WWWalker's South Australian Business

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See also UK | Mining | Defence

Groundwater App | Adelaide | Arts | IT (Cybersecurity | Tenders | NETGEAR | Defence) | Politics | Huge State Debt | Electricity Infrastructure in Decline | Auto Industry in Decline | Arrium steelworks Whyalla in administration then sold | Huge Projects | Defence | Agriculture | Riverland | SA Harvest Trail labour hire contractors cleaned up | Bushwalking


Groundwater App

In 2022, I am extending Salt Table Helper (EC) mobile app to cover groundwater in SA. It is a very dry state and there are precious reserves to incorporate. They have separate water reserves in the Southeast for farmers.

Adelaide

Adelaide has a high concentration of science and engineering companies compared to finance companies in Sydney.

Adelaide is the city of churches. It still has strong Christian roots.

We have always found Adelaide great to do business with.

Adelaide has an ethereal feel. How do they make money? It has worst economy in Australia.

Arts

South Australia has a great arts community and hold their annual festival. I being a musician and librarian find this a very rewarding place for the arts and historical research re aboriginal missions e.g. re Tindale anthropologist at South Australian Museum for my father S Preston Walker's book "Enriching Australia through educating indigenous people" due out in 2022.

I installed and catalogued a 1500 volume library for Christian group in Canberra for person who was an ex Defence engineer contractor from South Australia. So South Australians are always hitech.

IT

Cybersecurity

On 24 November 2021, DTEX Systems, a cyber security company in Adelaide, was awarded best IT company in Australia as per Pearcey Foundation National Awards. Premier of SA Steven Marshall congratulated Mohan Koo of DTEX Systems who had returned to Adelaide from USA due to COVID-19 and grown his IT business in Australia remotely.

Tenders

In July 2021, SA Tenders and Contracts said all their tenders were now going through Consolidated Tenders from Adelaide who also hosted tenders for Victoria, ACT, LG Tender Box Qld and Council Buys SA. Consolidated Tenders is a single sign on (SSO) for all those government tendering sites. They use metadata well and allow history reuse to gain more tenders. They also clean company data of suppliers so it is accurate using APIs to Australian Business Register.

The tender categories are too large so many irrelevant tenders are sent to suppliers. It is mainly aimed at enterprises in infrastructure projects not small business. Victoria Tenders will not fix wrong UNSPSC classification in tenders so they go to wrong business i.e. painting is art and painting services is house painting but they classify house painting as painting of art so artist or musician gets tender which is irrelevant. Engineering includes building and IT so any building tenders also go to IT suppliers which is irrelevant.

They do not allow for operations vs admin offices in their system so send emails with wrong admin address so business has to remove any operations address. Also any wrong classification in profile has to be corrected or wrong tenders are sent. Subscription to updates based on profile classification is useless and only keyword searches work with accuracy as classification is so broad and governments make classification errors.

There was no way of blocking wrong classification or irrelevant tenders unless business removed that category from their profile or unsubscribed from alerts to broad classification categories and just relied on keyword searches. It was a very stupid and biased system and favours large building companies over small IT companies.

In 2012, I was hoping to get a SA Government ICT tender. This did not eventuate by 2017 due to our small size.

NETGEAR

In March 2012, we signed up as a NETGEAR reseller with an Adelaide distributor which fell through due to lack of sales.

Defence

In 1980s, a South Australian software engineer worked with me at CSC in Sydney on New Submarine Defence project. See Huge Projects for Defence projects in Adelaide.

Politics

In March 2022, a new ALP government won the SA state election after only 4 years of Liberal Government.

In March 2018, a new Liberal State Government was elected in South Australia after 16 years of ALP.

See Links for list of prominent political parties in South Australia.

There is a lot of turmoil, new parties, splits, mergers, renaming, rebranding, opportunism and being facile going on in South Australian politics since 2017.

Huge State Debt

By 2015-16, South Australia will have $7.7Bn in debt. Revenue fell $1Bn in 2011 due to fall in GST. It is the highest taxing state in Australia.

Electricity Infrastructure in Decline

Auto Industry in Decline

Arrium steelworks Whyalla in administration then sold

Huge Projects

From 2012 onwards, there is $109Bn in major infrastructure projects like Olympic Dam Uranium mine expansion (plans) and French Future Submarine Project (cancelled) now AUKUS Nuclear-Powered Submarine Project at Osborne Naval Shipyard.

Defence

In July 2022, ADSTAR 2022 DSTG hybrid conference was run to start collaboration between Defence, Universities and SMEs.

Defence ODIS and Innovation Hub were setup to handle the mass carnage of cancelling a big project and migrating SMEs across to new project.

The French Future Submarine Project was cancelled in September 2021 at cost of $5Bn and replaced by AUKUS Nuclear-Powered Submarine.

The latest Defence Future Submarine Project was won by French firm DCNS (now NAVAL Group) who are spending $50Bn (4/16).

Australian Submarine Corporation built in Adelaide Collins Class Submarines in 1990s but lost tender to overseas for Barracuda Class submarines.

In December 2018, I went to Future Submarine seminar at Adelaide. Project was 2 years out but in 2021 was cancelled and replaced so 5 years out for nuclear-powered submarine to start.

I went to Future Submarine Industry Briefing by DCNS 11/5/17 in Brisbane.

See The search for an economic solution for South Australia 4/17 - pro defence, mining, arts, con auto industry, steelworks, power industry

Agriculture

Riverland

In November 2008, we paid a visit for work to the Riverland of SA.

SA has poor internet access in the rural areas.

Loxton has an Internet Centre near the post office. Loxton library and Berri library have wireless hotspots that require a laptop.

The area badly needs an internet cafe or people have to have Next G or similar mobile internet themselves.

Pay rates are very low in rural areas making them unviable for short visits.

From Orange NSW, the best way to get to the Riverland is to catch a Countrylink bus to Cootamundra on certain days then connect to a Countrylink bus to Mildura. From there wait overnight and catch a Greyhound bus from Mildura to Renmark or Berri. There is a 9 hour gap between getting to Mildura and catching another bus to continue the journey - bad timing.

Always book a bed ahead or you may be stranded with nowhere to stay in Mildura.

Google Maps is a useful application on your mobile phone to find somewhere to stay in Mildura if you are not used to it. Go to https://www.google.com.au/maps on PC or m.google.com/maps on mobile and download Google Maps (it is free except for data charges from your mobile phone carrier). Google Maps also has a search button which brings up pins and phone numbers of motels for example and helps you navigate and contact potential places to stay. Plus at m.google.com there are tons of applications to try out on your mobile!

Also the Greyhound terminal in United Fuel, Mildura is a taxi ride of $15 from the railway station where the Countrylink bus arrives at, another annoying perplexity of transferring in Mildura. So you can be up for $35 to $75 or more for accommodation and taxi rides to make the stopover work in Mildura.

You can book a Greyhound seat via phone whereas Countrylink require a printed ticket or cash - all very inconvenient if you don't have a fax number or email access.

There is no internet cafe in Mildura so use your motel's internet connection and printer to book a Countrylink ticket and print it out.

This remote area is ripe for using a laptop with Next G and a portable printer to get by or hunt around for adequate information on how to book a ticket or a bed using Google Maps on your mobile phone.

Orange NSW has much better infrastructure than Berri SA or Mildura Vic. I was glad to get back to Orange despite its coldness!

SA Harvest Trail labour hire contractors cleaned up

In December 2011, I met a person from Harvest Trail in Orange who said many dodgy contractors who did not pay their backpacker or Australian picking staff were shut down in Loxton area. The bad contractors were getting Australian Government subsidies and not paying their staff and farmers were duped into using them as they had very low rates and the farmers did not check to see if the pickers were getting paid by the contractors. I made nothing as all I earned went back to board and transport and I wasted quite a bit getting from Orange to Loxton and back. I am glad the Australian Government found these tricky businesses out and stopped them listing dodgy jobs on Harvest Trail without vetting. Now all jobs advertised on Harvest Trail are checked to see if the contractors are paying their staff to see if they are legitimate and not a rip-off agency. I could not get my group certificate from the contractor as mail was returned to sender and they did not reply to SMS so I had to use a statutory declaration to declare what tax was withheld so I could get my tax back.

Bushwalking

Along the Heysen Trail from Cape Jervis south of Adelaide to the Flinders Ranges in north


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Created: 24 Nov 2008 14:03
Last Updated: 26 Jul 2022 23:33

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