Australia’s farmers are among theworld’s great optimists. Our farmers havemore than their fair share of challenges.They operate in a tough climate,with frequent droughts, bushfires and floods. Then there are the vagaries of commodity prices and international trade arrangements.

But our farmers are a toughmob.They attack difficulty head on and look for the opportunities among the challenges.

That’s why the National Farmers Federation is taking a positive attitude to the global shift towards renewable energy and the vast opportunities itwill bring to reinvigorate regional Australia. The NFF focused on these opportunities at its national conference and has offered its support for Labor’s Powering Australia plan, designed to cut power bills, create newjobs and help our nation prosper in the age of renewables.

There is great potential for our farmers to increase their exports of bulk commodities to a broader array of trading partners.Butwe must also seize the opportunity that comes with the use of renewable energy to reinvigorate regional Australiamore broadly.

Renewable energy from the sun andwind is notjust clean, it is also cheap.The shift towards renewables, if properlymanaged, can slash power prices,whichwill significantly improve businessmodels for value-addingmanufacturing in regional Australia.

Labor’s National Reconstruction Fund is designed to help drive this shift, providing loans, equity and guarantees to businesses in traditional and existing and emerging industrieswanting tomodernise and expand.

We would reserve $500 million of the fund for agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and fibre, to encourage investment in valueadding for both domestic and exportmarkets.

The fund will help diversify the sector and open up new possibilities for trade.

And, importantly, it will also createmore jobs and economic activity in the regions.

To unlock the real potential of the regions, we must ease the serious skills shortage that is holding back economic growth.

The struggle to find farmworkers is nothing new to our agricultural producers. The Morrison government’s Ag visa hasn’t brought a singleworker to Australian farms.

But what is less understood is theway in which skills shortages are holding back the great regional centres that serve our agricultural communities.

Whenever I seemedia reports about how cities lack enough teachers, doctors, nurses and aged careworkers, I remind myself that it is evenmore difficult in regional Australia.

Easing these shortages is critical ifwewant genuine decentralisation in this nation.

If we want people tomove to regional areas,wemust train up enough Australians to fill the important jobs that contribute to quality of life in these centres.

Regional communities need doctors, nurses, aged care and childcareworkers, as well as people in traditional trades applicable to farmwork. They need enough properly trainedworkers to provide the same quality of life as people enjoy in our big cities.

That’s why a Labor governmentwould create 465,000 new fee-freeTAFE places in areas of demonstrated labour shortage. We’d also create 20,000 new university places and prioritise universities offering additional courses in national priority areas.

A real regionalisation program is not about moving a few public service offices to regional centres. It is about building up regional communities for thosewho live there and thosewewant tomove there.

It’s never going to be easy.Butwith 1.5 million Australians unemployed or underemployed, we must get back into the business of skills training.

Another impediment to rural prosperity is inadequate broadband service. The Coalition government has short-changed rural and regional Australia on the NBN, replacing the former Labor government’s plan for state-ofthe-art optical fibre technologywith 19th-century copperwires.

While the government accepts itmade the wrong call and is now retrofitting the existing NBN so it looksmore like what was first proposed, Labor will accelerate this work. We will ensure that 80 per cent of homes and businesses in regional and remote Australia will have access to broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second ormore by 2025.

This includes expanded fibre connectivity to 660,000 premises, faster fixed-wireless speeds, upgrades benefiting 750,000 premises, and increased satellite data allowances.

During the coming election campaign,my message to farmers and regional Australians is that Labor strongly supports individual enterprise and understands thatwithout successful businesses, we can’t createjobs.

However, we also see a role for governments to put in place policies and programs that help businesses to prosper.

In farming, that’s about working with farmers, industry groups and regional communities to ease labour shortages, improve services, and shape the forces of change in ways that create national prosperity.

This opinion piece was first published in the Australian Financial Review on Monday, 11 April 2022.