Indolent Australia's high-level R&D review will miss the target

In disrespectful terms, Treasurer's ivory-tower economic directions play out somewhat like this: third-world resource-giveaways, low-wage population-replacement, government and care jobs aplenty, egotistical productivity and net-zero fallacies, overrated export-education, and incentivised real-estate speculation.

Reprising jobs summit, he's treating (consensual) stakeholders to a productivity roundtable to duck productivity questions.

By and large, this R&D review seems obliged (or chooses) to take our South Seas economic model at face value. Denholm and her panel look compromised. They'll struggle to generate the incisive thrusts our R&D effort would really need.

Having said that, perhaps they could try for: targeted increases in R&D spend, cleverer approaches to R&D infrastructure, better public-to-private linkages, fillips for the venture-capital scene, whatever. Might help at the margin.

Could this invisible investigation surprise, with a few Tesla-style zingers? Let's see. After all, ex-DOGE multi-dad Elon Musk and his company are valued at roughly 60% of a year of Australia's GDP GDP.