The primitive country?

A requirement of a basic science and high technology driven approach to strategic industry policy, would be more investment in our universities and more investment in active labour market programmes designed to equip the workers of today for the exciting, and well paying, high technology industries of tomorrow. Currently our universities are in crisis, another consequence of the turn to "economic rationality." Canberra has an astoundingly lackadaisical approach to active labour market programmes.

Long run economic growth depends upon advances in knowledge and technology. That being so, it follows that resources booms and debt driven bank profits are hardly optimal sources for long term Australian economic growth. The same dynamic applies to economic inequality. As such, the high technology based industry policy advocated for Australia should be couched within the framework of a newly minted social contract.

We can scale the new frontiers of science and technology if we as a society choose to do so. Breaking the social contract and deindustrialising Australia was a choice rather than the consequence of a natural law.

Let us decide upon truly becoming "the clever country." We should do so knowing full well that free market driven countries do not become clever countries. The logical corollary is that should Australia descend into a type of primitive country it would largely have chosen to do so.

The elite political and managerial classes support economic rationality. The people of Australia have not and do not. So, when we speak of "choice" it is important that we realise that it is the choice of the elite that is being referred to.

To become a clever country the Australian political system needs to be transformed so that the people of Australia, rather than merely an Australian, are sovereign.