The Australian dollar's new strength has come with higher iron ore prices but that won't be much consolation to Australia's dollar-sensitive non-mining industries, which have struggled through years of recession and high terms of trade.
The dollar is hovering around US75Â¢ or 63.8 on the trade-weighted index of currencies of our major trading partners. If it stays where it is, life will be harder for the trade-exposed industries outside the resources sector. 
These industries slowed and, in some cases, even contracted to make room for the expansion of the resources sector. The strong Australian dollar played an important role in driving this reallocation of resources. But now we need the non-mining industries to expand to fill the gap in demand created by the decline in mining investment.
The current unwelcome strength of the Australian dollar reflects the monetary policies of the major central banks as well as the strength of iron ore prices which the big miners and the Chinese say will not be sustained.
The Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Philip Lowe said on Wednesday the RBA would prefer the dollar to be lower because it would help the economy rebalance.
"Like everyone, we would welcome a slightly lower exchange rate," he said.
BIS Shrapnel's Frank Gelber made the same point at his business research and forecasting firm's economic outlook conference in Sydney on Thursday.
"The low dollar is absolutely crucial to driving forward structural change," he said.
But even with a more competitive exchange rate, change would be slow.
We are still seeing the tail end of the high dollar effect with the contraction of uneconomic manufacturers such as car makers, Gelber explained. The emergence of business activity that is economic at the lower exchange rate is under way.
"We are on the threshold of major structural change," he said.
"We are somewhere between a third and halfway through the fall in mining investment and waiting for non-mining sectors to recover. The transition has been agonisingly slow and will remain so. There's no magic wand that a politician can wave and fix it. It's not broke. This is a structural change driven by external factors and it just takes time."
Gelber directed his audience's attention to the big cycles of economic activity driving the structural change. They have started with the decline in mining investment, the boom in residential investment and the growth of commercial building, tourism and education exports.
The tourist industry provides a striking example of the cycle at work, with tourist resorts rejuvenating and expanding after running down their capital and even closing during the high-dollar days of the mining investment boom.
Agriculture is also benefiting from the more competitive exchange rate, with the Australian dollar rising against the decline in rural commodity prices measured in US dollars and the basket of currencies included in the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights.
The upswing will gradually spread to manufacturing. The re-emerging manufacturing sector will include new businesses that are viable because of the more competitive dollar and older businesses that cut costs and increased productivity in order to survive the sector's long recession.
And it is not just the exporters who will take advantage of the lower dollar.
Gelber pointed out that manufacturers who lost market share to imports when the exchange rate was high are starting to see their sales come back.
That's true of services as well. Most of the consumers of Australian tourism are Australians who, with a lower dollar, are more likely to spend their holidays in this country.
Local dollar-sensitive demand is generally the first to recover, Gelber explained, and the recovery will trigger more investment.
As these industries expand, the recovery will spread to the industries that provide their inputs and regions that surround them.
"And so we very closely watch non-mining profitability and growth to try and understand what's going on, and so we will hang out not so much for the GDP figures but for the business indicator sort of material, which tells us more about business profitability by industry sector," he said.
There are other cycles going on as well. The resurgence of infrastructure investment began as an attempt cushion the economy against global crisis and later, the decline in mining investment and the contractionary impact of the consolidation of recurrent government budgets.
However, as economic growth picks up, there will be a more natural increase in the demand for new transport and other infrastructure.
Road building is leading the way, Gelber says, because it is easiest. Next will come rail.
NSW is leading the way because it is most advanced in the business of recycling infrastructure money through an ongoing process of privatisation and reinvestment. In Queensland, where the political opposition to privatisation is stronger, the revival of infrastructure investment is likely to be weaker, Gelber says.