This is compounded by competing interests at various levels of government, our tendency to plan piecemeal, our history of bottom-up (rather than top-down) planning and our short economic and social timeframe predicated on the electoral cycle.
We will only have the appropriate policies and infrastructure support to best prepare for the outcomes of the boom - upside and downside - if we move to a new form of long-term planning and involve government, industry, academia and the community in a planning step-change.
Will we have the human resources?
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The demand for engineers and technologists to support growth and production is unprecedented. Australia is not alone. Other resource economies face the same issues - and we are in a global competition for people. Government and academic studies predict substantial shortfalls in engineers, mathematicians and scientists (all key to the future of the resources industry) in the decade ahead and beyond.
Unless we tackle head-on the issue of exciting interest among the best and brightest school and university students in science, technology and engineering as a career, we can expect our resources industry to be critically constrained.
We will face the twin issues or being unable to recruit from overseas and being unable to deter our own people, both new graduates and experienced professionals, from moving overseas to nations that value their skills more than we do.
How will we spend the profits?
A real key question rising from the current resources boom is - how do we spend the current and future export profits to optimise the upside outcomes or inoculate us from the downside consequences?
There is political attraction to spend it ‘easy’ on projects for the nation and benefits for its people that demonstrate immediate positive results from our good fortune.
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The immediate attraction of these benefits for all of us is obvious, but the tougher decisions to invest for the future will equip Australia far better for the decades ahead - both from the upside and downside perspectives.
Do we use the cash flow now to position Australia and Australian companies for the future?
The Government use of its surplus to set up the Future Fund and the Higher Education Endowment Fund are examples of what could be done. We must drive for increased investment in education, a greater focus on science and technology, more risk-taking in R&D, a narrower focus on what we do best and a national understanding of and commitment to long-term, over-the-horizon planning in the interests of the whole nation.
This is not just about governments. We all need to move our thinking paradigm from ‘me’ to ‘us’ and work for the longer term to make the best of this once-in-a-generation or once-in-a-century resources boom.
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