Your Say survey finds optimism on South Australia’s future, jobs and living conditions

With some of the hardest parts of the pandemic now behind us, South Australians were asked how they felt about the future. This is what they shared.

An artist’s impression of the Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre at Lot Fourteen.

The former Royal Adelaide Hospital site on North Terrace – rechristened as Lot Fourteen – is the crucible of Premier Steven Marshall’s vision for the state’s economic transformation.

The objective is a showpiece of hi-tech industries, generating plentiful and lucrative jobs, and collaborating with one another and university researchers to drive innovation and growth.

Mr Marshall is buoyed by technology giant Amazon on Monday announcing it had established a Lot Fourteen office and planned to create 50 jobs in the state by 2024.

An artist’s impression of the Lot Fourteen development.

Amazon adds to the precinct’s line-up, which includes the Australian Space Agency, the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre and the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre.

The emphasis on job creation is shared by respondents to the Sunday Mail’s Your Say survey, with almost half rating jobs and the economy as the most important issue facing the state.

South Australians were also optimistic about their state’s future, rating this as +14.85 on a scale of plus or minus 100.

In comparison, Victorians rated their state’s future as -35.78.

Respondents also were optimistic about SA as a place to live for people under 25 (+19.17), for people raising a family (+53.84) and for people aged over 65 (+53.23).

This optimism extended to state pride, with about half of respondents saying they identified as a South Australian first, ahead of as an Australian.

Mr Marshall’s vision of tech-led economic transformation was popular, with almost 20 per cent of respondents saying professional, scientific and technical services offered the most hope for delivering jobs and growth opportunities.

Mr Marshall said Lot Fourteen would continue to be “a powerful generator of jobs for South Australia”.

“This year, the number people doing business, working, researching and studying on site at Lot Fourteen is set to reach 1000, with continual growth forecast over the coming years,” he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said “ South Australians have always been an optimistic people, taking confidence from our resilience in the face of adversity.”

“But for government, the task is to take the opportunities of a post-COVID world and translate that into real actions that set our state up for decades to come,” Mr Malinauskas said.

“COVID has demonstrated the need for industrial sovereignty, which means the future of advanced manufacturing in Australia is bright and South Australia is best placed to be the powerhouse of job creation in this sector.”

A South Australian Productivity Commission inquiry last October into research and development, including innovation precincts such as Lot Fourteen, provisionally concluded they appeared “to be an inefficient instrument with limited effectiveness in stimulating additional applied research and commercialisation”.

The commission accepted the value in co-located businesses and researchers collaborating, but declared “the cost of generating that outcome also matters”.

In an era of Zoom meetings and dramatically increased numbers of people working from home, the commission said “the cost of virtual versus physical precincts must now be part of the assessment of precincts” and vowed to investigate this further.

Keys to a healthy jobs future

Healthcare and social services offer the best hope to deliver jobs and economic growth for South Australia, according to the Your Say survey.

People also are prepared to pay more tax to fund the health system, helping to deliver those jobs.

Almost 30 per cent of respondents backed healthcare as a jobs generator, ahead of professional, scientific and technical services (19 per cent), construction (16 per cent) and manufacturing (10 per cent).

More than 40 per cent of SA respondents were prepared to pay more tax to grow hospital capacity and quality to meet future demand.

A similar proportion opposed a tax impost, while 18 per cent were undecided.

Nationally, a slim majority was not prepared to pay more tax to fund hospitals, while 35 per cent said they would be preparedto do so.

Buoyed by SA’s pandemic response, almost 60 per cent were confident in the public health system, 29 per cent were not and 13 per cent were unsure.
– Paul Starick.

Our neighbourhood where the ideas rule

To the Kaurna people, it was Karrawirraparri, the fertile riverbank that provided food and shelter for thousands of years.

It was Colonel William Light who labelled the area Lot Fourteen, as he planned out his visionary new city, and, within just a few short years, work had started on building a hospital for the people of the fledgling colony.

The hospital served South Australia for more than 150 years before it was moved down the boulevard to its current location, leaving behind a collection of unused buildings that once might have found themselves on the wrong side of a developer’s wrecking ball.

Instead, the area is being rapidly transformed into a neighbourhood where ideas rule – a hub of innovation and science, and a place where technology and art can rub shoulders.

The team from Apxium at Lot 14. Sales Director Gabor Szekernyes, Operations Manager Max Lanning and CEO Jeremy Coombe. Picture: Tom Huntley

You still need a little imagination when walking through Lot Fourteen today.

There are wide expanses of bare dirt that are in the process of transformation. New buildings are going up, old ones are being repurposed. A central park-style open space will eventually bring the surrounding green space into the heart of the development, and work is yet to commence on what promises to be the beating cultural heart of the precinct, a new Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre.

And while the construction work is ramping up, inside the operating hubs the hard work has already begun.

The Australian Space Agency has moved in, as has Australian Institute for Machine Learning. Inside the Stone and Chalk building, tech types sip coffee and discuss ideas.

Away from the communal area – which looks more like a cool cafe than an office – newly formed start-ups are working away on ideas with the potential to revolutionise their industries.

Start-ups such as financial technology company Apxium, an Adelaide outfit that is now serving some of the largest accounting practices in the US, Canada, UK and Europe.

Neumann Space chief executive Herve Astier and chief scientist Paddy Neumann at work in the company’s facilities at Lot Fourteen, where they develop in-space propulsion systems for satellites.

Apxium’s founder and managing director Jeremy Coombe said moving into Lot Fourteen was a no-brainer.

“We were part of the opening cohort of tenants at Lot Fourteen,” Mr Coombe said.

“Adelaide’s always had this undercurrent of technology and innovation, but there’s never been a way of coming together as a collective. We wanted to be part of a like-minded community, and that’s what we have here.”

Mr Coombe said Apxium’s aim was to become a truly global entity, but he said the company had no plans to leave Adelaide.

“We’ll stay here, this is our home,” he said.

“If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that with the internet and capable team you can operate from anywhere in the globe.”

– Nathan Davies