State's building growth
goes bush

Regional Victoria is winning back its place in the sun.
Home building approvals in areas outside Melbourne soared almost 60 per cent in the year to June,
as more of the state's growth went bush.
State and regional statistics released yesterday suggests that with the boom in farm incomes in
the years before the drought, and deliberate policies by the Howard and Bracks Governments
to lift spending outside Melbourne, regional areas are reaping the benefits.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show:
The value of building approvals in regional Victoria shot up 64 per cent in the three years to 2001-02,
out doing even the 55 per cent growth in Melbourne.
Job growth in the rest of the state out paced job growth in Melbourne in the same period.
Full-time jobs grew twice as fast in the regions as in Melbourne.
Population growth outside Melbourne shot up from 12,080 in the five years to mid-1996
to 57,036 in the five years to mid 2001.

Melbourne still dwarfs the rest of the state in its ability to generate new economic activity,
the figures show regional Victoria has bounced back, particularly in new building and job growth.
Melbourne still dominates building approvals at a national level, let alone state.
In the year to June, it accounted for $10.9 billion of new housing, government and business building,
accounting for 26 per cent of building approvals nationally and 81 per cent in Victoria.