to this question leads to the next question. What are our strengths?

At Rupanyup, we have been asking ourselves this question for a few years now.

Through the Rural Migration Initiative we soon identified a lack of housing as the key blocker to attracting people to the region. But we should be able to flip this. We should be able to make access to affordable housing our strength. We have relatively cheap and available land, and in many places we have surplus public infrastructure – schools, roads and sporting facilities already built.

What we have not had is a collaborative framework to get the scale we need to engage with investors and developers, and get projects happening across multiple locations. But this is changing.

The community bank network is about to launch a pilot project with the aim of building 200 dwellings across 10 towns under the Distributed Housing Project banner. If we can do this successfully, it should demonstrate to government, investors and developers there is an alternative to building 1000 houses on the edge of a major city.

In regions such as the Wimmera, this project can add momentum to the great work being done by Wimmera Development Association in bringing together interested groups to drive housing development.

As regional people, we cannot wait for improved government policy to have an impact.

It may never reach us, but we can create our own field of dreams. We can build it and they will come.

WELCOME: Johnson Asahi representatives, from left, Mark Johnson, Noriyuki Nakamura, Corey Ryan, Katsura Nishinaka, Yoshihiko Kubo, Kazushi Tomita and Shigeto Okazeri visit the Dooen factory during the business’ 100-year celebrations.

Anniversary celebrations

Johnson Asahi’s Wimmera teams welcomed several international guests on Saturday to inspect its Horsham operation and new facility at Dooen.

Asahi Industries president Noriyuki Nakamura, Asahi Agria managing director and Johnson Asahi director Kazushi Tomita, Godo Steel managing director Katsura Nishinaka, Yoshihiko Kubo and Shigeto Okazeri, of Asahi Agria, JT Johnson and Sons managing director Mark Johnson and JT Johnson and Sons international marketing manager Corey Ryan toured the site.

The visit coincided with 100-year anniversary celebrations of the founding of JT Johnson and Sons and the opportunity to inspect the operations of a new facility at Dooen.

JT Johnson and Sons began in 1923 when company founder John Theodore Johnson established a small chaff mill plant in Stockport, South Australia.

In 1995, Johnson Asahi formed as part of a joint venture between the fourth-generation Australian family business and Japanese company Asahi Industries.

The same year a hay processing plant was built in Horsham to produce oaten hay, alfalfa hay and straw.

The new facility at Dooen has been operating since January and is part of the process of the company relocating its operations from Plumpton Road, Horsham, to the Wimmera Intermodal Freight Terminal at Dooen.