REFEREED PROCEEDINGS OF THE 40th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL RMIT UNIVERSITY MELBOURNE 5-7 DECEMBER 2016 EDITED BY PAUL DALZIEL AERU, LINCOLN UNIVERSITY LINCOLN, NEW ZEALAND Published in Canterbury New Zealand by: Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit P.O. Box 85084 Lincoln 7647 NEW ZEALAND Email: [email protected] Conference website: http://www.anzrsai.org ISBN: 978-0-473-38890-4 Copyright © ANZRSAI 2017 Individual chapters © the authors 2017 This publication is copyright. Other than for purposes of and subject to the conditions prescribed under the Copyright Act, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. ANZRSAI is pleased to acknowledge the conference sponsors. Lincoln University Page ii Preface The 40th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Regional Science Association International (ANZRSAI) was held at the RMIT University Melbourne from 5th to 7th December, 2016, co-hosted with the European Union Centre at RMIT and the RMIT Centre for People, Work and Organisation (with the RMIT Social Change Enabling Platform). A broad range of papers from academics, policy advisors and practitioners was presented to the conference. This publication contains the refereed proceedings of those contributed papers. Participants who submitted their full paper by the due date were eligible to be considered for these refereed proceedings. There were twelve papers submitted to a double blind refereeing process, all of which were accepted for this publication. One was withdrawn by the author. As in previous conferences, I am very grateful to referees for their work within a short timeframe. Three awards were presented at the conference dinner. The John Dickinson Memorial Award for best article in the Australasian Journal of Regional Science 2016 was awarded to Tony O’Malley for his article “Governance and Regional Incomes in Australia” published in volume 22(1), pp. 103-124. The ANZRSAI Award for Best Conference Paper 2016 was awarded to Karim K. Mardaneh, Jerry Courvisanos and Ameeta Jain for their paper “Economic Resilience of Regions: A Longitudinal Study of the Australian Economy from 1986 to 2011”. This paper is the first paper presented in these proceedings. The ANZRSAI Award for Best Conference Paper by a Current or Recent Student 2016 was awarded to Amanda Qian Wu and Marion Myhill for their paper “Going off the Beaten Track: Exploring Chinese International Students’ Motivations for Selecting Regional Australian Higher Education”.. The committee highly commended one other entrant for this Award: Kelbesa Kenea, Susan Kinnear and Delwar Akbar, for their paper “Accessibility of Anbessa City bus service: Analysis of Stakeholders Opinions in Addis Ababa”. I thank all the participants for their involvement in our 40th Annual Conference, particularly those who had travelled some distance from overseas to attend. The international community of regional science scholars is strengthened when people gather to share their research and expertise at conferences such as this. Professor Paul Dalziel Editor, 40th Annual ANZRSAI Conference Proceedings Page iii Contents Preface iii Contents iv Karim K. Mardaneh, Jerry Courvisanos and Ameeta Jain Economic Resilience of Regions: A Longitudinal Study of the Australian Economy from 1986 to 2011 1 Delwar Akbar, Susan Kinnear, Prem Chhetri and Phillip Smith Assessing Road Travel Conditions in the Bowen Basin Region: Implications for Transport Planning in Australian Mining Communities 24 Delwar Akbar, John Rolfe and Rahat Hossain Perceived Risks to Housing Unaffordability in Resource and Regional Communities: Policy Implications for Regional Housing Affordability in Australia 38 Gleeson, Grant The Triumph of the Market or the Doom of History? What is the Future for Regional Towns? 53 Kelbesa Kenea, Susan Kinnear and Delwar Akbar Accessibility of Anbessa City Bus Service: Analysis of Stakeholders Opinions in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 77 Fiona McKenzie The Human Capital Factor: Generating, Attracting and Retaining Human Capital in Regional Australia 88 Lee Pugalis and Darren Keegan The Regional Economic Development Paradox: Policy Order and Complex Practice 107 Lee Pugalis and Su Fei Tan Metropolitan and Regional Economic Development: Competing and Contested Local Government Roles in Australia in the 21st Century 121 Md Zillur Rahman, Delwar Akbar and John Rolfe Developing a Conceptual Framework of Living Cost to Income Approach for Depicting Affordable Housing Locations: Policy Implications for Housing Affordability in Melbourne, Australia 137 Warit Wipulanusat, Kriengsak Panuwatwanich, and Rodney A. Stewart Innovation in the Australian Public Service: A Qualitative Analysis 148 Qian (Amanda) Wu and Marion Myhill Going off the Beaten Track: Exploring Chinese International Students’ Motivations for Selecting Regional Australian Higher Education 165 Page iv Economic Resilience of Regions: A Longitudinal Study of the Australian Economy from 1986 to 2011 Karim K. Mardaneh, Jerry Courvisanos and Ameeta Jain Federation University Australiaand Deakin University, Australia [email protected] ABSTRACT Resilience is about addressing vulnerability, not only by surviving a shock to the system, but also thriving in an economic environment of change and uncertainty. A robust conceptual framework is required to navigate through underlining elements of vulnerability. An evolutionary model of regional adaptive cycles around four sequential phases in economic activity – reorganisation, exploitation, conservation and release – is adopted in this study as the framework for recognising such phase patterns. A data mining clustering method which utilises a k-means algorithm evaluates the impact of major shocks, notably economic recessions and drought, on four functional groups of regions (metropolitan, periphery, regional and rural). Applying this clustering method to the adaptive cycle model using census data from 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011, the paper identifies patterns of economic resilience in regions by industry categories. Preliminary results show different resilience patterns and varied stability to this resilience for industry/functional regions ranging from non-resilient to very resilient regions. Resilience is about addressing vulnerability, not only by surviving a shock to the system under investigation, but also for the system to thrive in an environment of change and uncertainty. Recent severe economic and ecological crises raise questions about sustainable development and resilience of regions within different industries (Courvisanos et al, 2016, p. 630) INTRODUCTION Investigating the vulnerability of regional economic systems in Australia to economic and ecological crises has been the major research objective of this research team over a significant period of time. The quotation above appears in the first peer-reviewed research output in which a robust conceptual framework was developed to navigate through the underlining elements of vulnerability. This framework of regional adaptive cycles is based on a four sequential phase model of economic activity – reorganisation, exploitation, conservation and release – that was initially advocated by Simmie and Martin (2010). By adapting this generalised pattern into a framework for examination of Australian regions and industries, and their income generation capability during cycles and crises, patterns can emerge that enables resilience against crises to be investigated. In Courvisanos et al. (2016), the data analysed was from the 2001, 2006 and 2011 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census. A data mining clustering method called k-means provided an algorithm to evaluate the impact of major shocks, notably economic recession and drought, 1 ANZRSAI CONFERENCE 2016 REFEREED PROCEEDINGS on four functional groups of regions (metropolitan, periphery, regional and rural) across all 558 local government areas (LGAs) in Australia. These four functional groups of regions were allocated over the 19 ABS defined industry sectors, thus creating a total of 76 functional regional groups and their relevant industries. Two major limitations emerged from the investigation of the available three prior Census data sets. First is that 41 of the total 76 functional regional groups and their industries could not be allocated to the four-phase evolutionary pattern due to two or more non-separable (non-significant) periods being identified. Second is that only three periods with census data points 2001, 2006 and 2011 were available to be accessed in order to build the database for clustering. This is a limited time horizon with only two shocks (mid-2000s drought and 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis) in the snapshot data points with which to examine the adaptive resilience of regions by industry. To overcome these two limitations, the research team undertook further investigation by extending back in time to cover census periods that take in the 1989-92 recession and the 1999-2001 dot com bubble crash. This required the statistical data from ABS to reach back across a further three Census periods, 1986, 1991 and 1996. Given the number of LGAs and their respective industrial sectors, preparation of the data concordance for six Census dates was a huge data setting task.