Australia is a society dividing into winners and losers as external forces and new ways of doing business impacts on the nation`s economic geography.
A new book Australia`s Changing Economic Geography, A Society Dividing describes and analyses these developments and their effects on Australia`s cities and regions and the people who live there.
The authors contend that Australia is a society dividing, developing a new economy that is increasingly concentrated in the major cities, and especially in Sydney, which has emerged as the nation`s global city. This has led to an uneven distribution of investment and jobs.
Australia`s Changing Economic Geography, published by Oxford University Press and being launched in Sydney and Melbourne this week, argues that these stark new divides present significant policy challenges for governments.
The book shows how increasingly there is a mismatch between the patterns of growth in population and the concentration of investment in high value added economic activities.
It examines the effects of globalisation, communication technologies, new production processes, deregulation, the rise of the new economy, and corporate restructuring on economic activity and employment, and then shows how these changes have led to new ways of doing business in Australia.
The authors - Associate Professor Kevin O`Conner and Professor Robert Stimson from The University of Queensland, and Emeritus Professor Maurice Daly, formerly from the University of Sydney - have been researching the changing economic geography of Australia for more than three decades.
They say Australia has never been an equal society and the rich are getting richer while the rest of us are living in a "worried" and "disappointed" country. There were eight billionaires in Australia by 2000, but the overall incidence of poverty has increased dramatically during the past two to three decades.
Regarding rural and regional Australia, the book uses Port Douglas in far north Queensland and Griffith in inland New South Wales as examples of regional centres "made good" but it also highlights the inevitable selectivity that means other places will be unable to participate in long-term growth.
The authors show how many large regional service centres in the wheat-sheep belt of inland Australia continue to perform well, while it is the small country towns that are really struggling. Ironically the rapidly growing coastal urban centres attracting in-migrants seeking lifestyle in the sun belt are performing poorly in economic terms, and the authors question the sustainability of such regional growth into the future.
The book calls for a comprehensive national approach to addressing the infrastructure needs of Australia`s major cities and the nation`s regions, pointing out that the lack of such national policy puts Australia out of step with fellow OECD nations in Europe as well as Canada and the USA.
In-keeping with its core message of centrality, Australia`s Changing Economic Geography, A Society Dividing will be launched at the Melbourne offices of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) at 5.30pm today March 13, and in Sydney tomorrow March 14 at 5.30pm.
Media Contact: For further information, contact Professor Bob Stimson (mobile 0411 020 627) or Jan King at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 1120).
If any media wants to attend the CEDA launches they should phone the Melbourne CEDA office (telephone 03 9652 4000) or the Sydney CEDA office (telephone 02 9599 7020).
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