Innovatia

Australia, too, has sought a piece of the action. After the war, Country and National party lead- ers Earle Page and John McEwen garnered con- siderable community support for an agricultural research and development bureau. In the 1980s, these early rural R&D institutions were stream- lined into R&D corporations by Labor’s Minister for Primary Industry, John Kerin. This model of mission-driven R&D has been crucial to the suc- cess of Australian agriculture. “A successful refresh of our national business model requires not only large- scale government funding into R&D and technological procurement, but also support from universities, industry groups, businesses and unions.” Our mining industry – another export suc- cess story – has garnered decades of organised support from the logistics, R&D, education and training sectors. Australia led the world in au- tonomous vehicles and now leads the world in digital mining. The 1980s Hawke-Keating plan for industry restructuring – closing inefficient tariff-reliant industries and creating new val- ue-added downstream industries – got us only so far. We hastened the death of the inefficient automotive and clothing industries, but failed to create high-value industries that we anticipated. In the 1990s, we were rescued by the rise of Chi- na and its burgeoning demand for higher educa- tion services, iron ore and coal. But in the face

WHERE TO NEXT FOR AUSTRALIA? Research into innovation reveals it takes multi-decade efforts to reap results. Economists and scientists need to better align now for the country to see optimal outcomes by 2050. By Professor Beth Webster

T o rely on serendipity or “the magic of the market” for our future material wellbe- ing would be a triumph of hope over evi- dence. The world has bumbled along, buffeted by chance and good fortune, for thousands of years. But since World War II, several developed nations have taken calculated steps towards se- curing advantage chosen industries. Often, gov- ernments created new industries and unleashed latent needs. The United States has become a case study in this curated development. After the war, on the advice of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Truman administration increased strategic and mission-orientated re- search and development (R&D) by more than 10-fold. This decision spawned clusters of tech- nological excellence – biomed, radar, communi- cations, electronics, weapons – that by the 1970s had increased employment by over 60 per cent relative to the counterfactual. Since the 1970s, other developed countries have similarly geared up. Rapid economic devel- opment in Japan, Israel, South Korea and Ger- many is testament to a focused and bipartisan approach to science and technology.

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