With the average price of a 4 bedroom home in Sydney being well over a million and a similar well positioned home in Rockhampton could be bought for around $450 000 to help attract people to move here place a full page in Sydney’s major real estate guide featuring quality Rockhampton homes and their prices. It would be reverse sticker shock.
Would it get Sydney people to sell up and move here? That’s the unknown; jobs would be a major factor in the decision, unless they are retired.
Arguably the ideal people you want to move here are young, those about to start or have a young family when personal spending is likely to be at its highest. House prices alone will possibly not be enough reason for them to move.
Add a can do entrepreneurial culture that fostered innovation and encouraged disruption to affordable housing; would this sway a few to come to Rockhampton?
Imagine what attracting these budding entrepreneurs with our own home grown ones could do for the local economy – exciting, stimulating, job creating and no advertisements saying ‘our economy is a disaster’.
How do we create this culture? A major catalyst would be establish a Youth Entrepreneurial Economic Zone (YEEZ). It is something I have proposed several times in the past. Our region needs to make a bolder statement and commitment than just a smart city, we need to make a cultural change that retains and attracts more entrepreneurs, nationally and internationally.
It appears local politicians are still to grasp this YEEZ concept, disappointing but the cultural change can and must happen while we wait for them. To be successful it has to involve a bottom up community driven approach.
We must want the change and be involved in it.
This Thursday (May 4) Rockhampton Innovative Networking Group (RING) is holding another of their C2C (Communication to Careers) sessions with Year 10 students at The Cathedral College.
It’s not a career expo but high school students interacting with a variety of local business people and amongst other things talk about their aspirations.
At last week’s C2C I recall two students talk about their goal of opening their own business.
I wonder how many 15 year olds are willing to tell stranger’s that.
Brave, it needs to be encouraged more, both the willingness to share this personal insight and for more 15 year olds to have this aspiration.
This is a necessary foundation block to a bottom up approach for the cultural change needed.
Needed as we can’t just rely on being in bidding contests and hope we win a slice of the action for our economy to get stronger.
We need a plan that we have more control of and more people to get off the sidelines and get involved.
Involvement can start by taking the time to talk to local secondary school students, listen to their post school ambitions and encourage the pursuit of them here and suggest ways they can get help developing them.
Be part of the bottom up approach, join RING at The Cathedral College this Thursday, details can be found on www.ring.org.au/c2c.