Outside of the large cities infrastructure is almost non-existent. The national highway network is horrible compared to the US, the rail network is even pokier.

Outside of the large cities infrastructure is almost non-existent. The national highway network is horrible compared to the US, the rail network is even pokier. Hospitals and schools are of a much lower standard as well government just doesn't have the money to build this stuff. Secondly, large businesses who provide employment don't want to be based outside of large cities because there's no talent so you get this problem the net migration is to the large cities forcing up real-estate prices and labour costs. It's this vicious catch-22 - how can you attract people and businesses to regional centres without investing in infrastructure yet where's the demand to build infrastructure if populations of said regional centres is declining not increasing. It's 2012 and the drive to urbanization (especially mega cities) has never been greater than now and yet to solve some of Australia's structural economic problems we need to attract people away from big cities by creating self-sustaining (in the sense it provides adequate opportunities for its own population) regional towns with fast rail links to major cities. It's an impossible feat with the system of Government we have now which fosters basically a 2 party system where both are slightly right of centre and stuck in their echo chamber of mediocrity.