Rupanyup/Minyip, Edenhope and Charlton community bank branches have partnered with the Regional Australia Institute for the pilot.

Rupanyup’s David Matthews said a lack of population was a fundamental challenge for many rural towns across the country.

“At the same time, we’ve observed that a fundamental challenge for a lot of cities is overpopulation,” he said.

“Our proposition is that within many of our towns, there’s surplus public infrastructure. For example, some schools have 50 students when they could take 100. All we need is to add people.

“There’s a myth that there are no jobs in the country, and the institute is doing work to demonstrate that is not the case.

“There are jobs across many sectors, from healthcare to transport, trades like mechanics and autotechnicians, and jobs in technology – we need people who can bring the IT skills needed in rural businesses.”

Mr Matthews said the first phase of the program would include developing a community prospectus, which would identify jobs and housing available.

“The towns will work with migration agencies to match people to jobs,” he said. 

“We think we will be able to see benefits quickly.”

Mr Matthews has already sponsored a number of migrants – including a mechanic from India and two Columbian vets – to work in Rupanyup as part of his commercial ventures.

Other migrants are also looking at opportunities in the town.

“We’re already into the program in an informal way in Rupanyup,” he said.

“And there are already some great examples of this targeted approach in other towns, with Nhill and the Karen population, and Pyramid Hill’s Filipino population.

“We want to start to do that in a more organised way, rather than place by place or driven by one business.

“We think there's an opportunity to do this in a regional way initially. If we get it going, we'll be rolling it out nationally as well.”

Mr Matthews said the next step was for project co-ordinators in each town to meet.

“It’s a really exciting project,” he said.

“We do a lot of treating the outcome of our population challenges – this is about trying to tackle them head-on.”

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