The 2026 Ready Communities Impact and Action report – Regions in Transition outlines a range of ways to create sustainable change in regional communities. The following highlights examples across Australia in the area of Local retail, shop local and main street activation programs.
Buy local campaigns run by councils and chambers of commerce use branding, social media, and community events to redirect consumer spending toward local businesses. Every Australian state has run some version including Queensland’s Go Local Grow Local, South Australia’s Buy SA for SA, Tasmania’s Buy Something Tasmanian, and the ACT’s Choose Local. Founded in Narrabri in 2007 by Ashley Watt, the Why Leave Town gift card program is a more structured approach that provides communities with a closed-loop spending mechanism: loaded funds can only be redeemed at participating local businesses, ensuring capital recirculation within the region. Since launch, over $25 million has been loaded onto local gift cards across more than 80 communities and 450 postcodes. The Coonamble Shire model takes this a step further, using the gift card infrastructure to channel charitable donations to drought-affected residents in a way that simultaneously supports local businesses. These mechanisms work best when coordinated across council, business chambers, and large local employers. Santos, for example, donated $40,000 in Why Leave Town cards for distribution through the Narrabri Lions Club. The NSW Small Business Commissioner has published guidance for councils on implementing buy local initiatives, drawing on case studies from across regional NSW.
Main street revitalisation involves a more integrated set of interventions spanning physical infrastructure, tenancy activation, place management, and business mix curation. Mainstreet Australia, the national peak body (successor to Community Business Centres Victoria, established 1996), provides advocacy, professional development, and a knowledge exchange network for trader associations, councils, and place managers working in town centres. It has long advocated for the adoption of Business Improvement District (BID) model with Sydney’s Western Harbour BID becoming Australia’s first in 2022.
Renew Australia, a certified social enterprise operating since 2013, brokers agreements between property owners with vacant shopfronts and creative enterprises, startups, and not-for-profits, providing rent-free short-term licences that generate foot traffic and incubate new businesses. It has provided rent-free opportunities to over 265 participants nationally Renew Australia, with projects running in locations from Broken Hill (Renew Far West NSW) and Warrnambool (Shop in a Box 3280, run by Leadership Great South Coast) to Cairns, Innisfail, Alice Springs, Burnie, and Campbelltown. The Queensland Small Business Commissioner has partnered with Renew Australia to offer a space activation program specifically tailored for regional and remote Queensland councils. At the consulting end, firms like Premier Retail Marketing have developed assessment methodologies including the “12 Keys to Successful Streets” framework applied across dozens of regional and metropolitan main streets from Renmark and Mildura to Albany and Queanbeyan. The common thread across these approaches is that main street vitality is not a natural outcome of market forces; it requires coordinated, ongoing management that brings together property owners, traders, councils, and the community that can lack a dedicated national policy framework.
