In The Australian David Penberthy makes an accurate observation about Adelaide:

At the turn of the century Adelaide looked like Detroit without the gangs. Its working-class southern and northern suburbs were filled with boarded-up reminders of a glorious manufacturing past; those factories that used to make car components, whitegoods and textiles were all closing as this small and geographically disadvantaged state stood powerless against globalisation.

Things have economically improved under the Rann Labor Government since then, due to mineral exploration and a burgeoning defence industry.

Slowly the rust-bucket state is becoming part of the information society or knowledge economy with the flows of globalisation working to facilitate this. High speed broadband is slowly being seen as a foundation for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life in that it enables entire new industries and unlocking vast new possibilities for existing ones.

Slowly because the idea of a “postindustrial” economy and the creative industries is still on the margins of policy discussions and SA, unlike Queensland, has still to use these ideas to move beyond the traditional discourses of the subsidized arts, to both give a central role to creativity in the generation of economic wealth, and to shift to the larger discourses such as those of trade policy, copyright and intellectual property, urban development, and educational futures.

The creative industries concept shares with information society theories an interest in the long-term shift in employment and national income from agriculture and manufacturing to services in advanced capitalist economies; the growing role of knowledge capital as a primary driver of growth in these economies; and creative industries as the loci of innovation and employment growth in increasingly knowledge-based economies.