If commodity prices do stay at their current relatively high levels on the back of strong emerging world demand, the mineral extraction sector and all those parts of the Australian economy that service it and feel its flow-on effects, will expand. Other sectors will, relatively, contract over time.
That is to say, the structural adjustment issues that faced us a year and a half ago, and which have received less attention since then, would resume. These sorts of adjustment in the economy have industrial, geographical and social dimensions.