Ten Years Ahead for Riverina
Ten-year roadmap for jobs, infrastructure, and community progress.
A Plan That Looks Ten Years Ahead for Riverina
My vision for Riverina is grounded in a simple idea: our region doesn’t need more announcements; it needs long-term planning with real money behind it. That means moving away from project-by-project politics and towards a coordinated, multi-year strategy that links infrastructure, workforce planning, and private investment. It’s not about outspending Canberra or making unrealistic promises. It’s about using public money properly, to unlock private capital and give Riverina the certainty it needs to grow.
Pillar One: Water Security – Certainty Over Chaos
The first pillar of that vision is water security. Riverina’s economy, communities, and future depend on reliable water. Yet too often, water policy has been reactive, driven by droughts, floods, and sudden rule changes rather than long-term planning. That uncertainty costs farmers, towns, and food processors far more than steady investment ever would. Over the next decade, I believe Riverina should see sustained investment in off-river storage, irrigation efficiency, town water security, and modern planning systems. The goal is simple: less crisis management, more certainty. Water certainty costs less than water chaos, economically, socially, and environmentally.
Pillar Two: Roads, Freight & Infrastructure
The second pillar is roads, freight, and regional infrastructure. Riverina feeds the country, moves its goods, and underpins national supply chains. Our roads, bridges, and freight corridors should reflect that reality. Instead, many communities are left with unsafe highways, bottlenecks for freight, and infrastructure that is patched rather than properly upgraded.
Building Bridges, Boosting Futures
A long-term plan for Riverina must prioritise safety first, freight efficiency, and infrastructure that respects the region’s economic role. That means consistent investment in highway upgrades, stronger bridges, better regional freight roads, and rail and intermodal infrastructure that actually reduces costs for producers and exporters. If Riverina feeds the country, our roads should reflect it.
Pillar Three: Health & Essential Services
The third pillar is health and essential services, with a focus on staffing, not spin. Buildings and equipment matter, but without people, they don’t deliver care. A hospital without staff isn’t a hospital. Across Riverina, communities know the frustration of services that technically exist but are stretched, understaffed, or unavailable when needed.
Stronger Workforce, Better Care
That is why workforce attraction and retention must be central to health policy. Practical measures like health worker housing, sensible salary loadings, training pipelines, and expanded telehealth and mobile services make the difference between services that stay open and services that quietly disappear. Reliable care close to home shouldn’t depend on postcode or luck.
Pillar Four: Jobs, Skills & Keeping Young People in Riverina
The fourth pillar is jobs, skills, and keeping young people in Riverina. Too many young people feel they have to leave the region to build a career, gain skills, or find secure work. That is not inevitable; it is the result of choices about where we invest.
Careers Without Leaving Home
A stronger Riverina means jobs tied to place and skills that don’t force people to move away. That includes apprenticeships and traineeships, investment in ag-tech and food processing, support for regional manufacturing, and digital connectivity that allows people to live locally while working nationally or globally. You shouldn’t have to leave Riverina to build a future. All of this requires money, and it also requires honesty about where that money comes from.
How I Plan to Deliver
My approach is based on disciplined, structured investment over a ten-to-twelve-year horizon, drawing on existing federal programmes, state co-funding, and private capital. Government funding provides the backbone: certainty, planning, and risk reduction. Private investment follows when projects are credible, staged, and long-term. The government builds the platform. Business builds on top of it. This is not about criticising what has already been delivered. Past projects matter, and they have made a difference. But Riverina’s challenge is not a lack of individual announcements; it’s the absence of an integrated plan that links water, roads, health, and jobs together over time. Our region has outgrown maintenance politics. The next decade requires planning, not patching.
Moving Beyond Slogans – A Plan That Works
I am not running on slogans. I am running with a plan that is costed, staged, and realistic, a plan designed to move Riverina from uncertainty to confidence, from short-term fixes to long-term growth. Riverina deserves nothing less.