The GFC changed our lives, and now it's all-change again

THERE is an argument the 20th century did not end in 2000 but rolled ahead until it bumped into the 2008 global financial crisis.

GFC, Lehman, Bear Sterns, Merrill, Fannie, Freddie

THERE is an argument the 20th century did not end in 2000 but rolled ahead until it bumped into the 2008 global financial crisis.

Up to then, many business and social institutions that had shaped Australian society in the late 20th century still prevailed.

The way we worked, shopped, went on holidays and formed ourselves into relationships and tribes was pretty much an extension of the way these things had been organised for decades.

Sure, we might have been a bit more sophisticated in our approach, but the basic structures remained unchanged.

But since the financial crisis, a new century, a new Australia and a new way of living and working emerged.

I think a new or at least an altered world order is now possible from the present breakpoint.

What we are witnessing is the diminution of US and EU economic and cultural primacy and the rise of China as a global force.

In Australia, the lead indicators of change over the past three years have oscillated between hard-core economic factors and softer social and behavioural trends.

China replaced Japan as Australia's leading export market in 2008. For the first time since European settlement, the country that delivers most export income is no longer a country with which we have a military alliance.

Then the number of outbound tourists from Australia exceeded, for the first time, the number of inbound visitors: that crossover came in 2009.

What shall we do with the under-used theme parks and motels dotted along the eastern seaboard whose existence is predicated on a continuation of demand by domestic tourists?

Dollars that were once spent in these places are now more likely to be spent on cheap airfares to Hawaii or Bali.

In the years that followed the global financial crisis, a decade-long drought broke, the climate change imperative faltered (at Copenhagen), the Australian dollar surged, internet retail sales blossomed and fly-in fly-out workers reorganised how and where we work.

Everyday talk of the early years of the 2010s is not about concepts such as seachange and tree-change, which arguably flowed from last decade's lifestyle largesse, but about work-based issues such as the need to develop skills, the rise and spread of mining and the nation's ability to capture prosperity.

Seachange cities such as the Gold Coast and Mandurah have finally given way in the popular media to cities that were little heard of a decade ago: Karratha, Mackay, Gladstone, Bunbury and Townsville.

These are the muscle towns of the commodities boom: places that sit between an orebody and an export terminal.

And then there are the "hotel towns" that accommodate the FIFO workforce in places such as Pannewonica, Roxby Downs, Prominent Hill and Glenden: hotel towns because their lone purpose is to accommodate the workforce to service a mine.

And who knew in the 2000s, let alone earlier, that Australia had so many basins? And that the basins might be filled with resources other nations would desperately want? There's black coal in the Bowen Basin and coal-seam gas in the Surat Basin, as well as other export riches from the Galilee, the Bonaparte and the Moomba basins.

The post-GFC surge in the value of the dollar, combined with an imposed or at least threatened austerity from afar, changed consumer behaviour.

Gone is the trophy consumption of the early 2000s, and in have come new consumer rules.

Get what you want, but get it smarter by finding an internet site and then use high-value Australian dollars to complete the deal.

The structure of the economy is shifting from low-skilled to high-skilled sectors, from established city-based jobs to remote mine-based work, and from a nine-to-five protocol to a fluid deliverables-driven structure.

Office workers clocking on and clocking off need office space.

Knowledge workers producing deliverables can and do produce their services from their homes. Less need for dedicated office space in the city centre, more need for home-based workspace in the suburbs.

Even the way we form relationships is on the move.

I doubt any modern relationship could be formed without some level of facilitation by Facebook or the social media.

It is the new century's matchmaker bringing together couples for filtering and for flirting, for courting and for canvassing.

And all to one end of course, but the pathway to joyous union is different: it is littered with technology that must be bought, upgraded and used on a daily -- no, hourly -- basis. The opportunity for business is to understand the directional shifts in the economic structure and consumer behaviour and to align products and services with the new narrative of how Australians want to live their lives in the coming decade.

But business acumen is more than merely identifying the sector (there are no prizes for suggesting mining's all the go in the 2010s), it's about identifying the products and services that will be required.

Selling smartphones is an example, as is building and installing dongas, which are on-site accommodation cabins for miners.

Or it might be the provision of aviation services connecting pools of available labour (say at Wollongong) with gaps in the demand for skilled jobs (say at Moranbah).

The question is whether the social and economic paradigm as outlined will prevail for the short to medium term.

This trajectory might be altered if, for example, there is a change to the political situation in Australia such that one party gets a sufficient majority to enable bold nation-building infrastructure projects to be undertaken.

And if, for example, there was resolution to the financial problems of the EU and the US, Australian consumers might start spending more, rendering "internet shopping" both tedious and unsatisfying.

And if world commodity prices dropped and China slowed its consumption of Australian resources, then the glamour, or at least the frisson, of FIFO as a new way of working would subside, there would be a diminution in the demand for the supply chain of services that has been established to support the mines.

Change these big-picture factors and the impact reverberates through the economy wreaking havoc in some areas but invariably creating opportunity elsewhere.

KPMG Partner Bernard Salt was appointed an Adjunct Professor with Curtin Business School earlier this week;

Facebook/BernardSaltDemographer; twitter.com/bernardsalt; [e-mail]