Defence

Feature

Future challenges for Australia

Global challenges as well as those closer to home were discussed by over 500 delegates at Future Summit 2005 in Melbourne in early May. Neil Orme reports on the highlights from the summit.

The second in what is likely to become an annual series of events examining future challenges facing Australia attracted delegates from business, all levels of government, academia, the media, and a range of not-for-profit organisations.

This year's summit focussed on:

• Australia/Asia engagement;
• sustainable prosperity;
• biosciences and biolifestyles;
• leadership dimensions and political structures;
• corporate futures and national economic challenges; and
• 21st century community interests.

Global Pressures

The summit kicked off with an engaging presentation from Harvard University's Professor Jonathon West on the challenges to Australia. He identified four key global drivers of change that will influence Australia's future:

The rise of China - the 'workshop' of the world; with cheap but skilled labour in abundance; skills being upgraded at an astonishing rate; the ability to produce goods at a vastly lower cost (the quality $1 bottle of wine and the almost luxurious $500 car); all leading to a basic restructuring of the competitive industrial structure of the world;

The biology/life sciences revolution - while the biosciences are regarded as the catalyst for transformative technology, Australia was said to be well off the pace in this area due to systematic under-investment;

Global warming - we have underestimated the impact that this phenomenon will have on Australia; and

The states' loss of monopoly on the use of force - "young men love war because it's exciting and young women love warriors"; there are 10,000 laboratories that can produce biological weapons; it is becoming easier for non-state actors to use lethal force to promote their causes.

Closer to Home

Dr Peter Ellyard from the Preferred Futures Institute then talked about reinventing Australia for sustainable prosperity. He told the delegates that Australia is too reactive to change - we are over-managed and under-led. We are problem-centred, and suffer from too much prophecy and not enough vision. We need to transform ourselves for 21st century success in an interconnected world - a smart, healthy, productive, stimulating and enabling environment is the key to achieving this vision.

The scene set, the delegates were then asked to look at a list of some 20 to 30 challenges for Australia out to 2020 and to select their top three. The outcome of the poll was education, health and Australian identity. Working groups set about exploring these issues in more detail, with the outcomes to feature in a Summit report that will be released in due course.

The next two days revolved around series of concurrent workshops and briefing sessions, punctuated by keynote addresses from eminent speakers.

Our Region

In a session on Australia's regional and global competitiveness, speakers commented on our strengths - political stability, a modernised and international economy, a tradition of activist engagement, our capacity to be an honest broker, and the reality of multiculturalism. And our weaknesses - a lingering perception that Australia is an Anglo-Celtic enclave, our status as the new kids on the regional block, a need for a greater depth in Asian literacy, and the challenge of balancing traditional alliance relationships with new relationships in our region.

Strong nation states play a central role in Asia and are likely to continue to do so - historically, multilateral mechanisms have been weak in Asia. And there is the abiding nature of our geography and our environment to take into account when we consider our defence and broader security priorities.

Leadership

In the area of leadership dimensions and political structures, speakers reflected on Australia's past history of innovation in leadership and economic management. Today we face the core challenges of regaining the confidence and the ingenuity that once placed us ahead of other nations in terms of our economic growth, our social policies and our democratic innovations, and making a persuasive case for continuing reform. Speakers commented on the challenges posed by short-termism, buck-passing of responsibility between different levels of government, reform fatigue and the erosion of trust in some of our key institutions.

Some ideas put forward to encourage longer-term planning in Australia included increased superannuation contributions to sustain longer-term investment; fixed and longer terms for governments; tax reform to improve incentives for productive work; a New Deal to re-balance Federal-State responsibilities in areas such as education and health; more regular reviews of the Constitution, the establishment of an Australian Development Fund; and more rigorous cost-benefit analysis of major projects.

Ideas to restore people's trust in the political process included open preselection processes, an annual Deliberation Day to engage people in national debate at local levels, and revamping Question Time in Parliament.

There was much comment on the absence of 'ideas' in Australian political discourse, the pragmatic and intellectually shy nature of our politics, and concerns regarding the dilution of standards in ministerial responsibility and accountability.

In a spirited dinner address on the first evening, former Governor General Sir Ninian Stephen talked about the essence of leadership for mere mortals - a certain mastery of the domain, an ability to communicate the message and a belief in what you are doing. Another interesting dinner speaker from the CSIRO put forward a range of growth strategies for Australia, including the notion of Australia as an education and health 'mecca' for our 3 billion neighbours in Asia, and the strategy of Australia Inside (niche Australian products inside every significant global product).

We heard that biotechnology will revolutionise our lives over the next several decades as existing products and processes are replaced by things that we can barely contemplate at present. The design of new drugs to cure incurable diseases, the manipulation of foodstuffs to remove those elements that cause harm to the body, and an explosion in the use of smart materials are just the beginning. A key challenge is to monitor and control the dark side of this revolution and to make sure that its benefits are shared more evenly across humanity.

Looking forward

Sessions on inter-generational responsibility and 21st century interests covered a broad range of issues that face Australia over the next decade. A number of younger guest speakers spoke with optimism about the willingness of young Australians to engage in multicultural issues and the global community, their heightened sense of justice, and their sense of 'connectedness' with a wider world.The 1 million Australians living and working overseas were seen as an untapped source of 'soft power' for Australia.

Speakers highlighted the need for strong, harmonious and prosperous communities as the foundation for future social cohesion, and expressed regret at the loss of a sense of community in many parts of Australia. The importance of people being able to feel a sense of belonging, and the need for inclusiveness (in terms of an Australian identity, our national symbols and sharing in prosperity) were recurring themes.

Corporate drivers

In looking at corporate futures and economic challenges, delegates heard that the traditional drivers of productivity in Australia (infrastructure development, labour reform and deregulation) would provide for only incremental gains in the future. One speaker suggested that imploring people to work harder was an implausible solution. The key to future productivity was to unlock the power and potential of the individual - encouraging talent, improving knowledge sharing and management, viewing careers as servants rather than as masters, and creating 'people' rather than 'capital' in our educational institutions.

We heard that skills shortages, our deteriorating terms of trade, over-reliance on household debt, under-investment in economic and social infrastructure, under-investment in innovation and lower than optimum workforce participation rates were key challenges in the short to medium term. Another speaker questioned what had happened to the 'make do' entrepreneurial and 'have a go' mentality of Australians.

Why are Scandinavian workers almost twice as productive as their Australian counterparts? Answers included access to a high quality public sector education system; a much higher proportion of women in all sectors of the economy, including in middle and senior management (women are smarter and more productive than men); extensive social support structures that allow women and older workers to participate easily in the work force; a supportive attitude towards casual and part-time work; a culture that focuses on high value added activities and fosters life-long learning; a lack of natural resources that has forced a reliance on intellectual capital rather than the exploitation of nature to secure wealth, and an openness to new ideas.

The wash-up

The final morning of the summit was set aside for summary remarks on some of the key themes of the event. On climate change, the speaker stressed the need for Australia to 'green' its domestic market ahead of the rest of the world, aim for Australia to be a zero net contributor to climate change by 2025, and establish a regime of sanctions and rewards to change the balance in the use of renewable versus non-renewable sources of energy.

On the matter of Australian identity, there was a view that we need a conscious policy to establish who we are, to better define our national values, to invest more intellectual effort in telling the story of who we are, to strive for inclusiveness, and to guard against complacency in terms of our perceived acceptance of multiculturalism. As a defining element in our identity, it was suggested that Australia should be a global powerhouse in environmental technology.

Education was at the heart of much of the discussion, with a particular emphasis on empowering learning to encourage a thinking society - moving from a 20th century skills based model to a 21st century learning based model. This approach would entail a cradle to grave framework for learning, with a focus on contextual and customised learning. There was a groundswell of support in some quarters to implement radical cultural change - abolish all Departments of Education (described by one delegate as "the last bastions of Stalinist centralism alongside Pyongyang and Havana"); give incentives for reinvestment in learning; provide tax concessions to support investment in intellectual capital; allocate more resources to early childhood development; and restore the rite of passage to adulthood at the crucial Year 9 and Year 10 stages in secondary school.

In reflecting on the three days, my abiding memories include China, India, biotechnology, Australia as an education and health 'mecca' for 3 billion neighbours, the quality $1 bottle of Chinese wine, the decent $500 car and the sense that we are over-managed and under-led. I was heartened by the imperative for an educated, healthy and environmentally sustainable Australia, and by young, multicultural Australians who seem at ease in a global, interconnected, community.

Neil Orme is Assistant Secretary Corporate Governance and Renewal.

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