Why don't we know where we're going?

AFTER spending more than fifty years of my life in Tasmania, in 2009 I belatedly joined the brain-drain exodus to the mainland. I had a wonderful time living in southwest Victoria and working for Deakin University in Warrnambool and Geelong.

There are many similarities between the southwest of Victoria and Tasmania. Someone even described Warrnambool as an 'upside down Devonport', with the coast to the south instead of the north. The weather is cool, wet and windy. Geelong is a liveable city on the water, and just a little bigger than Hobart. Like Tasmania, it is in the midst of economic restructuring. For Geelong this is from a heavy industrial and manufacturing economy to an advanced manufacturing and research economy. The education attainment rate in the whole region is a concern. Like Tasmania, Geelong and the southwest have a single large university that dominates higher education and research in the region. There are marginal electorates. The whole region from Geelong to the South Australian border has a population of about 350,000, a bit smaller than Tasmania.