Jay’s vision: Let’s get confident, confident
Big questions and small answers: South Australians are again entitled to feel let down after the Premier’s Shaping the Future of South Australia speech to an economic forum.
The man delivering the speech, Jay Weatherill, even alluded to earlier disappointments before outlining his “Ten Economic Priorities”.
The priorities, Weatherill said, would guide decision-makers as they address concerns about the state’s economic future.
“The truth is South Australians were unconvinced at the last state election that either party had the answer to this [economic] question,” he said.
“The fact that over 400 of you are gathered here today suggests that you also want to know the answer to this question.”
What followed has been variously described as “underwhelming”, “missing on detail”, “lacking tangible, transparent and measurable outcomes”, and “strong on aspiration” but “short on detail”.
ABC Radio hosts David Bevan and Matt Abraham spent some time this morning just poking fun at the “let’s be more confident speech”, comparing it to previous campaigns such as the ill-conceived SA: Going All The Way effort of the late 1990s.
TV news bulletins last night gave the keynote speech begrudging coverage, focusing on the Premier’s call for South Australians to “project more confidence”.
“And if you hear someone bagging us, you know, stand up for South Australia,” a less-than-confident-sounding Premier told the audience of 400 at the Committee For Economic Development Australia (CEDA) lunch yesterday.
Weatherill’s Ten Priorities (not to be confused with his Seven Pillars of 2013) is worth reading; unfortunately, it misses one key element.
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It doesn’t acknowledge that South Australia is the economic busted arse of Australia, courtesy of a raft of government failures.
And you cannot plot a direction for the future if you don’t know where you are or how you got there.
South Australia has high unemployment, high under-employment, low wages, a stalled real estate market, a gambler’s obsession with mining prospects and an appalling record of public-sector maladministration.
Our unemployment is at an unhealthy trend rate of 7.1 per cent and has been trending up for some time.
Our policy makers missed the bleeding obvious when throwing money at the car makers.
Even simple tasks, such as completing IT projects to merge seven different systems of concessions and rebates, get stuffed up year after year.
I can’t remember the last public-sector information technology project that was actually delivered as planned. Some of the IT project failures in Health have been epic.
The most irresponsible failure of public administration was the 2012-13 State Budget.
Then-Treasurer Jack Snelling and his Cabinet had failed to read the cautious concerns in the market about high-capital mining projects.
“South Australia will be a very different place in a few years,” Snelling declared on May 31, 2012.
“The expanded Olympic Dam mine — the largest open-pit mine in the world — will be operating, along with dozens of others, exporting copper, gold and uranium to a region hungry for our resources.
“The Future Submarine Project — the largest nation-building project since the Snowy Mountains Scheme — will be in full swing, employing thousands of South Australians, and transforming our industrial landscape.”
The Treasurer and his government had mapped out the next four years based on a project – Olympic Dam – that even its proponent (BHP Billiton) had said was no sure thing.
So why did the State Government get sucked into such an economic gamble?
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Three reasons: one, the State Bank collapse of 1992; two, a lack of fortitude by successive state governments; and three, a Dunstan-era zeal for social values that are big on “liveability” and short on economic reality.
The bank collapse hit the state’s confidence and hit it hard.
Ever since 1992 we’ve been looking for a silver bullet to overcome the impact of massive debt and an incapacity to invest in infrastructure. That incapacity led to half-measures such as one-way freeways that simply underlined our lack of confidence.
The Brown and Olsen Liberal Governments (1993-2001) took some hard decisions on expenditure, but baulked at the really tough calls that would raise revenue to back spending initiatives that would stimulate the economy.
Brown and Olsen spent an appalling amount of time on their own internal leadership battles, leading to their party being booted out of government in 2002.
We were then to endure the Mike Rann era that celebrated illusions of success and ignored opportunities to rebuild the economy.
It was Rann and his Treasurer Kevin Foley that started the El Dorado fever around Olympic Dam as far back as March 2005.
Foley’s apprentice, Tom Koutsantonis, continues to carry the mining torch despite Olympic Dam’s expansion cancellation – and despite the recent decision by Rex Minerals to put its Hillside project on the back-burner.
Even if the mining hype had delivered (and it was never going to), that sector has only ever contributed around four per cent of the state economy.
It gets far more attention than it deserves.
With Rann gone, Olympic Dam gone, Defence Industry prospects fading and the car makers packing their bags, we are left with the Weatherill administration.
It was founded on the execution of Rann, survived on the incompetence of the Opposition’s campaign strategies, and has a Dunstanesque fascination with where trendy people eat and drink.
It’s currently mired in continuing issues arising from the administration of child protection, an issue about which the government was warned by the Layton report of 2003.
Despite all that, the Premier yesterday implored us to stand tall – to be confident.
“From this moment, I ask that all South Australians project a quiet confidence about our place in the world.”
Business SA chief executive Nigel McBride summed it up best when speaking to reporters after the speech was delivered.
“Confidence is a visceral thing; you can’t force people to have it. We’ve either got it or we don’t.”
And that’s the reality – we don’t.
It’s time the State Government understood why.
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