Adelaide: decline and fall

· SA receives $1.30 back from GST revenues from Canberra for every dollar it spends. This is the horizontal equalization 'begging bowl'.

· CBD vacant office space is 12.4 per cent and rising.

· Unemployment rose over the last 18 months from 5.6 per cent to 7.1 per cent (trend). The real unemployment rate (non-ABS methodology) is closer to 12 per cent. Real youth unemployment in Gawler and Elizabeth is close to 40 per cent.

According to DIAC/ABS, from 1984-2014 about 80,477 Crow Eaters fled the state permanently. Most were in their 20s and 30s. This needs some explanation. On average, between 20-30,000 South Australians actually leave the state every year and in strong economic times, immigrants and make up most (but not all) of the short fall. In poor or indifferent economic times, the departures out weigh the arrivals by up to 4000 people per year. Since 1984, that has totaled 80,477 people. During the last ten years, international migrants have back-filled 70 per cent of the locals who left. Now migrant numbers are falling due to local and international factors (no jobs and the rise of Asia as a migrant destination).

Many of the departees were the brightest and best – the high achievers; the ambitious ones, the mad ones, the dreamers, hungry to do well. We invested our rates and taxes in them – and this is how they repay us! So it goes. Labour goes to where the work is. This demographic flight compounds the macroeconomic forces squeezing the state.

I don't support eugenics. It has some nasty ideological ramifications but in Adelaide, it's hard to ignore. Over the last 30 years or so, almost the complete entrepreneurial and professional leadership class has left. This has created a raft of psycho-social problems.

Compared to the eastern states, the professional operating standards of many organisations are extraordinarily low. Resilience is at low tide and there is a baffling sense of entitlement, when no entitlement has been earned. Rights are confused with privileges and much tactical planning appears aimed at obtaining a sinecure. This has created a 'sheltered workshop' culture. People don't rock the boat even when boat rocking is the thing to do.

SA media would never publish this sample of the companies that have closed in the last four years. In fact only InDaily, an online newspaper, publishes exposition. It's not a 'happy face' story: Mitsubishi, the Port Stanvac oil refinery, ROH, Bridgestone (production), New Castalloy, Accolade Bottling Plant (Reynella), Sanitarium (production), Trident Tooling, Autodom, RPG Group, Bridgestone, Clyde-Apac, Priority Engineering Services, Modular Furniture, Sheridan, ADCIV, PSG Elecraft,Mary Martins, Qantas catering, the Port Lincoln Tuna Cannery, Red Ochre construction, Angas Park, McCain Foods (Penola) and many more, have gone.

Hundreds of jobs have been lost at Forestry SA and Hills. Visocorp and Tenneco are in serious trouble. OneSteel, Detmold and Elders are looking very shaky. There have been significant sackings in print and photographic at The Advertiser. These businesses closed or downsized because they were no longer competitive.

Other businesses such as BAE Systems, Redarc, Sage Automation, Sydac and Codan, are doing well. They have reached out to international markets or are making parts up the value chain.

Every now and then an expatriate with national or international experience in their late 40s or 50s will return, usually to look after ageing parents (see graph below). When they apply for local positions, they are invariably knocked back because they are too experienced. Age prejudice is endemic in Adelaide. When merit dies, the city falls. Recruitment apartheid in 'Adders' sails close to criminality. It's a nail in Adelaide's coffin.

What does SA have a lot of? Old people. About 43 per cent of the state's population are Boomers. Indeed, much of Adelaide's popular culture revolves around the long look back to yesteryear, when facts such as owing $14 billion in projected state debt and having a real unemployment rate of about 12 per cent and rising, was unheard of. 'Pass me a chocolate frog cake', say the oldies, and pine for the 'good old days.'