A Regional Jobs Summit was held in Narrabri for the north-west inland regional area of NSW. It was hosted jointly with the Northern Inland Regional Development Board (NIRDB) and attracted wide interest from regional industry groups, educational and employment agencies, job network and training service providers and local and state government. 

Key speakers included Don Tydd and Meryl Dillon from the Northern Inland Regional Development Board, Narrabri Mayor Robyn Faber and members of other Industry Skills Councils, RTOs, NSW Government departments, employment agencies, academics and researchers, and growers.

Organisations expressing interest included Tocal College, TAFE New England Institute, DPI Queensland, NSW DET, Central West Community College, Best Employment, Namoi Cotton, Cotton CRC, the Association of Mining Related Councils, NSW TAFE and the Central Highlands Skills Formation Strategy.

Narrabri Mayor Robyn Faber said the region had not been able to establish an effective regionally-based approach to attraction and retention of workers, made worse because the right type of training was not readily available.

“It has been difficult to get people to relocate to the region and seasonal workers are unwilling to go through a change in lifestyle and settle in the area,” she said.

The summit sought to create an opportunity to bring together regional people, industries and organisations together that would not normally interact and to enable them to discuss employment issues and explore opportunities to address skills needs on a wider scale. Key issues facing the region included:

• Effective attraction and retention strategies is a key need
• An employer culture of handling people well, understanding their expectations and developing them - women, generation Y, mature age employees, disabled and indigenous
• How jobs within the region are promoted -the value proposition to employees must overcome negative perceptions
• Providing attractive and fulfilling jobs as one part of the solution for attracting and retaining people in rural and regional Australia
• Need to anticipate future labour demands and the capacity to up-skill people as technology and businesses scale increased
• Recognition that significant labour and skill shortages will feature as

The NSW Government announced that it would provide a matched $100,000 to further develop the project in the north west of NSW. The Minister for Regional Development, Phil Costa said AgriFood’s regional jobs project was being developed in response to the growing need to attract and retain skilled workers in the agrifood industry.

“AgriFood Skills Australia and its project partners anticipate that growth in the agrifood, mining and other industries will result in a need for businesses to attract skilled workers to sustain and grow their enterprises,” Mr Costa said.

CEO Arthur Blewitt said skills and workforce development were of concern to the whole community; and employers as well as people entering and already in the workforce, needed to adapt to changing business conditions to survive.

"We believe that this initiative can pave the way for a national approach that can be applied across many areas of regional Australia,” Mr Blewitt said.

“This is a 'first' for us but with support from other Industry Skills Councils and through our regional partnerships, this first step can become something of greater significance for displaced workers as well as for the agrifood industry itself.

"Our focus is on finding regional solutions at a grass roots level. Our research suggests that the agrifood industry is in a position to offer jobs to people who, regrettably, have been displaced from other areas as a consequence of the global economic downturn. Agrifood appears to be well placed for the uptake of displaced workers from other industries into the agriculture, horticulture, food and meat processing sectors and also into other industries that have vacancies."