Gary,
Daniel Bell (1973), is seen as an early another exponent of the knowledge society. He emphasized the role of universities in transmitting knowledge that would advance economic development and thus the growing importance of the symbolic analyst or the managers and controllers of information and knowledge systems.

In occupational terms this included both high tech industries and non-profit services, such as education, health and government.

So all the current talk about education, universities and the old talk about Adelaide being an education city refers to the knowledge economy.

Gary,
The decision to close Mitsubishi's Adelaide care plant was long overdue. The company could not produce cars that consumers wanted to buy and it needed high levels of protection to keep it alive.

The free market economists argue that SA has to win itself from excessive dependence on heavily protected manufacturing industries. Well the white goods industry has all but gone; and the car industry has contracted. Hence the rustbelt image.

And, as you point out, SA is pinning some of its hopes on government supported defence industry (ship builders and weapons firms). What will the Rudd Government do about those?

Peter S Stock said
"The company could not produce cars that consumers wanted to buy"
The factory could have produced, and technologists designed cars that consumers wanted to buy if their executives had been able to predict where the market was going and give appropriate direction (but that would mean living up to their position description).

Dave,
From what I can gather the car manufacturers survive by following the traditional path of adapting an overseas care for the local market.

Thus Mitsubishi 380 started off life as the US market Galant, a front wheel drive car, that was adapted and modified by the engineers in Adelaide, even though Australians prefer rear-wheel drive for the family sedans.It was dated as it came onto the market and was built down to a price.

The SA plant was always marginal and Mitsubishi in Tokyo was reeling from mechanical faults and failures to act on recall notices that it had covered up.

Peter,
the key to survival is to develop local centres of excellence for design and innovation that can fit into global supply chains and to produce cares that consumers in Australia and overseas want. Mitsubishi was not able to do this as well as Holden or Toyoto.

Ford is in a similar position to Mitsubishi. Propping up the industry by offering more subsidies and delaying scheduled tariff cuts will just postpone the inevitable if the shift to excellence and innovation is not made.

Nan,
I remember reading somewhere that education has replaced tourism ($11.5 billion) as Australia's biggest services export and the third overall, trailing only coal ($20.8 billion) and iron ore ($16 billion) production. So much for agriculture being the backbone of the country.

The $12.5 billion is generated from 450,000 international students who are treated poorly in terms of being customers who exist to be milked, are exploited in their part time jobs as they are paid below the minimum wage, and a third of whom struggle to make ends meet.