Genteel Decline in Adelaide: Risk, Certainty or Impossibility?

1. Genteel Decline in Adelaide: Risk, Certainty or Impossibility? • Professor Andrew Beer • Director • Centre for Housing, Urban and Regional Planning • School of Social Sciences • University of Adelaide

2. Introduction • Asking the question • Mike Lennon mid 1990s • Determinant processes • Demographic • Export performance • Political processes • Conclusions

3. Demographic Processes:Life Expectancy

4. Demographic Processes: Overseas Migration

5. Demographic Processes: Overseas Migration

6. Demographic Processes: Projected Population

7. Demographic Processes: Projected Population

8. Demographic Processes: Age Sex Profile

9. Demographic Processes: Components of Growth

10. Demographic Processes:Relative Growth

11. Export Performance and the South Australian Economy • South Australia maintains a positive balance of trade with the world: • Exports $11.36bn in 2010 • Imports $8.4bn in 2010

12. South Australian Exports 2010

13. Good Export Performance but... • Lower median incomes - $433 for SA, $466 for Oz; $1,103 for SA, $1,171 for Oz for households • Fewer full time workers (58.5% v 60.5%) • More persons outside the workforce • Fewer professionals (18.4% v $19.8%), more labourers and community service workers

14. Key Trends in SA Economy • Loss of one round of manufacturing in the 1970s • Loss of headquarter functions in the 1990s, partly in association with the State Bank collapse • Rising of agri business in the 1990s and early 2000s, including tuna and wine • Decline in manufacturing after 2000 • Eg Mitsubishi, Hoover, Kimberley Clark, Holden • Shift to minerals and defence industries after 2002 • The ‘14 mines policy’

15. Key Trends in SA Economy • Mining expansion very successful • Fuelled by rapid increase in commodity prices • Defence spending successful • Highly contingent on Canberra • Education successful • But perhaps saturated, and not a source of employment for all • But • Mining services not based here • No major financial services based here • Major Federally funded agencies based elsewhere • Not a major tourism destination • Major defence bases elsewhere • Excepting 7th RAR

16. Political and Economic Processes • Centralisation of government resources in Canberra • Unlike Tasmania, no guarantee as per minimum number of House of Reps seats (currently 11) • Population growth remains concentrated in WA, Victoria and Queensland (followed by NSW) • Increasingly industries are attracted to their markets, rather than their source of supply • Concentration of headquarters and political power in eastern seaboard and Perth

17. Conclusions • Outcomes are not certain • But SA’s role in the national economic (and international economic) system is unclear • Low rates of growth may not be all bad • But does leave you vulnerable to some adverse external shocks • Population ageing is part of the equation • But more fundamentally, it has been the failure for a variety of new and robust industries to emerge • Loss of headquarter functions, and failure to develop financial services are key losses

18. Conclusions • And the challenges aren’t all in Adelaide • Places such as the Riverland particularly vulnerable • As an active citizenry we should engage with and understand these debates • Realise why some changes are needed • Hang onto those things that should be preserved