Adelaide – Athens of the South’s long, slow decline

The Sunday Mail will still be handed out free at the football on Saturday night and people of colour leaving a crime scene will still be described by the electronic media as '"people of Aboriginal appearance." Hoon drivers and cars crashing in to houses will be over reported. Hard news will be under reported.

But the untrained eye will begin to notice more buildings for rent as businesses and shops close down. The CBD will remain a desert at night. There will be jolts as major contracts for defence or mining come to an end.

The signs of decline and fall can already be found in the hollowing out of primary and high school enrolments in the 10km radius from the CBD. Less young people means less students and less students means less schools.

The media will play a role too in the decline of Adelaide as a city-state. It won't report it. It may report the symptoms, but its function as an 'attack dog' over the last twenty five years makes it entirely unsuitable now to change its collar and suddenly start to report. It's a part of the problem – young people know that. That's why they don't buy newspapers or watch TV news.

Without sounding ghoulish, Adelaide needs brains – and lots of them. I don't just mean "Thinkers in Residence," who fly in with a whole lot of whiz bang ideas and then fly out again.

Adelaide's greatest contribution to culture is not through the arts. It is through its ability to attract international students and migrants to settle.

The international education industry poured $1.05 billion into the South Australian economy in 2009/10, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Adelaide continues to attract record numbers of international students, with 34,000 choosing Adelaide as their study destination in 2010.

Rarely have I seen a city so in need of new ideas, new blood and new ways of doing things. Adelaide's innovative spirit has been bred out and it's entrepreneurial heart crushed by nanny state regulation and complacency.

'Adders' must look to Asia for new models of action. It must look for movers and shakers, not in frilly party dresses born from privilege and status. But, draw down the kind of ethos born from single-mindedly and aggressively pursuing a commercial vision.

The academic Pierre Ryckmanns (aka Simon Ley) put it wonderfully when he wrote in an essay on provincialism, "Culture is born out of exchanges and thrives on differences. The death of culture lies in self-centeredness, self-sufficiency and isolation."

Difference is not an easy idea to sell in Adelaide.