Without taking any action regional Australian towns and cities will grow by more than one million people over the next 10 years, but a major national body wants to push that number up higher.
The Regional Australia Institute (RAI) think tank's 2032 strategy includes a goal of adding 500,000 extra people to the regions, many of whom would be encouraged to leave their capital city homes.
That would bring the country's regional population to 11 million.
The Rebalance the Nation project has been met with a mixture of enthusiasm and reluctance from regional centres, many of which are struggling with housing, staffing and infrastructure shortages.
In regional Queensland, rental vacancy rates are sitting below 1 per cent in some areas.
Buying a home has also become far tougher, with interstate arrivals during the pandemic paying top dollar for properties and driving up house prices.
RAI chief executive Liz Ritchie said she understood many regions were under tremendous pressure but it was still time to start thinking about growth.
"Communities won't grow unless the leaders rally around to make them grow," she said.
"It might get to a point where, if you've been a fast-growing region, that might start to slow down as other regions lift — other regions who have capacity, who are willing and wanting to grow."
She said workers, critical infrastructure and productivity would accompany growth.
Fighting to catch up
Queensland's Sunshine Coast's Mayor Mark Jamieson knows about growth.
He said his region had grown by about 30,000 in the past 12 months, but his push for upgrades to infrastructure from both state and federal governments had failed to keep pace.
Cr Jamieson said a push to have more people in regions "would be more than we can probably cope with".
"So many people being on the move has the impact of displacing others at the same time," he said.
"There's just not enough properties to go around at present."
Cr Jamieson, who is also the head of the Local Government Association of Queensland, said the region still lacked critical public transport and public facilities like a convention and exhibition centre.
"It's been very much a catch-up," he said.
Cr Jamieson said he appreciated that plenty of regions needed to grow but questioned how the rate of arrivals could be limited or slowed.
"I don't think we have the levers that turn things on and off, necessarily," he said.
"If people were coming here and finding there were no jobs, then they probably wouldn't stay there long.
"I don't know that local governments have got that much control over what's going on in the broader economy."
'Massive things' on horizon
Three hours south west, Ali Davenport, the chief executive of the Toowoomba Surat Basin Enterprise business group, said the area was struggling with housing and labour shortages — but that was why she backed the push for growth.
"If we can get some more people to regional areas, there's a lot of job availabilities and we do want more infrastructure," she said.
"So the benefits to our region are going to be huge, but also the benefits to Australia in general."
Ms Davenport said the hardships of the present should not cloud long-term opportunities.
"We've got inland rail coming, we've got all these massive things on our horizon," she said.
"We also need people to fill those roles."
She said a 10 per cent growth rate for Toowoomba would be realistic as it prepared to hit a population of 200,000 within the next 10 years.
"I think regions need to grow at a steady pace," Ms Davenport said.
