Feisty city blows away the experts

KPMG consultant Bernard Salt, of Australia, told The Southland Times yesterday the city was continuing on its upward – albeit slow – spiral.

It could expect to maintain a stable population unless there was a structural shift in the region's economic base.

"I think you've got 50,000 feisty people who don't give up easily."

Mr Salt has been studying demographics across Australia and New Zealand since 1989.

About 1999, he suggested Invercargill was one of three Australasian cities that would suffer "significant and sustained" population loss.

In the normal lifecycle of a town, it could take up to 50 years before there was a turnaround.

It had been affected by a fall in the strength of the agricultural sector, efficiencies at the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter requiring less manpower and changes in meat processing.

Such structural economic changes could "wrong-foot" a town and the situation couldn't change no matter how good the community leaders were, Mr Salt said.

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