Andrew Taylor

In this brief we analyse the size, composition and changing scale of the NT’s non-resident workforce evident in 2016 ABS Census data and compare results to 2011 and 2006. The absolute size of the non-resident worker population in the NT has grown rapidly to become proportionally much larger than in any other Australian jurisdiction excluding the ACT. In a number of key industries, technology improvements and changing workforce practices are growing the significance of non-resident workforces. Understanding and profiling this component of the workforce will benefit efforts to attract and retain residents and to understand industry development.

Background Population growth rates in many parts of northern Australia have slowed considerably in recent years. Governments are interested in identifying northern migration 'markets' as potential targets for a mix of marketing and policy-based approaches to improve population attraction and retention. In the Northern Territory (NT), German-born residents present an interesting case study. Many are long-term residents ('sticky'), highly educated, in professional jobs and say they are likely to stay. Aims We profile and report on a study of German-born NT residents as one important international market for offsetting population losses. Understanding factors which have contributed to the attraction and retention of this group may help to inform policies and initiatives to improve the population position of the NT and northern Australia more broadly. Results German-born residents are a relatively immobile ('sticky') and educated population group in the NT with a high ratio of females. Many of those surveyed, in particular those who had arrived as working holiday makers or tourists, exhibited little or no intention of leaving. Lifestyle factors, climate and job opportunities ranked highly in decisions to stay. Conclusions The study of German-born Territorians holds promise for developing targetted niche migration initiatives to address skills and population deficits in the NT and northern Australia. Analysis of responses to the GTS highlighted opportunities for recruiting skilled women and the importance of tourism as a source for labour supply and population growth.

Skilled migration has long been at the forefront of policies for engendering population and regional economic
growth in developed nations like Australia. Indeed a rapid growth in the size of the skilled migrant intake
during past thirty years has seen skilled migration visa numbers outstrip the combined permanent intake from
other migration streams. The Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (RSMS) and State Specific Regional
Migration (SSRM) schemes have been enacted and progressively altered in order to attract skilled migrants to
regional areas of Australia. Nevertheless, population and economic growth are becoming increasingly
concentrated into regional hotspots, particularly across the north of the country, raising questions about the
efficacy of these programs to address skill needs in industries outside the resource sector, where a spatially distributed demand for skilled workers is emerging. In light of overall pessimism in existing literature which points to skilled migrant ‘leakages’ from regional Australia to larger cities, this study aims to provide an up-todate assessment of the contributions of the RSMS and SSMS programs for attracting and retaining skilled migrants and their families to the Northern Territory of Australia. We conducted online surveys with recent
migrants to the jurisdiction through a combination of open and closed questions. The results provide positive
indications about the demographic, labour force and retention contributions of the programs with high rates
of retention evident overall and demographic contributions including a female-biased migrant cohort and
high rates of partnering. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that skilled migrants are contributing
to population stability in the face of high population turnover and an increasing male bias across the north of
Australia. Nevertheless, the study reminds regional areas that future growth and sustainability will require
concerted and innovative approaches to planning and development as global competition for skilled migrants
increases.

This paper is a summarised account of a plenary talk delivered at the First International Conference on Urbanisation in the Arctic. The conference and days around it were a remarkable and stimulating intellectual experience, particularly given many of my academic ‘idols’ were present. Equally pleasing was the presence of ministers of the Greenlandic Government and the major of Iqaluit. All were open to discussing the difficult (‘taboo’ as it became labelled during the course of the conference) issue of population movements towards large towns and away from small villages where more traditional lives have been, and continue to be, played out. The intention of my talk, composed well before I landed (after two failed attempts incorporating an unexpected trip 280 km north of the Arctic Circle) on Greenlandic soil, was to highlight similarities in the issues and challenges facing Greenland and the Northern Territory of Australia as both grapple with tumultuous transitions in their Indigenous settlement demographies and in the structure of their economies. Having now visited Greenland, the similarities are starker than I had ever imagined and are by no means limited to Indigenous issues. So strong are the resemblances I can now confidently employ my oft used (tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless pertinent) catchcry that “Greenland is the Northern Territory with snow” or (alternatively) that “The Northern Territory is Greenland with red dust”. My time in Greenland was life changing on many levels both professionally and personally and I wish to thank my hosts Klaus Georg Hansen (and his wife and children) and Rasmus Ole Rasmussen (the font of all knowledge!) who’s  giving of time and intellect made my visit so special.

Increasing the age pension qualifying age is one mechanism by which governments of developed nations are attempting to manage increasing costs associated with population ageing. In Australia however, there are a number of groups within the population who will be affected differently by a recent decision to increase the qualifying age to 70 by the year 2035. In this research brief we use scenario modeling and analysis to explore the effects of changes to the age pension qualifying age, and in light of changing life expectancies for Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, determine the effects on years in ‘retirement’ and compare these effects to the non-Indigenous population.

Following the inclusion of the variable “unpaid assistance to a person with a disability” in the 2006 and 2011 Australian Censuses of Population and Housing, this research brief profiles carers in the Northern Territory (NT) based on socio-demographic and geographic characteristics. The brief answers the question of ‘who cares?’ and creates a baseline profile of NT carers.

In this brief we analyse data and make commentary on the population related aspirations inherent in the Developing Northern Australia White and Green Papers. The aim is to identify the opportunities and challenges based on the pre-existing population and to comment on the population targets and desired changes which can be distilled from the Australian Government’s agenda in relation to developing northern Australia.

In this report we outline the scale and composition of population ageing impending in the Northern Territory as the context for presenting results from a large survey of seniors conducted in late 2013 and early 2014. The survey was conducted in partnership with the Council on the Ageing, NT. This report summarises the results of the survey and examines the policy, services and infrastructure needs associated with the rapid anticipated expansion in the seniors' cohort in the Northern Territory. We discuss the challenges and opportunities for creating age-friendly communities and environments based on findings from this research. The aim is to provide policy makers in the NT with information for developing age-friendly communities and to deliver a research baseline for the strategic planning of services and infrastructure by government, service providers and others.

Increasing the age at which people are eligible for the age pension is one mechanism by which governments of developed nations are attempting to manage increasing costs associated with population ageing. In Australia, there are a number of groups within the population who may be affected in unintended ways by increasing the eligibility age to 70 years by the year 2035, as was proposed in the 2014 Federal Budget. Most notably, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians currently with an average at birth life expectancy of 69.1 years for males and 73.7 years for females, nearly 11 years less than non-Indigenous Australians, may be the most affected. This study explores the consequences of the proposed future amendments to the age pension eligibility age, using projections of the likely age structures of future populations to estimate expected years of life remaining after reaching pension age. Despite projected improvements for Indigenous life expectancies, increasing the pension eligibility age under the schedule proposed in the policy would significantly reduce the expected years in post pension age, thus countering some of the anticipated benefits flowing from expected future life expectancy increases. However, if the eligibility age were to be increased more gradually, Indigenous Australians would be afforded a greater opportunity to access age pension benefits, whilst still reducing the length of time the non-Indigenous population is eligible to access the age pension, thus fulfilling policy objectives to manage increasing costs associated with population ageing.

Outback areas of Australia account for much of the landmass with just 5% of the population, many of whom are Indigenous Australians. Despite tourism being an important industry for Outback economies, it has declined in recent decades prompting a search for new and expanding tourism markets. While Indigenous tourism in the form of visits to Indigenous communities, attractions and sites to obtain the Indigenous ‘experience’ has been pursued it has, along with other niche markets, delivered at best limited and isolated successes. But Indigenous people are themselves highly mobile, making frequent and regular trips away from home. In the past these trips were labelled in a derogatory way as ‘walkabout’. The characteristics of these trips posit them firmly within accepted definitions of tourism but, excepting one study on homelessness, there is a vacuum in research on the potential of people ‘on the move’ as a tourist market. Consequently we do not know the potential size or characterist...

Citation: Michel, T. and A. Taylor (2012). "Death by a thousand grants? The challenge of grant funding reliance for local government councils in the Northern Territory of Australia." Local Government Studies 38(4): 485-500.

In July 2008, the local government sector in the Northern Territory of Australia underwent wide-sweeping reforms, with 53 councils being amalgamated into eight regional shires. Most of the affected communities have majority Indigenous populations. The dominant justifications for these reforms focused on internal ‘deficits’ about the community council sector: lack of competent and ethical staff, managerial workforce instability, inefficient use of resources, and poor oversight were cited as the primary causes of chronic underperformance and dysfunction. This paper identifies and discusses the under-scrutinised role of grants revenue dependency and volatility in the demise of small councils. We analyse financial data from 2005-06 to 2007-08 to demonstrate the extreme volatility in year-on-year grants funding. With their high dependency on grants revenue, such volatility and unpredictability resulted in many councils being hamstrung in their ability to strategically plan and ensure stability in service delivery, infrastructure management and employment provision. We argue that these fiscal dynamics, fuelled by hierarchical intergovernmental relations, contributed significantly to the dysfunction of rural, remote and Indigenous councils in the Territory, and mutually reinforced other structural and internal weaknesses of the sector. This argument runs against a common but simplistic conceptualisation of the sector’s dysfunction prior to 2008 as due to endogenous deficits, best solved by externally imposed structural reform. This article concludes by suggesting that there are factors additional to scale that need to be incorporated into an analysis of the effects of amalgamation policies on rural and remote councils.

Regional development theories suggest concentration of a developed country's human and economic resources around mainly urban population nodes. These nodes have critical mass both of producers and consumers. They are well connected to markets and information through hard and soft infrastructure. They also tend to become centres for the creative industries, sports and recreation, education and learning because they have both the population and the economic wealth to invest in these activities. The more distant one gets from these centres (although the relationship is not strictly linear), the more difficult it has proven to bring together and sustain development resources. Consequently, just as different demographic patterns are observed between nations, there are important sub-national differences. -- While there may be continuing disagreements about how remoteness is defined, even cursory examination of maps of Australia, North America and northern Europe reveal where the "extreme cases‟ of remoteness are most likely situated. Each map has areas where there are many labels for towns and cities and where there exists a spider-web like network of roads and railway lines. As the eye moves (generally north) from these areas, the number of labels diminishes, along with the number of alternative transport routes between towns and cities. Ultimately, in the far north (and more so towards the west in Australia and North America), the level of human infrastructure is very low and population centres are small and widely dispersed. In Canada, the transition from high density human and transport networks occurs within a few hundred kilometres north of the border with the United States. The Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are jurisdictions most obviously "remote‟ from the main population centres, but so are large northern sections of the more southerly provinces. In Australia, the Northern Territory embodies remoteness, along with the northern and eastern parts of Western Australia and the north and west of
Queensland. Alaska in the United States has a population density of 0.42 persons per square kilometre, by far the lowest density of all States and comparing to 31 persons per square kilometre for the country as a whole. The northern European situation is more politically complex. The Nordic Council of Ministers has identified the "Northern Sparsely Populated Areas‟ which includes parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, along with the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland. --
Australia, Canada, the United States and Europe's Northern Sparsely Populated Areas face substantial challenges in including their furthest jurisdictions in the processes of post- industrialisation and the development of knowledge economies. It is now widely accepted that such processes are human ones – innovation diffusion relies on the interactions between people and the
organisations they construct. People provide the core inputs for networks and clusters. People are the entrepreneurs in economic systems. The collections of people as producers, intermediaries and markets constitute the critical mass which drives innovation. People are not just qualitative competitive variables; they also feature as inputs to quantitative variables such as economic structure and productivity. The role of people is not limited to economics and neither should economics be seen as the sole justification for the existence of remote populations. People sustain social, political and cultural capital - forces for social development, creativity and cultural enrichment which do not necessarily have to have immediate economic returns.

Settlements at the Edge examines the evolution, characteristics, functions and shifting economic basis of settlements in sparsely populated areas of developed nations. With a focus on demographic change, the book features theoretical and applied cases which explore the interface between demography, economy, well-being and the environment. This book offers a comprehensive and insightful knowledge base for understanding the role of population in shaping the development and histories of northern sparsely populated areas of developed nations including Alaska (USA), Australia, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland and other nations with territories within the Arctic Circle.