KEY POINTS:
A short while ago Mike Rann, with his brother Chris, scrambled over a wire fence near the old hydro workers' village of Mangakino, southeast of Hamilton, in search of their roots.
They had already stopped at the pub and found a barmaid who had married one of their
childhood friends, and were now looking for the house at Maraetai they had grown up in back in the 1960s.
"The village no longer existed, so we climbed over the fence - we were probably trespassing - and we found the base of the house," Mr Rann said.
"We went down the back where the bush was coming back into the garden and found the aviary my father had built in 1962. It was all sort of broken up but the wire netting was still there on a pile of rubbish."
This weekend Mr Rann will be back in Auckland looking for more than memories. He may have grown up in New Zealand, his mum may still live in Birkenhead and he may carry two passports, but he is now Premier of South Australia and on a mission.
This is vital work for the state. For decades it had watched its economy slide, its people leave and the capital, Adelaide, fall behind Auckland in size and dynamism. Like the New Zealand of the 1980s, it had to find a reason to exist.
With an expat British-born Kiwi at the helm and a high-powered economic development board that includes long-time Rann friend and former New Zealand Prime Minister Mike Moore, South Australia has now found its future.
This is boom time in the making: massive resource projects that include a A$1 trillion copper, uranium and gold mine, and huge defence and high-tech industries. Two top international universities - University College London and America's Carnegie Mellon University - have established their first foreign campuses in Adelaide.
"For years South Australia was renowned for world-class wine, for a beautiful city [Adelaide], but economically we've not been in good shape," Mr Rann said. "That has completely changed.
"We've gone from four operating mines four years ago to 10 operating mines, and we've got another 70 coming, including the world's biggest mine. We need hundreds of thousands more workers."
He is putting up the notice board in New Zealand and hunting skills in countries as diverse as Britain and India. Mr Rann will host wine, beer and pie nights in Sydney and Melbourne in a bid to lure expatriates home.
That is the rub for South Australia. It has vast and rapidly developing potential that will rocket it out of its Cinderella status, but has nowhere near the human capital it needs to make it work.
But the patterns are changing. Mr Rann said the state has just recorded its highest numbers of migrants since 1972 and is now heading from a present base of less than 1.6 million to 2 million by the mid-2020s.
This year the state government will spend more than A$2 billion on infrastructure, including public transport, roads, rail and ports, and on regional freight networks.
In the deep red expanses north of Adelaide, about A$25 billion of minerals and energy projects are under way, boosted by tax changes and reductions in red tape.
Canadian-based international research organisation the Fraser Institute lists South Australia's mining potential ahead of any other state, and fourth in the world. The value of mining exports has more than doubled since 2003-04, topping A$2.5 billion in 2007-08.
About 560km north of Adelaide, BHP-Billiton is planning to develop its already vast Olympic Dam mine in a A$7 billion expansion that will eventually become the world's largest mine. The site holds the world's largest uranium reserves, the fourth-largest copper deposit, and large gold reserves.
To the north, the state plans to boost oil and gas exploration in the Cooper Basin; in the southeast, to develop coal gasification projects. Renewable energy is also booming.
In Adelaide, new high-technology industries are clustering around a defence sector that maintains the Navy's Collins class submarines, and which will now build its three new, A$8 billion, air warfare destroyers.
Mr Rann is now hunting the people needed to make all this work. Strategies are being developed by the economic development board and a social inclusion group. "I've said to them I want to make sure that people who have been traditionally left out ... get an opportunity to get work.
"I want to make sure Aborigines get jobs."
NZ HERALD EXPO
* The New Zealand Herald Your Career expo brings employers and potential employees together in the biggest careers event in the country, with a two-day series of workshops, presentations and exhibitions across four pavilions.
* Where and when: The expo will be held at the ASB Showgrounds on September 27-28.
APPLY HERE
Expatriate New Zealander turned Australian politician Mike Rann is coming to Auckland with a shopping list of jobs to fill.
Mr Rann wants our talents and skills for a state that is blossoming out of genteel decay into a boom that will equal or even surpass the roaring resource economies of Queensland and Western Australia.
He is leading a team to the New Zealand Herald Your Career Expo in the hope of diverting young Kiwis away from their traditional migrations to Sydney and the two mining states, and the more distant flights to Britain, Europe, North America and Asia.
For the huge mining and defence sectors, he wants electrical, electronic, mechanical, production and civil engineers, computing professionals, mechanical and fabrication and engineering trades, and electricians.
For the wider economy, he wants skills such as registered midwives and nurses, community and welfare workers, building, architectural and construction professionals and tradespeople, and bakers and cooks.
"I'm going to New Zealand to explain that it's smart to work in, or invest in, the next boom-time town, not the last," Mr Rann said.
