There are many worrying things about Malcolm Turnbull’s submarine announcement. There is the 50 billion dollar price tag. There is the report indicating that the cost is possibly 40 per cent greater than it would have been were the submarines manufactured overseas. There is the possibility that, like all great South Australian building projects, the costs are going to blowout massively – like the hospital, and the highway, and the oval. There is the ominous history of the Australian Submarine Corporation, who haven’t yet lived down the Collins-class sub-hubbub, and whose canoe building skills remain in question. There is the fact that building the submarines in Adelaide is going to be slower than building them abroad, meaning they won’t be useful for a good long time yet. There is the damage we have done to our relationship with Japan in making a U-turn about where we’ll be getting our U-boats. There are all the signs that this was merely a political decision to save some high profile Liberal seats in the upcoming election (‘cough’ Pyne ‘cough’), but that the contract will go only a small way to repairing South Australia’s struggling economy.

Perhaps most terrifying of all was that when the deal was announced, my fellow South Australians were utterly thrilled. ‘Oui Did It!’ sang the front page of the Advertiser. InDaily, our closest thing to a second daily newspaper, ran a story titled ‘Subs Celebration’, in which every Tom, Nick and Penny in local politics waxed lyrical about this supposedly wonderful deal. ‘We’ve always had to fight for our economic future here in SA,’ said Premier Jay Weatherill proudly, somehow taking responsibility for the announcement. Between a generous GST apportionment and federal handouts like this, South Australia isn’t so much ‘fighting’ for its economic future as it is holding the rest of the country hostage. The uniformly positive reaction from the public, politicians and press was astonishing. Sure, this is eventually going to bring some jobs to South Australia, but it’s not a long term solution to our woes. We landed the contract because it was politically convenient for the Prime Minister, not because Adelaide is now a worthwhile place to invest in manufacturing. How far has South Australia fallen that the free-settled state, designed as a middle class utopia, is now celebrating welfare benefits?

Horrifying as it is to my squeamish old-Adelaidian sensibilities, I have heard some appealing arguments for taking the handout shamelessly. Federation has, after all, been unkind to South Australia. The national economy has globalised, which is terrific if you want to buy a cheap shirt or a car that works properly, but it has undeniably been at the expense of our parochial manufacturing industries. It remains an economic rule that Western, unionised workers, paid fairly, cannot compete with oriental slave labour. In the early 20th century Adelaide was the third largest city in the country. It has now fallen to a distant fifth. Population growth has collapsed, but job opportunities have collapsed faster. By far, we have the highest rate of unemployment in the country. Had South Australia remained an independent colony, we would have had straightforward economic recourse. For one, we could have inflated the currency to keep our industries competitive. It is, perhaps, fair enough that in exchange for our ceding monetary sovereignty unto them, the eastern states occasionally send us a cheque in the mail. Heck, would we really even want Adelaide to be a modern industrial city, full of smokestacks and working class people? It’s so pleasant as it is! If you look at it long enough and hard enough, you start to wonder, is there really anything wrong with being the mendicant state?

Well, the rest of Australia seems to think so. A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the antipathy of Peter. There’s scarcely a commentator from another state who thinks this is a good deal, and all the ex-convicts seem to suddenly have a newfound respect for honest work and free markets. As a proud South Australian I am inclined to defend our state’s interests against the nasally accented neighbours who’d just as soon take a federal handout for themselves, but my love of state runs so deep that I’m disinclined to defend such a dishonourable state of affairs. I can attest from my own prior, and not inconsiderable, time on Centrelink payments that despite the many wonderful benefits of benefits (food, shelter, a submarine manufacturing industry), the downside is that dependency does eventually corrode the soul.

We have a long history of dependency, and the scars to prove it. We’ve seen a mass exodus of our young people, and it is the best and brightest who invariably leave. There are few credible paths out of debt and deficit for our state. It is economic desperation, rather than a miraculous state-wide epiphany, which has resulted in the newfound belief that Adelaide should become the dumping ground for the world’s nuclear waste. We suffer degradation to our spirit and reputation.

When my lady friend moved here from Melbourne earlier this year, her friends were horrified; they despaired not only that they were losing their friend, but that their friend was losing her mind. ‘Adelaide? What will you do there? Why doesn’t your boyfriend move here?’ That might be put down to interstate rivalry but, frighteningly, upon arriving in Adelaide she’s been asked virtually the same questions. ‘Adelaide? What will you do here? Why didn’t your boyfriend move to Melbourne?’ (It’s because I was unwilling to reside in a perpetually damp, architecturally insane hellscape.)

There are, of course, things we could do to fix the situation which don’t involve more grants against the national interest. We could cut regulation, bring taxes down, and encourage foreign investment rather than driving it away – in the immediate future, this could be done by making life electoral hell for the Coalition until Scot Morrison unblocks the Kidman sale. We have, after all, always had to fight for our economic future here in SA. Alternately, and this is what I’d prefer, we can build the submarines here, keep them once they’re finished, declare our independence from the rest of the country, and threaten to deploy the submarines against anybody who has a problem with that. We’ll be poorer, and I’m not entirely sure of how we’re going to get enough fresh water to stop everybody dying of thirst, but we will, at least, have our dignity back.