This Millennial moved to regional Australia to own a home

A brief glance at the past fortnight’s headlines is revealing. High-speed rail is connecting Sydney to Newcastle. A Regional Australia Institute poll shows Gen Z is interested in moving to regional areas. And of course, speculation on capital gains tax changes Treasurer Jim Chalmers will announce in May’s budget. 

These stories seem unrelated. But they are connected, because they attempt to address the same problem: the only problem that matters – younger generations’ access to housing.  

For high-speed rail, he government’s business case explicitly notes the population density of the Newcastle to Sydney corridor, with the prospect of additional housing densification around the relevant stops. In other words: build the fast train and increase housing access. 

Similarly, polling released in February by the Regional Australia Institute showed 49% of Generation Z and 41% of my own Millennial generation are likely to consider a regional move, driven largely by housing affordability concerns.   

Liberal oppositions, seeking to address those concerns without asking their supporter base in blue-chip suburbs to weather more development, also reach for the ‘decentralisation’ lever under the guise of choice.  

Recall Peter Dutton’s plan to remove housing infrastructure bottlenecks in greenfield sites, promoted in the inner Gippsland town of Drouin (98 km away from the Melbourne CBD).  

Or this week’s Victorian Liberals’ election pitch to fast-track homes in growth suburbs and the regional centres of Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo – at 75km, Geelong is the closest to Melbourne. 

Since leaving Sydney at the end of 2016, I have spent that time – bar the one memory-holed year living in Melbourne during COVID – living in regional Victoria.  

I moved away from Sydney because, as early as 2015, I realised I would never be able to afford a home anywhere. Much to the amusement of my colleagues, I nurtured dreams of moving to Tamworth, or Orange; but realised my job opportunities would be painfully limited. 

That’s how I found myself in Horsham, nearly four hours outside Melbourne.  

Having worked in education research, I was acutely aware of the difference good teachers can make to students’ futures.  

Joining the Teach for Australia program meant several things: the option to understand my field better from coalface experience, the chance to swap Sydney’s frenzy for a quieter option, but also the chance to retrain into a profession I could take anywhere in the country – rural, regional or metro. 

For young people who go into professions that can be taken anywhere, living in regional centres makes sense. Many places are crying out for skilled professionals: medicine, nursing, teaching and allied health.  

I am fortunate to have ended up a homeowner in Ballarat, with my hybrid-working journalist husband. City wages, and a Ballarat-sized mortgage.  

Interest rate rises are meaningful to me because of what they signal about the economy, not because they significantly undermine our financial situation. I am profoundly aware what a luxury that is.  

American economist Thomas Sowell wrote “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.”  

For the life we have chosen, there are several – most notably in job opportunities and life-cycle productivity.  

The nature of my current work means I can do it remotely without sacrificing productivity. But were a job change to become necessary, it would likely require going into Melbourne for two or three 12-hour days a week, relying on a train service that is reliably some combination of overcrowded, delayed, or cancelled.  

Remote work can work – but it can also mean reduced opportunities for collaboration, mentorship and professional growth.  

Research reported by this masthead in September examined the many trade-offs of remote work, with young women most likely to be disadvantaged. If workers cannot be ‘seen’ to be productive, they risk losing out on the compounding gains of promotions and wage rises. 

There is also firm-level productivity to consider. The McKinsey Global Institute’s research shows only a small number of firms are responsible for the lion’s share of productivity growth across the economy. 

As McKinsey told this masthead last year, “workers want to be in a high-productivity, high-growth company.”  

And where are these companies? In cities. Public sector agencies often decentralise to regional towns – remember Barnaby Joyce forcing the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority into Armidale? – but growing companies rarely do, because it hurts their bottom line.  

Yes, my decisions over the better part of a decade have been shaped by my own preferences. But also by the creation of a policy environment that has made it too expensive for people to live where they would most prefer, or could be most productive.   

Here’s where the intergenerational equity aspect comes in. Younger generations face trade-offs – housing, career growth, family formation, social networks – that older generations rarely had to make to anywhere near the same extent.  

Intergenerational equity will not be restored by building expensive trains to cities young people cannot afford to live in. It will be restored by making those cities accessible again. 

Trisha Jha is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies