Prime Minister Paul Keating visited Mildura on May 6, 1994, to announce an allocation of $2.55 million funding over three years to the SunRISE 21 program. The Victorian Minister for Agriculture the Hon. Bill McGrath, also visited the region on June 8, 1994 to commit Victoria's support to the program.
During the initial phase of the program, the Steering Committee made a concerted effort to contact key organisations in the region, and to establish collaborative arrangements with them. There was a convergence of views for the future of Sunraysia from many sections of the community encapsulating industry, salinity and regional development strategies.
Driven by community initiative and fuelled by the pooled resources of community, industry and government stakeholders, SunRISE 21 enabled local people to initiate innovative development projects, directed towards a sustainable economy for Sunraysia, over a period of almost a decade.
Early achievements included major research projects commissioned to provide authoritative data to guide development and restructuring initiatives within the established irrigation districts.
A description of achievements and the historical development of SunRISE 21 from 1994 to 2003 is provided in the following pdf document: