During 2025, Regional Development Australia (RDA) Wheatbelt’s Director of Regional Development, Josh Pomykala, and Research Evaluation Project Officer, Chris Evans, began a series of Local Government (LG) Economic Development (ED) workshops for Elected Members and staff. The aim being to offer our 42 LGs an increased understanding of localised economic development and their roles in initiating economic development opportunities. Mr Evans is an Australian Certified Economic Developer (ACEcD).

The pilot workshop involving the Shires of Narrogin and Dumbleyung highlighted the challenges and opportunities for both large and smaller shires, but there was a common theme across all shires regardless of size, and that was the lack of housing availability.

While there were shared commonalities between the smaller shires there were also some marked differences in terms of optimism, aspirations and potential opportunities. On reflection, these differences could not be attributed to any one factor, be it geographic location and proximity to major population centres or even the size of population. However, it appeared that shires with multiple town sites or larger community sites faced more challenges in forming or applying a centric economic initiative compared to shires with one town site.

From RDA Wheatbelt’s perspective, as well as the LGs involved, the ED workshops were not only of value but were meeting a need. Many LGs in the region, especially the smaller ones, are struggling with limited rate bases that barely cover the costs of regular LG responsibilities and wages of employees. Likewise, the smaller LGs tend to not have diversified local economies, which impacts when market or climate shocks affect agriculture and farm businesses spending in the local economy.

The other issue from limited local economic diversification is its negative influence on population growth. With the amalgamation of farming land into large corporate farms, many of the region’s inland LGs have seen ongoing population decline as farming families and permanent employees from smaller farm businesses leave after the farm has been sold to the corporate enterprise. In turn, the corporate farms employ a lower ratio of permanent employees and generally use backpackers for seasonal work. For instance, in 1966 when there were around 22,000 farms in WA with the majority located in the Wheatbelt, and the population of the Wheatbelt was 86,000 people. Now, there is only about 4,000 farms in WA and the estimated population of the Wheatbelt is around 75,000 people.

However, greater digital connectivity and decentralisation of manufacturing and other businesses along with skilled migrants and their families does offer some hope for these smaller Shires – if they are able to access funding for residential housing and skilled worker accommodation. It should be noted that external public funding for housing is necessary as private lending institutions will not approve housing loans in these areas as the cost of building is more than the completed structure. Essentially, this is market failure.

For a copy of the full report please contact admin@rdawheatbelt.com.au.