“Over the years I have often heard South Australians' concern that their children feel they need to look elsewhere to study, start and build a career. And once they leave they won't come back. Now this attitude is in nobody's interests. We have great plans for South Australia and we need, you need, as much of your talent to stay here, and more talent to come to join you.” - Malcolm Turnbull, Adelaide, June 4 2016
As the Prime Minister delivered his speech to a Liberal party rally in Adelaide at the half way point of the campaign, you could see the heads nod in the room.
Despite announcing billions of dollars in Navy ship building contracts, including the future submarines, there’s a sense, it's not ingratitude, but an angst that they're just too far over the horizon. These new manufacturing jobs being spoken about are needed now.
Volker Sildatke and Richie Stevenson have been through the cycle of losing a car industry job, retraining into another industry but now find themselves without a job, again.
They spent 24 years and 15 years respectively working at Mitsubishi, before the factory shut down in 2008. The pair then took advantage of retraining programs on offer by becoming seafarers, in the hope of a fresh start.
“We had to go back to our families and say look, I’ve picked up this other work, it’s a transition, but I’m going to be away from home a lot more than I have been,” Mr Sildatke said.
Mr Stevenson said going to work at Holden’s Elizabeth plant was also an option at the time but he thought better of it.
“I thought, well that probably won’t last as long, so I thought, yeah this (seafaring) is something I could see out for my working days.”
In hindsight, it didn't matter; with the pair now again out of work after their fuel tanker took on a foreign crew. Both are keenly aware of what the 1200 Holden workers, who next year will walk out of the Elizabeth plant for the final time, are feeling.
“For people losing our jobs now, there’s nothing to go into straight away,” Mr Stevenson said.
“They’ve got the submarines jobs, maybe, but those guys there, there’s a lot of them that won’t get those jobs so I don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s not looking too good at the moment”.
Federal and State governments say they want today’s car workers to become tomorrow’s ship builders.
“You can have all the retraining you want in a number of areas, but there’s still got to be a job there at the end of it,” Mr Sildatke said.
Fewer young people in South Australia than 30 years ago, unemployment an issue
South Australia has had the nation's worst unemployment for 17 months in a row. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures place it at 6.8 per cent, ahead of Queensland at 6.5 per cent and Tasmania at 6.3 per cent.
“Even announcing one project after another… it’s still very difficult to turn around because there’s that negative feeling of people losing their jobs from established industries,” says Michael O’Neil, Executive Director of the SA Centre for Economic Studies at the University of Adelaide.
Mr O’Neil’s recent study showed South Australia's population has not only been growing far more slowly than the rest of Australia but it's also comprised of far fewer younger people. In fact, despite population growth, there were more people aged 24 and under 30 years ago than today.
That’s just an ageing population right?
Well, yes, but Associate Professor O'Neil says in South Australia's case, that's only half of the story.
The other half can be traced back to the State Bank collapse in 1991, a generation ago.
"When you look back, the people who did the leave the State were younger people who had no attachment here, no mortgage, who were well educated, who tended to go to Victoria and New South Wales," Mr O'Neil said.
And once they got jobs interstate, the majority married and had their kids there too. Few returned with their families.
“The reality is that if you go interstate the majority of people do tend to stay interstate,” Mr O’Neil said.
“And that’s then contributed to this little skewing of our age profile.”
Laneways, back streets and small bars
Plenty of those who stay are trying to make sure their friends don't have to leave. In Adelaide’s CBD, Peel Street, once a tired laneway, has been brought to life by the State government’s small bars license in 2013.
Government agency Renewal SA says since its introduction, 69 new venues in Adelaide’s smallest streets and laneways have generated an estimated 800 jobs (mostly part-time and casual) and $65m in economic activity.
“The revitalisation of Adelaide’s underutilised small streets and laneways is energising the city. Changes to the Small Venue Licence were designed to simplify the regulatory processes to encourage more people to open a small venue, ” said Renewal SA’s Georgina Vasilevski.
Talk to the Vujic family, who opened Kaffana two years ago, and you can sense their pride in being part of something, those who breathed life into a dead alleyway.
On Saturday night before opening, the place is humming with half a dozen staff in their 20s, hugs and kisses on arrival. The bar has a kitchen in which self-described "Mamma Vujic" runs the show. Through her thick Serbian accent, she is all one adores about European generosity and hospitality, and it comes out in her food.
“We’ve got a lot of young staff, a lot of enthusiastic kitchen hands and apprentices so it’s been good," said Nick Vujic, one of the owners.
He says the best thing about the small bars is that it's seen a return of older crowds, those who are beyond their clubbing days, to the city for a relaxed night out. But Mr Vujic wants people in their 20s to enjoy the space too.
"Hopefully we'll drag a few more in, a few younger ones that is."
South Australian ministers, State and Federal, are hoping to do the same for the place overall.
