There has been an undeniable shift in the economies of most if not all Western nations from a reliance on agriculture and industry for employment and wealth generation to that of services. This change has occurred over the last century but has accelerated and diversified since World War II. Thus to the usual array of health and education services has grown whole new categories of “producer services” and those associated with personal assistance as the role of finance capital increased, personal wealth grew and populations aged. Such an observation is not new but how it has been theorised and related to place has shifted; as the changes have been variously described in terms of economic restructuring; associated with the decline of the centralised welfare state; a shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism, Modernity to Post-Modernity; and the emergence of a technology driven knowledge economy. The most recent transformations of places and economies have been associated with neo-liberalism – a retreat of the State from an active role in the economy and a reassertion of free-market economics driving an untrammelled digital revolution. In this interpretation, the State is basically absent, or at most, an entrepreneurial stimulus to private, technologically-based innovation. 

However in Australia, despite comparable patterns and supposedly years of neo-liberalism, this paper argues that the State remains a major employer, provider of services and shaper of economic geographies. In the case of easing the trauma associated with major economic transitions and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, actions by different levels of government in Australia have been critical. There have basically been massive continuities rather than a sudden step up in State intervention as a result of the pandemic. Such an assertion is illustrated by examining one regional city in Australia – Geelong in Victoria – which has successfully moved from being an industrial centre - where over 30% of the workforce were employed directly in manufacturing in the 1960s – to a place where industry now employs less than 8% and services over 80%. As well as successfully surviving this trauma, the city has weathered the dislocations created over 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, with resulting low levels of unemployment and ongoing rapid population growth.