Candidates say promotion is the way to attract new business to Bathurst

Their suggestions came in response to a question at Tuesday night's candidate forum, hosted by the Bathurst Business Chamber, about how to attract and secure new industries, such as manufacturing and technology.

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Amber Marks represented Team Hanger at the forum and put the emphasis on a collaborative approach between council and established industries in Bathurst.

"I'm not in small business or medium business, so I don't profess to understand the regulatory issues, but what I can say is that what I'm seeing is that, on their own, I don't believe our local council presents a strong enough value proposition to attract business, and that's what I mean by collaboration," she said.

"The value in understanding our local and regional assets, understanding the skills and industry strengths that we have, and understanding how we can leverage the existing organisations, be it the university or other industries, to say collaboratively we present a value proposition for Bathurst."

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Ben Fry, who is leading the Balanced Bathurst team, said council had to present the city in a better light.

"That comes down sometimes to optics of how the council operates and the culture that that council leads from the top," he said.

"Culture is everything in an organisation and we need to present the city in a good way, in a good light, to make it attractive to large corporates and medium and small business, whoever wants to come here and set up shop."

He also thought that council needed to cut the red tape to make it easier for new development to go ahead.

"We are diversifying slowly. There is a bit of red tape and, again, it's that age old argument: we need to maintain regulation but we need to cut a bit of red tape when it comes to small and medium enterprise, I feel, but those larger ones probably deserve a bit more of a close look," he said.

It was a point that Robert 'Stumpy' Taylor, the lead candidate of the Team Back Bathurst ticket, agreed with.

"I think the regulatory constraints that sometimes council put up has detriment to small business and it just makes it a little hard for the small businesses to get out there and be known," he said.

"I also feel that we need more foot traffic in the CBD to support small businesses.

"So I think through marketing, though major manufacturers, get some more foot traffic around the CBD and just limiting the constraints that council can put on small businesses, would go a long way to attract a lot of manufacturing businesses to town."

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