South Australia future is in Agriculture and Mining, Adelaide will become a fly in Fly out town most likely, a ghost town at worst.
Do nothing governments ( Labour and Libs) that fiddle with the CBD and nothing north of Gepps cross will see to that.

The state need infrastructure to unlock it's mineral wealth and that will be funded by China central government not ours.

Waiting for the baby boomers to die out as a logical solution, may see their homes being taken up by new generations of retirees, and does nothing to address the immediate problems!

Even a fly in fly out concept still needs dormitories or habitable lodgings and service industries!
But apart from that the essential central point is well made.

And the bricks and mortar mindset is simply holding up far better more sensibly targeted investment!
And that investment needs to be directed at our/your best people and their better ideas.

And if those ideas receive essential commercialization funding; those ideas will be the very vehicle needed to create the jobs of the future!

As anyone can see for themselves now; one doesn't need to shed many real manufacturing jobs to have enormous flow on consequences for the entire economy!

Conversely, one doesn't need to create very many brand new make stuff jobs to entirely reverse that same domino effect/economic outcome!

Look, basket case economy, Ireland, went on to become one of the most successful tiger economies, just by investing in their best people and their better ideas; even where that then meant they'd have to pick winners!

And only ever undone by allowing foreign speculators into the domestic real estate market and or development, and insanely, with almost exclusive foreign debt funding!

And then compounding that problem by trying to bail out those very same foreign investors, with scarce public money!

Don't take my word for it, just look at the irrefutable evidence; and having done just that, be guided by it!

Or is that too hard; given I'm not from around here mate!
And indeed, none of my Irish ancestors!
Rhrosty.

The only function of a CBD is to block the traffic: more so if Adelaide is indeed a fly-in/fly-out town, then the last thing one needs is this CBD blocking the way to/from the airport!

As for vacant office-space, not only is there plenty already, but even more can easily be vacated: for example that building near the train-station, the one with the steps that attract so many demonstrators - due to its proximity to the Adelaide zoo, its residents could provide nutritious meals for the lions and tigers without anyone noticing.

You are aware aren't you Rhrosty, that Ireland is now the biggest basket case in Europe, & you have to be going some to win that title.

All that investment can only do so much. Investment needs a return, without which it was no better than peeing up the wall.

Any investment in South Australia will be about as useful as the Irish experience, a total waste of time & money.

As a backwater to grow a little wine, bread & milk, SA is OK, but anyone expecting any more is kidding themselves. It along with Tasmania will continue to bleed the rest of the country white, if we let them. Time to shut down the money pipe & tell them to use their own resources to support themselves. They have them, but just won't use them while we are silly enough to keep them in milk & honey.

Things are about to get too tough for the rest of the country to keep non paying passengers along for the ride.

I really started looking at some of Adelaide’s problems four or five years ago while studying demographic shifts and generational transfers. It was a digression but when I went back 30 years, you could see that both SA’s politicians and the business community did almost no forward planning. No alarms went off about population drift, an undiversified economy and low exports. These weren’t sexy tabloid topics, so The Advertiser (monopoly daily) didn’t report them. The more I dug up, the more confounding and serious those problems were. They have come home to roost.

I must admit that in the face of major structural issues in the labor market, the construction lobby is an irrelevance. It’s like peeling back an onion. If you remove the advertising and PR businesses, the lobby groups and various non-value adding associations, the state public service and all non-capital (not including knowledge generation), then you actually don’t have much one can make, buy or sell. In SA, thank God for the farmers.

It’s odd in SA – no one talks about this stuff. I have more meaningful conversations on solving or ameliorating the state’s problems with international students, migrants or unemployed locals who come to me looking for career advice. It’s amazing how unemployment fixes ones gaze on problem solving.

Yes Has, but if you cared to actually read all of my post; [and wouldn't that make a nice change,] you will see where I explained how and why; and where I pointed out in the clearest possible terms; how to avoid repeating Ireland's economy killing mistake.

If you look at any of the tiger economies, you will see they all prospered on the back of the social democrat construct,[investing in their best people and their better ideas,] and then went backwards on capitalistic individualism and monumental real estate over leveraging!

Moreover, it really is a case in every case, that together we stand, divided we fall!
None more so than a totally bankrupt post war Japan and its economic miracle!

Now if SA could just examine that excellent example and emulate it; they too could do exactly what a war torn and bankrupt Japan did!

And the biggest failures are very much connected to an indigenous real estate market that can and did go backwards or shrink!

And the numerous examples include the USA, the UK, Ireland, Spain and over valued over leveraged Japan; and is now starting to infect the powerful Chinese economy!

If the SA government has some spare stimulus money laying about, they'd be better advised not to invest it in any more overvalued over-leveraged real estate; but rather, any halfway decent cooperative venture that makes things, like say an employee owned and operated CNG> electric, car factory!

Japan finally understands its inherent mistakes and is now trying to return to an economy that again makes and exports things!

And if they, with their higher labor costs can successfully do just that, then so can we!

What apart from much smaller population and far fewer resources has tiny Norway or a slightly larger Sweden got that we haven't?

Lee Kwan Yu type pragmatism perhaps; and given outcomes, very obviously missing here; and where Volvo are now building or assembling Swedish trucks!
What's next? Highly maneuverable Saab jet fighters perhaps?
Fools never learn!
Rhrosty.