Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Things that get me down about Australia

Each day when I flick through the newspaper (those old things!) I like to form my own narrative around what the day's stories mean in the wider picture.

In today's Australian two stories, put together, really show to me what is wrong about Australia's current economic policies.


Picture one: Hoards of coal carriers parked outside Australian ports waiting to run-off with their fill of Australian coal. I have no doubt that the coal they just ran-off with was sold to them by a partly, if not wholly, foreign owned miner.


Picture two: Avaya closes their Australian R&D lab in a global consolidation. And dedicated local researchers get retrenched and probably move overseas.

This is what gets me down - Australia sitting back comfortably reaping the rewards from rock-kickers and hole-diggers while important industries like innovation and manufacturing gets shipped overseas.

When will the Australian government really act to retain and encourage the building of an innovative and highly-transformed economy?

10 comments:

Mick Leyden said...

*sigh* - I often lament this one too... from what I can see the only way this country can stay internationally relevant over the next 50 years is by being smarter than everyone else.

Our universities should be attracting the best and brightest from around the world and should be renowned for producing the highest quality research and providing the highest quality education.

but as you say we just keep being happy to be China's quarry... how long will that last?

*sigh*

Alex of Melbourne said...

Very much *sigh*. I'd be interested to know where exactly along the innovation food-chain things are falling down. I think Universities are doing a great job to attract talented students and researchers but I fear that Australia lacks the ability or incentives to commercialise much of what is invented/developed in these labs. We need more of an American culture of entrepreneurship, and incentives that will promote this.

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Anonymous said...

get up campaign in this election 2010 is cheeky and funny re: social networking via the media.

it works well and is damn good

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

get up sends e-mail alerts and have been for a while mate!!

Alex of Melbourne said...

Thanks for letting me know, maybe you can publish the emails online too. Gotta say, I've been culling my email subscriptions for a number of years now, mostly promotional junk comes through in emails. Try blogging, I highly recommend it!

Anonymous said...

Yes get up on Twitter, some of the emails are full on and interesting to say the least..........the mental health one on the resignation of the head is really emotional stuff,

Anonymous said...

Great to see you have found get up on Twitter