Any regular reader of this blog will know that a population expansion of South Australia is a regularly recurring theme.  While the military expansion of the State is extolled by our government as a creator of jobs, it appears that we're looking elsewhere to find them.  Meanwhile new suburbs are created and plans are laid to house personnel required for the defence and mining booms.

 An article in today's Advertiser suggests that we're going to be battling to scrape together the required numbers to fill the defence jobs.

 [extract]

The State Government has set a target of up to 12,000 new workers to join SA's burgeoning defence sector by 2015.

Of this number, up to 3000 positions will be blue-collar workers
or tradespeople needed when production starts on the largest contract -
the $6 billion air warfare destroyer (AWD) project - from 2009.

The State Government Defence Strategy is aiming for SA's
defence industry to grow to 28,000 workers by 2015, with revenues
doubling to $2 billion a year. As well as the much-publicised AWD
contract, SA's 120 large and small defence companies are preparing to
take large slices of work associated with a $3 billion army vehicle
replacement contract and an estimated $750 million-$1 billion maritime
surveillance program for the air force.

It becomes more obvious now why Attorney General Phillip Ruddock is introducing work-visa changes, and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone is being so protective of Halliburton's reputation in Parliament.   It also accounts for our state Premiers to the Howard and Bush visits to India to recruit trained electronic technicians from Mumbai.

South Australia will need many thousands more people to fulfill the requirements placed upon it by the US, and the only place that these can come from is abroad.