I know it's been fashionable lately to bash on our unis as useless degree mills, but Australian universities have great bones and punch above their weight in research impact given the relatively abysmal amount of funding allocated to basic scientific research for a country so wealthy. Innovations through technology that are wealth generating come from first giving adequate money to fund scientific discoveries. CRISPR for example came from a basic National Science Foundation Grant to understand how bacteria deal with viral DNA as an immune system. Ozempic came from being curious about the Hela Lizard venom and characterising those molecules--I could go on and on about the useful things that have been discovered by studying basic scientific questions. Australia spends ~half as much as an average OED country as a percentage GDP on R&D expenditures. CSIRO has gotten so bureaucratised it is not poised to innovate either. We can't do all this transformative technology if we don't have place for a basic foundation of research to discover new things. We also aren't training people to be poised in technically to take on these big challenges.
We actually have been benefiting from incredibly talented PhD students who want to avoid America or who cannot go for visa reasons recently, especially from China which has invested massively in scientific research and has many very well trained PhD candidates coming over who want training in English (still the lingua franca of science). But we have increasingly a poor environment due to these budgetary issues. There has been some discussion of participating in the brain drain of American scientists, but this is not even remotely feasible given levels of funding available. While I agree that there are perverse incentives from over reliance on international student tuition for revenue, this "degree mill grift" is essentially what has allowed the better universities in Australia to retain enough funding to at least have a semblance of globally relevant research activity. Faustian bargains taken to keep things from sinking even further.
An embarrassing thing that came to pass recently was that Albo had to call an emergency meeting to discuss that Australia receives nearly 600 million AUD per year in subcontracts from US funding agencies--crumbs in the US budget for global collaboration from agencies like the NIH or DARPA. Potentially losing this funding from Trump administration shenanigans, however, presented a serious problem. The ARC budget is 1 billion. The NHMRC budget is 940 million. So pennies from the US ends up being a substantial amount of money! That's honestly rather embarrassing.
If Australia is serious about becoming an economy that gets out doldrums of lack of innovation, first it must actually invest and foster our basic research ecosystem here. This means not letting our institutions languish, including our universities and institutions like CSIRO. There is a lot that can be done on the regulatory side to make research better and less of a bureaucratic mess (I have some rants about our GMO laws that have not been updated for over 20 years, for example that make certain sorts of biological research a nightmare or risk assessment paperwork that goes way overboard). But funding our academic and government researchers to go about their business of researching things is just not a priority in this country. Downstream, we have less funding for VC backed startup founders, but it's a chicken and egg issue. How do innovate if you can't discover?
Another illustrative statistic that has come out lately given everything going on in the US: for every dollar spent by the NIH, it delivers $2.56 in economic activity.
4) The reason the US buys Al metal AKA 'solid electricity' from Australia is because it would have to build new electricity generation in order to process bauxite. The lead time for this (in the USA) is 10-12 years. Insane.
Been waiting for someone to write this exact post for ages. Best thing I've read on the subject. Australia has innumerable advantages and ought to be incredibly well positioned for the 21st century - but we need forward-thinking people to sit down and blueprint it all out and start the hard work of building consensus around it.
This was for sure one of the most depressing and low-stakes elections in recent memory, but there's a huge gap in the political market for pro-growth and pro-future politics. People are voting Labor because of an understandable desire for political stability and the total incompetence of the opposition parties. Young Australians of all political stripes could be won over by a credible plan for a prosperous future - someone does however have to put in the hard work of actually laying it out and selling it to them.
Yes, I do hate the idea of increasing politicians' salaries. Higher pay isn't necessarily going to fix the problems you point out. I've met people with high salaries who are not particularly smart or talented. Most politicians here don't actually know much about politics.
Actually, we should also include and uncapped performance system where by a politician is laser focused on outcomes for their constituents. Rem structure matters! And of course it should be designed to attract a totally different kind of public servant. If you are smart, ambitious and altruistic public office is not even in your top 10 of career pursuit options.
I could live with it if they eliminate the other boondoggles. Like, owning a place in Canberra, staying in it and claiming the away from electorate allowance and renting out rooms to colleagues
They should be on the same super rate as the proles also
Excellent ideas… but they apply to many countries… the Australian cycle is now deep into the good times make weak men, and on the cusp of weak men make bad times (IMO). Where is there a country like Australia was 50 years ago? Argentina or Uruguay?
Kununurra is an interesting case study for terraforming. It already has a huge freshwater dam and irrigation infrastructure. You have unlimited clean water, space, and sunshine, and could theoretically build a billion dollar agriculture industry up there. But it hasn't worked because the product needs to be trucked ~1000km to market/port.
It takes a great deal of talent, dedication and hard work to turn a cheap energy, cheap food country into a high cost of living country. Australians tax everything but won't make the people who own the country - from Gina Reinhardt down to the humblest suburban squatter - pay for the costs of running it. If Arab sheiks owned Australia they would collect their land and resource rents and turn the place into a tax haven.
I'd also think about export of not just raw ore but the enhancement and procressing of it powered by Australia's basically unlimited solar and later nulcear, co-located with the mines, where there is more overlap in PV Potential and demand centers (happy to put this on a map overlay).
Also, Australia should have an EV car company! Y'all have all the resources in the ground to build it, it's just raw not in the end state.
Really tough to compete with downstream prices from China unless we subsidise (cheaper energy would help!). Though lithium and HPA are good candidates and government and private initiatives are underway. I would like to read a good study of our past failures on downstream processing (eg BHP's BHI plant, Rio Tinto's HiSmelt, the recent problems with the lithium refinery in Kwinana) though it's hard to pull all the facts together when it's under the cover of private companies.
Great post. For a very long time Australia has been too easy to live in and too easy to govern. Not surprising that complacency is the result! Don't think anything will change without a massive external shock.
Another boring thing:
I know it's been fashionable lately to bash on our unis as useless degree mills, but Australian universities have great bones and punch above their weight in research impact given the relatively abysmal amount of funding allocated to basic scientific research for a country so wealthy. Innovations through technology that are wealth generating come from first giving adequate money to fund scientific discoveries. CRISPR for example came from a basic National Science Foundation Grant to understand how bacteria deal with viral DNA as an immune system. Ozempic came from being curious about the Hela Lizard venom and characterising those molecules--I could go on and on about the useful things that have been discovered by studying basic scientific questions. Australia spends ~half as much as an average OED country as a percentage GDP on R&D expenditures. CSIRO has gotten so bureaucratised it is not poised to innovate either. We can't do all this transformative technology if we don't have place for a basic foundation of research to discover new things. We also aren't training people to be poised in technically to take on these big challenges.
We actually have been benefiting from incredibly talented PhD students who want to avoid America or who cannot go for visa reasons recently, especially from China which has invested massively in scientific research and has many very well trained PhD candidates coming over who want training in English (still the lingua franca of science). But we have increasingly a poor environment due to these budgetary issues. There has been some discussion of participating in the brain drain of American scientists, but this is not even remotely feasible given levels of funding available. While I agree that there are perverse incentives from over reliance on international student tuition for revenue, this "degree mill grift" is essentially what has allowed the better universities in Australia to retain enough funding to at least have a semblance of globally relevant research activity. Faustian bargains taken to keep things from sinking even further.
An embarrassing thing that came to pass recently was that Albo had to call an emergency meeting to discuss that Australia receives nearly 600 million AUD per year in subcontracts from US funding agencies--crumbs in the US budget for global collaboration from agencies like the NIH or DARPA. Potentially losing this funding from Trump administration shenanigans, however, presented a serious problem. The ARC budget is 1 billion. The NHMRC budget is 940 million. So pennies from the US ends up being a substantial amount of money! That's honestly rather embarrassing.
If Australia is serious about becoming an economy that gets out doldrums of lack of innovation, first it must actually invest and foster our basic research ecosystem here. This means not letting our institutions languish, including our universities and institutions like CSIRO. There is a lot that can be done on the regulatory side to make research better and less of a bureaucratic mess (I have some rants about our GMO laws that have not been updated for over 20 years, for example that make certain sorts of biological research a nightmare or risk assessment paperwork that goes way overboard). But funding our academic and government researchers to go about their business of researching things is just not a priority in this country. Downstream, we have less funding for VC backed startup founders, but it's a chicken and egg issue. How do innovate if you can't discover?
Another illustrative statistic that has come out lately given everything going on in the US: for every dollar spent by the NIH, it delivers $2.56 in economic activity.
4) The reason the US buys Al metal AKA 'solid electricity' from Australia is because it would have to build new electricity generation in order to process bauxite. The lead time for this (in the USA) is 10-12 years. Insane.
UPSHOT: Great post; ambitious & inspiring.
Been waiting for someone to write this exact post for ages. Best thing I've read on the subject. Australia has innumerable advantages and ought to be incredibly well positioned for the 21st century - but we need forward-thinking people to sit down and blueprint it all out and start the hard work of building consensus around it.
This was for sure one of the most depressing and low-stakes elections in recent memory, but there's a huge gap in the political market for pro-growth and pro-future politics. People are voting Labor because of an understandable desire for political stability and the total incompetence of the opposition parties. Young Australians of all political stripes could be won over by a credible plan for a prosperous future - someone does however have to put in the hard work of actually laying it out and selling it to them.
Yes, I do hate the idea of increasing politicians' salaries. Higher pay isn't necessarily going to fix the problems you point out. I've met people with high salaries who are not particularly smart or talented. Most politicians here don't actually know much about politics.
Feels like only upside risk
Actually, we should also include and uncapped performance system where by a politician is laser focused on outcomes for their constituents. Rem structure matters! And of course it should be designed to attract a totally different kind of public servant. If you are smart, ambitious and altruistic public office is not even in your top 10 of career pursuit options.
Look at Singapore, where politicians are paid something like a million dollars a year to avoid corruption
Giving politicians a big salary isn't going to turn us into Singapore overnight.
I'd rather attract the greedy than the power hungry.
Those two groups of people are different?
Yes? Obviously?
This might come as a shock to you, but there's (at least) one other group that's different: those hungry for media attention.
About the original two groups:
Compare how your run of the mill politician earns basically nothing compared to what equal amounts of ambition could get you in the private sector.
I could live with it if they eliminate the other boondoggles. Like, owning a place in Canberra, staying in it and claiming the away from electorate allowance and renting out rooms to colleagues
They should be on the same super rate as the proles also
Excellent ideas… but they apply to many countries… the Australian cycle is now deep into the good times make weak men, and on the cusp of weak men make bad times (IMO). Where is there a country like Australia was 50 years ago? Argentina or Uruguay?
Interesting and thoughtful post. Thank you.
Kununurra is an interesting case study for terraforming. It already has a huge freshwater dam and irrigation infrastructure. You have unlimited clean water, space, and sunshine, and could theoretically build a billion dollar agriculture industry up there. But it hasn't worked because the product needs to be trucked ~1000km to market/port.
Mate, get in there. I will definitely vote for you:)
It takes a great deal of talent, dedication and hard work to turn a cheap energy, cheap food country into a high cost of living country. Australians tax everything but won't make the people who own the country - from Gina Reinhardt down to the humblest suburban squatter - pay for the costs of running it. If Arab sheiks owned Australia they would collect their land and resource rents and turn the place into a tax haven.
Autonomous mining might also be helpful with, I dunno, colonising planets?
Love the energy of this article. How to enthuse a pretty self-satisfied and/or apathetic Aussie public, is all?
Let’s go 📈 Well written Misha.
i wish this bloke would X again
God speed.
Great post. How do we start?
I'd also think about export of not just raw ore but the enhancement and procressing of it powered by Australia's basically unlimited solar and later nulcear, co-located with the mines, where there is more overlap in PV Potential and demand centers (happy to put this on a map overlay).
Also, Australia should have an EV car company! Y'all have all the resources in the ground to build it, it's just raw not in the end state.
Really tough to compete with downstream prices from China unless we subsidise (cheaper energy would help!). Though lithium and HPA are good candidates and government and private initiatives are underway. I would like to read a good study of our past failures on downstream processing (eg BHP's BHI plant, Rio Tinto's HiSmelt, the recent problems with the lithium refinery in Kwinana) though it's hard to pull all the facts together when it's under the cover of private companies.
All great points. I've found Sal Griffith’s work on the energy side to be a great starting point
1000x yes
Great post. For a very long time Australia has been too easy to live in and too easy to govern. Not surprising that complacency is the result! Don't think anything will change without a massive external shock.