Outback town Broken Hill has 'potential' to be Australia's version of Las Vegas
Picture this – you are driving towards the outback city of Broken Hill, top down on your convertible, and shimmering on the desert horizon is a casino and five-star resorts.
And what happens in Broken Hill, stays in Broken Hill.
The mining city in the far west of NSW has the potential to be developed into Australia’s Las Vegas – and the concept is not as wild as it seems, property researcher Simon Pressley says.
The buyers’ agent and managing director of Propertyology says Australia’s housing affordability issues can be partly addressed by boosting the profile and lifestyle in regional towns and cities, to attract new residents.
Pressley says Broken Hill is the prime candidate for becoming Australia’s future tourist mecca and, by virtue of that, a more broadly appealing place to live.
Right now, Broken Hill’s median house price is $195,000 – a sixth of the combined capital city median.
Pressley’s idea for Broken Hill is a resort city with a casino, flash hotels, a world-class arts centre, a professional sports stadium and a major university.
For this to work, not just in Broken Hill but any corner of Australia, it needs colossal vision from business magnates like Richard Branson, if not governments, Pressley says.
“Humans are creatures of habit and there are not many Australians who can say they have a really good understanding of the 400 townships across Australia,” Pressley says.
“Most people spend their entire life in the city they were born in.
“Without exposure to diverse cities, big and small, you don’t know what you might be missing out on.”
Broken Hill was once the ninth-largest city in Australia. It is the birthplace of the mining goliath BHP and has an airport, infrastructure, and industries.
“You have to have a stable economy to create a stable community,” Pressley says.
“If you add other economic bows to it, you build resilience.
“There is no reason there could not be a mini version of Abu Dhabi or Vegas in Broken Hill. I am not saying build a casino city, but if you create something unique, people will go there and that energy spreads.”
Broken Hill mayor Tom Kennedy is not unfamiliar with the idea of his town as the Aussie answer to Las Vegas and sees the merit.
It was first raised with him by a group of town planners and surveyors last year.
“This proposal had been put to me,” Kennedy says.
“Our conversation was along the lines of the importance of decentralisation, not only to boost cities like Broken Hill, but to take some of that infrastructure dependency off Sydney and Melbourne, which are becoming bigger, sprawled out, and more unaffordable for the average person.”
Kennedy says the council’s immediate priority is to boost Broken Hill’s population from 18,000 to 22,000, and secure federal and state government funding to upgrade the airport runway.
He says the town is about 700 homes short of what it needs to meet demand from workers on upcoming mining projects and at a new compressed air storage facility.
Broken Hill will also have a role to play in the AUKUS submarine contract, he says.
“Because Broken Hill does have the railway and links up with capital cities, it is the ideal place,” Kennedy says.
“For decentralisation to work, it would take a fair bit of capital expenditure from both the state and federal governments.
“If they truly want decentralisation, they have to make sure airports, road networks and train facilities are of a good enough standard, and inject money into the same standards of hospital care and education.
“The jobs will happen if you have that, and people will move if you have that.”
Pressley’s Vegas pitch is in line with what the Regional Australia Institute broadly hopes to achieve.
The independent think tank’s chief executive, Liz Ritchie, says she prefers the term “regionalisation” to decentralisation, and it is the focus of a 10-year framework of 20 goals.
These include faster building approvals to keep up with population growth and increasing the vacancy rate to above 3 per cent, boosting workplace participation and improving access to doctors and childcare.
Ritchie “loves” the concept of Broken Hill as a Las Vegas-style mecca.
However, with a goal for 11 million Australians living in regional areas by 2032, her institute’s ambitions are much broader than any one town’s fortunes.
“We know we are walking towards three mega cities, which is not a future that Australians want,” she says.
“The agglomeration benefits have tapped out, and did so a number of years ago, because the congestion and pollution are so bad.
“We would love to see our Prime Minister stand up and put forward a vision that has regional Australia at its core, rather than as a fringe component to mega-city planning and investment, which is essentially where we sit.”
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