Smurf from what I have been reading Tas is slowly turning around in some areas through exports? Any areas you see growing down there?
A bit off topic since it's a state matter not federal, but I think the current situation in Tas does actually answer a lot of questions of broader relevance.
Lowest per capita debt of any state. Also the only state which still has most of it's major infrastructure in public ownership. Roads, power, water, ports, railways, public transport buses, the Spirit ferries - all publicly owned (railways were bought back from private owners a few years ago). And I repeat my point about lowest debt whereas if you look at the state with the highest debt, Victoria, well they were the poster boy for privatisation and pretty much sold the lot. Didn't work too well by the looks of it.
As for what's growing and what's not, there's a big message there I think.
Tourism is doing well, greatly benefiting from a private development (MONA) in which government had absolutely zero involvement. MONA has in itself been somewhat transformational, especially so when the various public events are thrown in. Credit too to Hobart City Council for the unrelated Taste festival - the place is absolutely buzzing at this time of year.
Forestry is stuffed and will remain so. Every tree cut loses money and creates essentially no employment beyond the actual cutting and transport since it's just chipped for export rather than being processed locally. Labor gave up on forestry some time ago and came up with what amounts to a deal for an orderly exit apart from those aspects of the industry which are actually profitable (timber that ends up in saw mills or the paper mill is still a very viable business - it's a minority of the wood but 100% of the profit). Then the Liberals got elected, ripped up the deal, and have just thrown another $30 million of taxpayer's funds at this loss-making "business". That alone goes quite some way to explaining my lack of faith in the party - they clearly are no longer in favour of free markets determining the outcome. Labor is a better choice if you think that governments shouldn't prop up loss making businesses.
The state's largest single exporter is still the zinc works. Has been that way for most if it's 98 year history and still is. It's roughly one sixth of the state's overseas exports coming out of that factory (third largest producer in the world by the way). TEMCO (ferro alloys), Bell Bay Aluminium (aluminium) and Norske Skog (paper) are also still individually huge exporters (though Norske Skog is really only "exporting" to other Australian states but the others are overseas focused).
Agriculture is growing, largely on the back of government-built irrigation schemes (themselves an adaptation of existing public hydro-electric or water supply assets in many cases). The basic concept seems to be about high value production rather than high volume, and aiming at the export market. I'm not sure how well it's working as such, but they've put a lot of pipes in place and have sold a lot of water to farmers so presumably someone's using it to grow something of value. Contrary to what seems to be the common belief interstate, eastern parts of Tas are actually quite dry, Hobart only gets half the rainfall that Sydney does each year, and there are parts of the state that are even drier. On the other hand, we've got 3000+mm falling on parts of the west coast every 12 months. Hence the irrigation schemes to shift the water.
Overall, I think there's a message here of broader relevance. A private development with no government support transformed tourism whilst the perpetually propped up forestry industry is still burning cash and shedding jobs like it's done for years. Keeping assets in public hands hasn't lead to a debt problem, indeed the reverse is true. There's still a role for heavy manufacturing industries even in a place like Tas and no, they don't interfere with tourism since the average tourist doesn't even know they exist. And the agriculture stuff represents a very obvious opportunity, albeit one requiring a degree of public financial backing, to target export markets. There's a broader message there about getting on with what works, forgetting about silly ideologies and cutting ongoing losses.
Then there's the things that just hum along in the background. Incat still builds ships. The boom years have passed but they still build them. The mining industry is still ticking along to some extent. Some troubles yes, but they're still mining at Rosebery and Savage River, still making iron pellets at Port Latta. Etc. New bauxite mine about to open apparently.
In much the same way as it is being argued that federal politics has wasted too much time with issues like gay marriage (and I'd add the republic debate in the same context), so too has Tasmania wasted far too much time with pie in the sky ideas involving the cutting down of trees. Meanwhile MONA was built, Incat built countless ships, the Hydro (government owned) made $ hundreds of millions trading energy markets, the smelters and mines are still running, agriculture is expanding and so on. If only we didn't have the dead duck Forestry chewing up a fortune of money and probably 50% of all political discussion over the past 30 years then we'd be much better off.