The South Australian Government will spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on an eight week spin campaign to tackle negative perceptions about the state’s economy and its high unemployment.
As reported in The ABC and The Advertiser, the Government has released a tender calling for consultants to devise an eight week campaign that will promote South Australia as a state of employment, tackling the perception of high unemployment.
Liberal front-bencher, Rob Lucas, has hit-out at the spending, claiming the Government is “delusional if they think the issue of high unemployment is only a perception in South Australia”, and noting “the reality is we’ve led the unemployment rate, or stakes, for literally months now”.
The Liberal’s are correct. South Australia does lead in the unemployment stakes:
Underemployment is also extremely high:
Driven by the loss of full-time jobs:
We also know that the car industry in South Australia will shut down late next year, which is forecast to cost around 6,600 jobs in Adelaide by 2018.
On a positive note, the massive $50 billion taxpayer spend on submarines is expected to boost employment by some 3,000, so there are at least some offsets, albeit of the ‘pork barrelling’ kind.
But either way, South Australia is likely to remain a ‘rust bucket’ state for the foreseeable future.
Rather than wasting taxpayer dollars to spin unemployment, the South Australia should instead give the state a genuine competitive advantage by freeing-up land supply and planning.
As noted previously (most recently here), Adelaide finds itself in the perverse situation whereby despite a declining economy and minimal population growth, its vacant land costs are the third highest in the nation on a rate per square metre basis:
Worse, the State Government has recently implemented plans to further tighten South Australia’s various urban growth boundaries across Adelaide and regional towns, thus severely limiting fringe land supply and very likely driving land prices even higher.
As long as South Australia’s costs are inflated, it will remain noncompetitive and will remain an economic laggard. This is where the Government should put its focus – not spinning the message on the state’s high unemployment.
