Adelaide – Athens of the South’s long, slow decline

This is a very poor result considering all of the brouhaha about low wage inflation, high income from mining and defence project spending. Indeed, South Australia contributes just over six per cent to Australia's GDP.

Source 2010 December, Wikipedia

As the population ages the state will need to find more monies to pay for services. It will need to increase taxes on its residents to fund infrastructure upgrades and it will become even more reliant on handouts from Canberra.

Retail in South Australia is stagnant, sales in the Rundle Mall (the main CBD shopping area) are catatonic, building approvals for new residential and non-residential are comatose. There is not a crane to be seen on the CBD skyline. New vehicle sales are trending down and according to DEEWR's May 2011 statistics, skilled jobs are down 50 per cent from 2007 and ANZ job advertisements are down a whopping 60 per cent from 2008.

South Australia has Australia's oldest workforce and is also the most rapidly ageing, with a public sector averaging 47 years of age and some sectors averaging more than 50 years of age.

From June 2009, only 14.8 per cent of the public sector was aged below 30, while 37 per cent of the public sector workforce was over 50. The state is on the precipice of a 'retirement cliff' with valuable skills and experience lost.

A bee in amber

Many years ago I read about a prehistoric bee that had been trapped in amber, forever preserved in that last instant of its life, many millions of years ago.

I got much the same feeling returning to 'Adders.' I re-met old acquaintances who were still, to paraphrase the Paul Kelly song 'Adelaide’, were sitting in the same chairs they were sitting in 25 years ago.

Some were still addicted to drugs. Some were still underpaid and undervalued in the service industry. Others used art, not as a vector to explain our place in the world, but as a psychological crutch to shore up dashed dreams and tattered ideals.