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Jobs and growth.
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Turnbull’s federal election slogan is still ringing in our ears.
But what jobs and what growth has Armidale experienced in the past 12 months?
Or even in the past 12 years?
Peter Bailey has been in business in the Armidale region for decades.
He ran his own business for almost 20 years, employing 28 staff.
He founded and is chief executive of Country Week, now the Foundation for Regional Development.
And he is a past president of Armidale Rotary, Tamworth Apex, and the Tamworth Chamber of Commerce.
Now Mr Bailey is standing for Council because he says, it’s time for Armidale to grow and prosper.
But what will growth do for the region?
“Growth provides jobs for our kids, grown provides better services, growth ensures that competition airlines give us cheaper air services, grow provides more numbers for our schools so they don’t discount and get into bidding wars for our kids,” Mr Bailey said.
“They’re the sorts of benefits to growth.
“And that’s what I want to do.
“A lot of people talk about economic development, but I think I’ve got a way of making that happen.”
Mr Bailey has spent the past 15 years traveling the state looking at how and why other communities thrive.
He now wants to bring some of those ideas back to the Armidale and Guyra communities.
“The greatest thing that I have learnt is that stability in leadership critical,” he said.
“If you look at Inverell or Tamworth, which are growing quite nicely, they have stable elected councils that provide strong leadership and are united.
“That’s what we have to ensure is here.
“Not bickering and fighting and leaking to the media every time a decision is made.
“We’ve got to make sure, when we make a decision, we ride forward with it and embrace it.
“I’m sure I’ll be supporting decisions that I didn’t support in Council.
“But we’ve got to move forward in a united voice because we’ve fallen off the perch.”
Specifically, Mr Bailey said in Armidale, the new hospital development, light industrial land at the airport, Acacia Park, the mall, and Council’s relationship with the region’s key stakeholders, Uralla and Walcha councils, and UNE, are critical to turning the city’s fortunes around.
In Guyra, the main street upgrade, securing water from Malpas Dam, the rail trail, and developing and supporting Guyra’s events and tourism are key.
For Armidale:
“The new hospital is a great catalyst to attract more allied health professionals here,” he said.
“Health is now our biggest employer, it's bigger than the university, but we’ve got to do more to attract more specialist.”
At the Airport, Mr Bailey said unlocking the new land needed to happen faster.
“I just don’t understand why there are so many delays,” he said.
“I’m aware of at least 18 businesses that want to buy land there, and they've been stuffed around.
“One is already considering moving out of Armidale.
“What’s going on, we need to make sure that becomes a priority.”
More than 500 people work in East Armidale’s Acacia Park industrial precinct and according to Mr Bailey, Council needs to do more to support those businesses.
“Acacia Park is something that people forget about,” he said.
“It has dreadful signage on the approach, it needs a good cleanup, and what can we do to help the businesses out there who are paying rates, to reinvest and attract new manufacturing industry?”
Events are one of the biggest untapped areas for growth in both Armidale and Guyra, Mr Bailey said.
“Most of the other things in economic development are medium to long term,” he said
“You can’t persuade industry to move here in six month, it takes time for companies to relocate and invest.
“But what we’ve got to do is put some resources into growing the region immediately and the best way to do that is through events.
“The Christmas lights that we turn on with the pop-up stalls, that's a huge success, we’ve got the keep that going.
“We need to find ways to encourage the cafes that don’t open, to open in the mall, whether that be on a roster basis.
“We’ve seen the impact of what a community can do in Uralla and we need to ensure that something similar is happening in Armidale.”
For Guyra:
“The lamb and potato festival is a great event … but my understanding is that it's plateaued.
“What can we do to move it forward, what can Council do to support them, and how can we take the event to another level?
“January is a great time of the year [to hold events] for businesses because lots of people are away so if you can generate some revenue, it helps.
“Guyra had a Christmas pageant in the main street ... it needs to come back and I think Council should be involved it helping.
One of the most critical things to solve in Guyra is water.
And Mr Bailey said Council needed to do whatever it could to help Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall find the money to secure a pipeline from Malpas Dam.
“When you consider that Malpas Dam actually sits in the old Guyra Shire and they’re not connected to their own water, it strikes me as a bit strange,” he said.
“That’s got to be a priority.
“If we can solve the water problems, we can then talk to companies like Costa, to see if they want to expand and that would be great for the community.”
Mr Bailey is a big supporter of the rail trail.
To him, it’s possibly the most important economic driver for the town
“The rail trail must happen,” he said.
“Suggestions that we are suddenly going to get passenger rail on that line to Brisbane are just farcical.
“What can we do as a council to make the rail trail happens?
“How can we drive it forward?
“This has to be a top priority.”
Mr Bailey also said the new regional council needed to forge a better relationship with UNE and other regional councils.
"We’ve been seen as predatory, we’ve been seen as paternalistic," he said
"Guyra had no time for us because they saw us as the big brother that just wanted to take them over.
"Uralla had the same attitude.
“My attitude is that I don’t want to take them over, we’ve got enough to do here.
"But I want to work with them because there are going to be projects that will be of a regional nature.
"So we need to work on our relationship with Uralla, and we need to work on our relationship with Walcha.
“They get benefits from us and we get benefits from them.”
Peter Bailey is a busy man with lots of ideas.
But according to him, and as the saying goes, if you want something done, ask a busy person.
The Armidale Regional Council election is on September 9.