The Waiting Place

In Oh, The Places You'll Go!, the last book writted and illustrated by Dr Seuss, he dedicates an entire page to the Waiting Place:

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

This is where the Australian Innovation Community finds itself at the moment.

The Prime Minister addressed the Ai Group Annual Meeting on Monday night and spoke in the most general terms about the government's commitment to innovation, viz:

The Government is building a 21st century innovation-driven industry policy - not the old industry policy based on protection and resisting change, but the 21st century innovation policy that embraces change, productivity and global markets.

And whilst this is heartening there is a sense that all of this discussion has been going on for far too long: the need is, after all, pressing.

In the same speech the Prime Minister addressed the fundamental need for renewed intervention and increased innovation intensity in the Australian economy: the Productivity Slowdown. He said:

In recent years productivity growth has declined sharply – from average annual growth of 3.3 per cent during the productivity cycle of the mid-1990s, to just 1.1 per cent in the current cycle. That productivity slowdown reflects the long-term neglect of investing in the drivers of productivity – our workforce and our infrastructure.

We must turn that around – because in the long term it is productivity growth that will build our future living standards. Over the last 40 years, productivity growth has accounted for more than 80 per cent of the improvement in Australia’s living standards.

The Government is committed to building our long-term prosperity by investing in five key platforms for future productivity growth – education, infrastructure, innovation, business deregulation and taxation reform. [emphasis added].

Simultaneously, CEDA has identified Productivity as one of its top ten "big issues", together with water, energy, education and training, labour skills, environment, transport, governance emerging industries and health. A round table will debate solutions to the top five issues, and you will hear more from CEDA on this as its media engine gathers steam, and the round table result is published in the BRW. Sadly, productivity was not one of the top five issues, so we may not see as much on this issue.

Finally, the opposition spokesman for innovation, Senator Abetz, addressed the AIRG annual meeting at the pre-conference dinner (Senator Carr got the floor during the conference). The delay on the Cuter Report (yes, Kris got his coffee) meant that Senator Abetz had little to comment on, other than the demise of Commercial Ready. In fact, he jokingly linked the two ideas, suggesting that the Cutler Report was delayed due to the reactions to that cut. Other than that he had very little to say, really reflecting that the opposition is going to have to do a lot of work on policy between now and the next federal election and, further, that they are likely simply to react to the government's policy position in short order, rather than generate their own.

I'm over the waiting place.
It's time for us to get on our way...

"Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed. (98 3/4% guaranteed.)" (Seuss, again!)