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Richardson: The unconfident state

Jun 26, 2015
BHP's copper production at SA's Olympic Dam mine increased by seven per cent in the 2020 financial year. Photo: supplied

BHP's copper production at SA's Olympic Dam mine increased by seven per cent in the 2020 financial year. Photo: supplied

It’s said that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, and that’s certainly true of South Australia’s burgeoning unemployment rate.

The Liberals have long called it our “dangerous jobs crisis”, even before it was particularly dangerous.

State and federal governments will each claim credit for solid jobs figures, but blame the other when the proverbial hits the fan.

Either argument is disingenuous and reductive, but that’s politics, innit? Commodity prices, labour costs and export hurdles don’t sound quite as succinct as simply bemoaning “Labor’s dangerous jobs crisis”.

This month, though, the unemployment figures hit 7.6 per cent, 1.6 per cent higher than the national average and above every other state. Even Tasmania.

Employment Minister Gail Gago’s response was strangely upbeat, effectively channelling her inner Paul Keating as she celebrated a beautiful set of numbers.

The dangerous jobs crisis we had to have.

“While the increase in the unemployment rate is disappointing, there were a number of positive signs for the state,” her media release enthused.

“South Australia’s economic basis has been more reliant on traditional manufacturing industries which have contracted dramatically in recent years,” she was quoted as saying.

“This has resulted in a more subdued labour market performance. However, there are some encouraging signs.”

These “encouraging signs” were basically the increased participation rate, “which could indicate increased confidence in the jobs market”. Or it could not.

Gago trumpeted that the participation rate actually made SA a national leader. Which, in an egregious sort of way, it was.

“No other state has come close to this level of increase,” she whooped.

Sadly, no other state had come close to the unemployment rate increase, either.

Minister Gail Gago

Minister Gail Gago

Yesterday, BHP Billiton confirmed it would lose 140 positions in Adelaide as it sought to make its Olympic Dam project viable.

It was, of course, a major story.

But 140 jobs come and go all the time. In any given month, a factory or plant or office will close, costing tens of jobs. Depending on the news agenda and profile of the company, sometimes it makes headlines, sometimes not.

And similarly, in any given month, the Government will talk up a new enterprise opening, providing a similar number of new employment opportunities. It usually doesn’t make headlines.

So why, given the relatively small quantum of jobs lost yesterday, did the BHP announcement send the state into a collective frenzy?

Because it is a symbol.

The Rann administration placed the Olympic Dam expansion at the symbolic heart of everything it stood for in Government: jobs, prosperity, confidence.

And indeed, in an ironic way, it did prove symbolic – a symphony of hype over reality, hope over achievement and missed opportunity.

So any downturn of fortune for BHP’s local operation carries with it the symbolic pang of collective failure. In an emotional sense, though not a financial one, it is the State Bank of this generation, a chronic reminder of a state that allowed itself to be swept up by bold promises and big dreams until the inevitable reality hit.

So while 140 jobs is not going to send that unemployment Gago seemed so pleased about soaring, its impact is disproportionate, because it plays to an almost uniquely South Australian condition.

The unconfident state.

That should be printed on bumper stickers and engraved on licence plates across South Australia.

Last month, a $60 million Penola dairy processing plant was green-lit, transforming the doomed McCain potato chip facility while creating 80 jobs in construction and nearly 50 in operation.

That’s 130 jobs. Hardly anyone batted an eyelid.

Yesterday BHP cut 140. Cue universal meltdown.

Because the South Australian condition dictates that if failure is an orphan, we must collectively foster it. We will appropriate it and clutch it to our collective bosom.

And we will never, ever let it go.

If there was a distinguishing feature about last week’s budget, it was that there was no distinguishing feature. Not much fanfare. Little hyperbole.

Certainly, no major infrastructure spend, long the hallmark of successive Labor budgets.

Which could be a good thing. Short-term injections of public cash can, at times, provide little hits of confidence. Sometimes they leave a longer legacy, as Adelaide Oval appears to have done. But it is, for now, more a legacy of good vibes than of a buoyant economic return.

Confidence is an intangible element, but it is a powerful one.

That is why the Oval is important.

That is why BHP is important.

And most of all, that is why it is important for SA to find a way to let go of its failures.

Just, y’know, not by trying to talk up the nation’s highest unemployment rate.

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