Australia's regional centres: are they part of the nation's network of cities or only when it matters politically? (original) (raw)

Thirty seven percent of Australians do not live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide. Reinforced by popular media references and current political arrangements at the federal level, this constituency has increasingly being referred to under the collective term of ‘regional’ Australia. Regional Australia is a broad term that can cover persons living in as a diverse range of settings as, on farms, in remote mining communities, as well as those who live in towns, cities and large regional centres. Contrary to widely held perceptions, reinforced by the often-used media term ‘the bush’, regional Australians mostly live in large cities and towns (DFAT, 2008). These non-metropolitan Australians are urban dwellers just like their metropolitan counterparts, with nearly 20 percent of them living in cities with populations between 40,000 and 500,000. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2004, p. 1) defines ‘urban’ as a settlement of over 1,000 people. Another 5 percent of Aus...