Australia’s Changing Economic Geography Revisited

For some time Australia has been exhibiting the hallmarks of a „two speed economy‟ in which the sun-belt states are surging ahead fed by internal migration and the resources boom. But the nation has always been one in which marked regional differences economic performance have been evident, with the nature and magnitude of those differentials changing according to the level of aggregation/disaggregation used in analysis and modelling and also over time. This paper provides an overview of Australia‟s changing economic geography over the last two to three decades, highlighting the changing nature of the socio-economic divides that have occurred, and speculating on what might lie ahead.