Don't cry for me South Australia

[Malcolm King]

I have a fantasy that Juan Peron takes over South Australia, gets rid of the Liberal and Labor parties and turns the Advertiser in to a newspaper. I picture him and Evita on the Town Hall balcony in King William Street, addressing the crowd.

It’s a lovefest. Juan’s uniform, tailored by an old SS officer, is showered in Coopers Ale, Beerenberg jam and frog cakes. Our savior!

Unfortunately, Argentina’s problems of the 1950s bear no relationship to what is happening in Crow Land today. South Australia’s economic issues are far more serious.

The state’s share of the national economy has shrunk over the last 24 years from 7.3 per cent in to 6.1 per cent. It currently exports just 4.3 per cent of Australia’s goods and services. State GDP growth is languishing at 1.3 per cent per annum, down from 1.8 per cent in 2012/13. The economy is regressing.

Real unemployment – not the ridiculous ABS methodology - is around 12 per cent and climbing. In the some parts of Adelaide’s northern suburbs, real youth unemployment is close to 40 per cent. In the southern suburbs its about 25 per cent and 20 per cent in our regional centres.

There are some parallels though between SA now and Argentina’s neighbor, Uruguay, in the 1950s and 60s. Uruguay’s economy boomed until just after the Korean War, due to expanding beef and wool exports. It created a strong welfare state in which the government redistributed wealth and protected workers. Think of the Don Dunstan years. Many lefties can think of nothing else.

After the Korean War, no one wanted Uruguay’s beef or wool. The economy crumbled. There was mass unemployment and inflation, manufacturing collapsed. The bills went up and the standard of living dropped. The government employed one in every five working Uruguayans. Nepotism ruled. Sounds like Adelaide today.

Then came the Tupamaros – revolutionaries who were young, groovy and politically ‘right on’. They robbed banks, gave money to the poor and made love with beautiful women. It’s unlikely a guerilla group would ever get up in the ‘City of Churches’ – sleep with beautiful women? ‘What’s in it for me?’ they’d ask.

The Tupamaros were the polar opposite of the SA legislature who in the main, are graveyard zombies straight out of Stephen King’s 'Pet Sematary'.

Have you ever noticed that when the fecal matter hits the fan, it’s the poor who cop it in the neck? In SA they have company – the middle class. This is something new in SA's history.

It’s also one reason why the local media is dedicated to creating external enemies (Al Qaeda, ISIS, housing trust tenants, single mothers, etc) or ‘mythologies’ that enforce the status quo; or stories that are so banal and absurd, you wonder whether Dada is making a comeback.

The real reason is because the elites are brown stain scared because they can see this getting terribly out of hand. We are looking as massive levels of unemployment in SA in both the working and middle class over the next 30 years, and the government has all the kinetic appeal of a Myer store window dummy.

We know what the problems are: a lack of economic diversity, failure to transition to the new economy, decline of the manufacturing and construction sectors, low exports, shrinking private investment, an ageing population and high taxes on small business, for starters.

There isn't the capability to rectify such destiny issues. Plus, to be honest, the people who were skilled in policy implementation left Adelaide 20-30 years ago. A cursory examination of Seek and CareerOne shows that while there is high demand for Salad Artists and Nail Technicians, there’s little demand for the skills and capabilities needed to rebuild a commercially viable state.

Actually, if a revolutionary force were going to arise from anywhere, it would be Elizabeth. Yet it’s doubtful whether its members would wear black berets, leather jackets and look like Che Guevara. They may look like Hando and his mates out of Romper Stomper, who think Norwood and Kensington Gardens would make a nice place to live.

John Kenneth Galbraith once said that the choices before governments were usually between the unpalatable and the disastrous. There’s a third option: begging. The state government is praying madly that the Federal Government makes these problems go away, without placing the whole state in to receivership.

There’s some very sorry news coming for Jay and his team of budgies. The resources boom is in full retreat. The Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments treated a temporary surge in national income as a permanent fixture and spent like drunken sailors. The Rudd and Gillard governments increased spending and created new entitlement programs without the ability to pay for them.

Recently the price of Australia's biggest export, iron ore, hit its lowest in five years. Two years ago iron ore peaked at $US149 a tonne. It’s now trading at under $US80 a tonne. We can kiss the expansion of Olympic Dam goodbye for some time.

While much of the Budget spin is now axle deep in bulldust, Australia’s mineral commodities are not faring well and retail is comatose. There will be no Federal handouts to Crow Land simply because it can’t run an economy.

As stated, the greatest and most wicked of problems is youth unemployment and the maelstrom that’s coming in the form of intergenerational inequality. As the national economy slows, many more young people will suffer long term unemployment while the Boomers maintain their hold on 70 per cent of the nations domestic wealth, as they live on and on and on. Living on is not the Boomers fault. The Government simply didn’t prepare for the longevity.

There’s one other possibility – extraordinary to contemplate – that the middle class, which is also being hammered by unemployment and high prices, turn against the government and corporate elite and do something to protect not only their interests but also the interests of those battling in the northern and western suburbs?

What could they do? Not pay land tax. What could the blue-collar workers and unemployed do? Not pay their utility bills. The state government is not representative of the people – it’s simply a manager – and a bad one at that.

Without government help – because they’ll stuff it up – businessmen and women need to change the narrative about the state. This is going to involve considerable risk and financial speculation. They are going to have to place SA at the centre of the media dialogue, not as a victim or sitting on the periphery (which is what it feels like working in SA). Knock off the chip on the shoulder and the parochialism.

Don’t send politicians overseas. It’s a complete waste of time. Send leaders of the business community trained in pitching sales propositions - and don’t let them come back until they have signed contracts in their hands.

In a highly developed society, the elite cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of hundreds of thousands of people, who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, labourers, lawyers, council workers and more. These people are the guardians of the system; buffers between the upper and lower classes.

But it’s these very people who know that the system isn’t working. That for all the promises made, few have been kept. They will ultimately push for radical change.

This article appeared at Opinion Online

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16737

[Will]

Wow, another outrageously negative article, embellished with distortions of reality, completely ignoring all the positive things happening in the state and sadly offering no suggestions on how to improve the situation. Furthermore to compare our state to Latin America is simplistic and laughable.

It makes me wonder why when you have so much contempt for the state, why you don't just focus your energy on moving interstate rather than writing pointless articles?

[Aidan]

Struth, what a silly article!

It criticises The Advertiser for not being a newspaper, but completely swallows the Murdoch Press's lies about the Rudd and Gillard governments "spending like a drunken sailor" and 'creating new entitlement programs without the ability to pay for them'. Or are those the Liberal Party's lies? Either way the author's contributing to the promotion of bogus problems which politicians damage SA's interests in an attempt to fix.

And the drop in iron ore prices may actually be good for Olympic Dam, as it's forcing our overvalued dollar down, which makes mining of copper, gold and uranium more viable (although the effect is slight because short term factors have limited influence in long term investment decisions.

SA's biggest problem by far is a lack of investment, and a big reason for that is that interest rates are set to control inflation in the eastern states. Hypothetically if they were set to control inflation in SA, they'd be much lower. But we're not getting much compensation for interest rates being set too high, and the government's completely ignoring the fact that spending in SA is less inflationary than spending the same amount elsewhere.

[Nathan]

The guy makes a living out of Adelaide bashing articles, littered with tired cliches about frog cakes and "Crow Land" and making tenuous comparisons. Ignore him.

[Brucetiki]

If this guy hates South Australia so much, why doesn't he just leave

[Phantom]

Check out the names of his articles... They're all seemingly bashing Adelaide...

Oh, Malcolm King... You mention that Adelaide so desperately needs skilled labourers and needs to be looking in a new direction for both our manufacturing industry and also our State Government's inability to manage its own affairs.

Malcolm King, wouldn't it be much wiser than rather than lazily typing up paragraph after paragraph of finger pointing at both the people and the powers that be in South Australia, how about you go back to Uni, gain an education in a real topic that can actually HELP South Australia and make your way into the necessary positions to make these changes you so desperately desire Adelaide to have?

I get that leading this revolution yourself may be so much harder than typing up vitriol to make the general populous of South Australia feel bad for the next fifteen minutes after reading your garbage, but honestly Mahatma Gandhi put it best by stating that “You must be the change you want to see in the World".

So, I ask kindly... Lead the revolution yourself or please, fuck off.

[tigerfeet]

Check email is working - newish member

[tigerfeet]

I thoroughly enjoy reading King’s articles. He publishes widely and has a marvelous turn of phrase. His penetrative insights in to the socio-psychology of Adelaide are both alarming and amusing. His recent article in InDaily was exceptional.

King was an associate director in DEEWR in Labour Market Strategy and generational change in Canberra, and has worked as an academic, senior policy analyst and a journalist.

I’m a CEO of a large company (750+) and I worked with him last year. He spends a large part of his time helping people get jobs and talking to executives about radical change and labour force issues. Rather than bashing Adelaide, he is actively doing something to improve it.

Unlike these asinine comments here, which take the form of ‘fingers in ears’.

His research on corporate demographics in SA is excellent. He has nailed the shocking workplace performance problems and the culminative effects of SA’s brain drain over 30 years and has provided some solutions.

We can’t, like Pollyanna, simply ignore bad news just because we don’t like it. That has been our problem and one reason why we’re in this dilemma.

[jk1237]

what a load of bullshit tigerfeet. The article is a complete yawn, simply designed to be sensationalist to get a reaction from a News Ltd type of crowd, so Malcolm can generate some ratings and a name for himself. Abosulutely pathetic.

We are all aware of the economic situation of our state. You really think there is a magic button that we can press to make us boom like Perf. There are about another 100+ western cities like us around the world, Im gathering they haven't found their magic button either. Our state GDP is quite good compared to many European cities And you do realise that Perf suffers from a brain drain of young people also

Malcolm should go send his Adelaide bashing articles to The Advertiser, start blaming Labor govts for everything, and he will probably find the money will roll in for him

[tigerfeet]

Let me come down to your level then.

Typical anti-intellectual pissant response from the bogan right, ending with the classic ‘fuck off’. That’s one of the major reasons why people are flooding out of Adelaide and why migrants stay for a year or two and then leave. But you don’t like migrants either, eh? ‘They can f-off back from where they came from eh?’ It ain’t that you don’t like the article – you just don’t like ideas. 100+ cities like Adelaide? Name them.

Any chance of engaging with the material?
Any ideas of how to generate jobs for the Holden workers?
Any ideas on what to do if the ASC goes down?
Any ideas on how to keep the 1200 workers employed when the hospital is finished?
Any ideas on what to do if the state’s credit rating is down graded again?

You want other people to magically supply solutions while you sit back and snipe. You don’t give a fuck. I meet these arseholes every day and go around them at speed. Try working for a living rather than putting shit on people who have more brains in their little toe than you have in your whole genetic line.

[Nathan]

Wow. Strawman arguments, baseless assumptions of hating migrants, calling anyone with a differing opinion anti-intellectual bogan right who doesn't work. What a classy CEO you must be.

Perhaps if Malcolm actually engaged we might have more respect for him, but to date all he does is copy and paste his rants and then disappears. This is a discussion forum, not a one way street.

No one denies this state has some issues; they're plain to see. But that doesn't mean we all have to fold into line and take a totally pessimistic view point.

[jk1237]

most amusing, tigerfeet and your friend Malcolm offer absolutely no suggestions or solutions for our state, just a crap sensationalist article. BTW I have a job and have an economics degree, and quite understand our state has gone through 4-5 economic restructurings since the late 70s, further eroding our manufacturing base. The recent high $AUD has made us go through another. But unlike Cincinatti, Pittsburgh, Hamilton ON, Winnepeg, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, Baltimore and quite a few European cities, we have been able to offset a lot of the manufacturing job losses in other emerging industries such as health sciences, education and defence. Unlike those cities we have never had declining pop growth rates, infact ours is quite good by worldwide standards. Our CBD is attracting billions of dollars of investment (from the private market), the private market doesn't open up 5+ large CBD hotels in 4 years in a city that's apparently 'dead', and our city is becoming far more livable (new bars, inner city housing etc) that it ever used to be.

Someone ban these pricks if they offer no sensible debate to this site, there is a site called AdelaideNOw that is perfect for these 2

[metro]

I’m a CEO of a large company (750+)

Try working for a living

I read that as "I'm a big shot CEO and better than you, get a job!!

Malcolm King should just move on and join the Grand Pricks over in Victoria, he'll fit right in, you too CEO!

[tigerfeet]

That's right fucknuts.

An economics degree. Shit. That's handy. You know fuck all. Go to Pittsburgh single digit IQ boy and do the time at CMU rather than trying to impress me.

Your little self righteous public service attitude will have a new arse hole drilled in it once the heavy data comes in. I'll be waiting for your resume and look forward to interviewing you.

Why would King or ANYONE with a professional background bother responding to backwaters like these.

[Nathan]

Does anyone seriously believe this guy is a CEO? If he has a meltdown like this after a couple of comments on an internet forum, imagine what he'd be like dealing with in business.