I should also add this. One of the major blocker to change is Adelaide’s media – specifically The Advertiser and TV (not including the ABC). The issues that confront SA require an engaged public. Unfortunately, much of the time, the public via our local media, is engaged in entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m no lefty academic who wants to deprive people of Dancing with the Stars.

Unfortunately for Croweater media consumers, there is no exposition or feature articles on how globalisation is affecting the economy or how the rising power of the Asian economies is downsizing the manufacturing sector. Why are kids leaving the state in droves? Is a growing population good or bad? Why don’t we export more? Can we fund aged care for our parents and grandparents? Why are there so few rural stories? Do state employment schemes really work? It’s a critical ‘heads up’ to editorial when the blogs on news stories are more informative than the news stories themselves.

The punters are fed a patronising diet of calculated political fabrication, insidious parochialism and fear mongering. In general, the journos are good. It’s an editorial decision to dumb down the content and report booster, PR puff pieces and local opinion leader pap stories, which have little or no news content.

And here is the kicker. The Advertiser and TV News have dumbed down the news so far; have anaesthetised the public on all matters of import (except crime and water shortages), that to change editorial policy now, would shake the local media to its core. Editorial would need to give primacy to the notion that the populace in a democracy is intelligent, responsible and alive to debate. That’s a big ask in Adelaide – but it’s future depends on it.

The problem South Australia has got is Adelaide. If it's not happening in Adelaide then the state government doesn't want to know about it.
The government needs to invest in infrastructure outside of Adelaide to build a strong economy. AS the king maker Brock noted, there’s lots of cranes in Adelaide funded by the government and none in the regions. South Australia could be a great mining state but for the lack of infrastructure. A decent rail network outside on Adelaide would be great for a start. A deep water port in the upper spencer would be good to.

What does our government come up with... let’s build a new sports ground and give it to a private members club to run for the salt and peppers to sit and watch the cricket or the football. Let's centralise health service to Adelaide CBD.

Country areas have to rely on federal funding to do anything.

There's a twofold problem here!
Politicians who actually believe the govt has no business in business, and a cadre of self proclaimed influential experts, who believe almost anyone else, including many much smaller, less well resourced nations, can do/is better than us, at almost anything!
Rhrosty.

Only preparations for war, in the shape of Defence industries, can save South Australia.

On SA's wish list is the proposed 36 Billion dollar new submarine project, an extra Air Warfare Destroyer (although unlikely) and perhaps Global Hawk Drones operating from RAAF Base Edinburgh.

On the confirmed to-do list is the future P8 Poseidon aircraft operating from RAAF Base Edinburgh, aerospace weapons tests at Woomera, and finishing the 3 AWDs and 2 LHDs.

All that mean lots of Federal-taxpayer's money for SA.

In "Adelaide lost in space as brain pool shrinks" (24 March 2014) details Adelaide’s long term economic decline, but suggests no solutions. One my visits to Adelaide, I have looked at the Defecne and Education industries as obvious areas for expansion. See:

* Adelaide: The Hi-Tech Arsenal of Australia : http://blog.tomw.net.au/2012/05/adelaide-hi-tech-arsenal-of-australia.html

As plantagenet suggests (24 March 2014 12:11:33 PM) one possible growth area for South Australia is Defence industry. The major part of this would be the new submarine project, but that is some years from being a large employer and, in my view, the current plan to build 12 of the world's largest conventional submarines is unworkable.

P8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft have been selected by Australia, but not yet ordered (although the good showing of the P-8 is the current Southern Indian Ocean search may accelerate the order): http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/03/maritime-patrol-aircraft-with.html

Similarly the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton long range maritime UAV has been selected by Australia, but not yet ordered. The decision was prematurely announced during the SA election by the PM to bolster the Liberal party election campaign (fortunately the aircraft are more effective than that strategy was). I would not be surprised to find a Triton has been secretly operating over the Southern Indian Ocean: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/03/australia-to-acquire-long-range.html

However, the P-8 and Tritons are off-the-shelf purchases and will provide few jobs for SA. In the interim, SA should encourage the smaller defence companies quietly working away in the city and in the technology parks near university campuses.

The higher education export industry should not be neglected by SA. One underutilised resource which South Australia has is Brenda Aynsley OAM FACS CP, President of the Australian Computer Society and a standards setter in the field of international professional education: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/01/order-of-australia-for-brenda-aynsley.html

There are lots of areas whereby SA and its people can do better for themselves... but relying upon poorly run and Sydney centric organisations such as the ACS is not one of them.

Curious, why aren't the 'sustainable population' spruikers crowing about Adelaide's success in achieving a decreasing and ageing population of old Ozzies :)

Andras Smith,
You’ve made some very sensible and sobering comments that hopefully the “anti-pops” shall take heed of.
On the other hand I’m concerned that several contributors here imply that racism, nationalism, supremacism, paranoia, etc. are all that lies beneath the “anti-pops” agenda—just as those who are not “denialists” are often painted as “alarmists,” or greens are diagnosed in much the same way as women were once deemed hysterics. The problem is that what might be complex and subtle debates are reduced to the level of ignorant populism, with one sided criticising our whole way of life and the other defending it, neither being prepared to consider the full implications.
Pertinent as your comments are apropos the “eugenics” etc. agenda of nationalists, there’s no hint of a deeper critique in your own comments, which impute to our global economic institution the inevitable context of the debate—the master which must ultimately be served. This is the same pretext of the article, and indeed the rationale that brings all sides (more or less) together: “it’s the economy, stupid!”
We have the likes of Dick Smith claiming we "can” prosper without population growth (profiting from growth offshore—as if we were separate and self-sufficient planets), and the neoliberal cohort treating the planet like a magic pudding; both sides favouring an “economic solution”.
My argument is that capitalism is the problem and can never be the solution—except by dismantling it. (According to popular logic this of course makes me an unhinged radical).

I’m concerned thus only concerned here not to be conflated with the “anti-pops,” nor indeed with the weighty deliberations of either (popular) side of this bipolar debate--which we might liken to that other debate between the warring factions of Lillyput and Blefuscu.

Sorry the above was intended elsewhere.