A couple of days after Steven Marshall released the Liberals’ vision statement for 2036, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released their February labour market statistics.

Most of the media ran with the sensational seasonally-adjusted data, showing that unemployment in South Australia jumped from January to February by 0.9 per cent. The number of unemployed people in South Australia jumped by 8000 (absolutely more than in any other state), with the number of jobs in South Australia falling by more than 2000 in a month.

I always prefer to look at the more stable trend figures, because the seasonally-adjusted figures include a highly erratic element that is not helpful in discussing what is happening in the economy and labour market. But the trend figures, while not as sensational as the seasonally-adjusted figures, are deeply sobering.

Trend-measured employment in South Australia increased over the year to February 2016 by only 8000 people (in a labour market of 801,000), ie by only 1 per cent.

In Australia as a whole, the increase was just over 270,000 people, or 2.3 per cent. Our job market is not even growing at half the rate of growth of the Australian job market as a whole.

The number of people unemployed in South Australia increased (trend figures, again) by 2100 people over the last year (3.5 per cent), while the number of people unemployed in Australia as a whole fell by 52,000 people (4.1 per cent).

The trend-measured unemployment rate in South Australia increased by 0.2 percentage points from 7 per cent to 7.2 per cent, while the unemployment rate in Australia as a whole fell by 0.4 percentage points from 6.2 per cent to 5.8 per cent. The gap between our unemployment rate and Australia’s as a whole has actually widened over the past year, going by the relatively non-erratic trend data released by the ABS.

The ABS also calculates a labour force underutilisation rate for each state and territory and for Australia as a whole. The underutilisation rate adds the number of people who would like to work more hours to the number unemployed and expresses this sum as a percentage of the labour force. South Australia’s trend-measured underutilisation rate in February 2016 was 17.7 per cent, the highest in Australia, far above the national rate of 14.2 per cent. Five years ago, in February 2011, South Australia’s trend-measured underutilisation rate was 12.9 per cent.

What the latest figures mean is that, on top of the 7.2 per cent of our labour force that are unemployed, about 10 per cent of South Australia’s workers are working short time or fewer hours than they want to work. This is quite shocking.

Over in the rust bucket states of America, like Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Premier Jay Weatherill, according to an interview with Tom Richardson last Thursday, was enthused by how an innovation ecosystem (as talked about in this column many times) “has been at the heart of the transformation of the rust bucket states”.

But why is he bewitched by innovation to do with cars, just because we used to make cars at Elizabeth and GM still owns the site?

Driverless cars may be the wave of some far distant future when car sensors can react with the speed of a human to a child unexpectedly running onto the road, but where is the evidence that Adelaideans can be world competitive in advancing this particular technology into products and services just because we used to assemble cars at Elizabeth.

Globally-competitive car assembly will never return to Elizabeth because it was never there in the first place. It was there because of car industry protection, which started to be dismantled by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s. South Australians at the forefront of information and communications technology might be interested in participating in some aspect of driverless car research activity, but it is just as likely that they will be interested in some other application, such as robots (like Pittsburgh, say) or drones (like we are already doing!).

Driverless cars will be assembled where cars can be assembled competitively for the world market – China, Thailand, Indonesia, Africa, or wherever assembly workers are paid world competitive low rates of pay.

Who would have thought that Pittsburgh, Illinois, the heart of the steel industry in America, would become one of the centres of the American robot industry?  Healthcare played a big role in saving Pittsburgh, too, but let’s stay with robots.

Steel is blue-collar, robots are white collar- or maybe white lab coat. Pittsburgh has changed what it does from steel to a vibrant technology centre. It has done so because of the freeing-up of its core human capital assets, its research capabilities and its start-up businesses.

Pittsburgh has transited from the industrial to the post-industrial era (again, as advocated for Adelaide in this column). It is pursuing an organic, “bottom-up” strategy rooted in university personnel and R&D, high technology and the arts. The city has also been willing to deregulate to create scope for new ideas to be tried out (as we should). And Pennsylvania has cut personal and business income taxes (as we should).

Back in South Australia, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall released the Liberals’ vision statement for the state’s bicentenary – 2036.  Judging by the experience of the rust belt states in America, it will take at least a decade of strong reform – and maybe 20 years – to turn the state’s economy solidly around. So the date – shockingly distant to most people – is probably about right.

Many people bagged the vision statement as containing little specific policy, but this is not politically realistic two years out from the next election. The sentiments in the vision statement are promising in terms of turning the state’s economy around:

• Government should support small business as the backbone of our economy.
• The role of Government is to create the right environment to allow businesses to grow.
• Reducing the tax burden on South Australian businesses and households to ease employment costs and relieve household budgets.
• Cutting red tape and unnecessary regulation that inhibit growth, allowing businesses to focus on creating more jobs.
• Fostering entrepreneurialism by supporting the efforts of individuals and businesses in taking up and commercialising new innovations and technologies.
• Balancing the State Budget.

The main concrete proposal that Marshall puts forward is to establish a state-based productivity commission to review and remove all unnecessary regulation, and modernise and simplify regulation that has become outdated and to identify how South Australia can achieve the productivity gains that will unlock new opportunities and create new jobs in the State.

This is a good idea. It is very difficult for governments to review their regulations (red tape) because much of the work of public servants is in administering red tape. Cutting red tape means eliminating the work occupying many public servants. Cutting the number of public servants as the work load is reduced would appear to follow. Hence, it is very difficult to get serious discussion of red tape reform within the public service.

Taking examination of this issue outside the public service itself into an outside agency (like an independent productivity commission) can break through this problem and bring about significant reform without compromising the intentions of the legislation underpinning the red tape.

Richard Blandy is an Adjunct Professor in the Business School at the University of South Australia and contributes a weekly column to InDaily.