Lucky country: Digging deep
26 January 2007

Australia has come a long way since it depended on its minerals but we face deeper challenges in the future, writes Bill Ferris.

There's a lot to be confident about as far as Australia's future is concerned. First, our people skills have grown remarkably since Horne's depressing assessment. The leadership, the middle management and the shop floors of so many of our corporate entities are up to world's best practice.

We have proven to be rapid and enthusiastic adaptors of new technology. This propensity to invest in and embrace new technology will continue. I am confident that we will make the necessary increase in public and private commitment to education that underpins much of this ability and interest in technology adaptation.

Second, our natural resources boon that Horne so clearly identified is not going to disappear anytime soon.

So why worry?

First, there is the risk of complacency. We need to worry about making our luck ahead of the time when some of the gloss wears off our present jewels. During a recent visit Professor Michael Porter (from the Harvard Business School) noted that as good as Australia's economic performance has been in the past 15 years, we have begun to slide down the OECD performance chart during the past five years. He sees Australia's challenge as making the transition from an investment-led economy into an innovations-led one.

For this you need a culture of ideas, of knowledge and fresh thinking about what will work 10 years from now. Ideas where Australia can be the beta site: like renewable energy alternatives of solar, wind or tide, like water treatment and management and carbon clean-up technology.

While we have always been clever at inventions, we have not been nearly so smart at commercialising them. Plenty of Nobel Prize winners, but not many world brands.

Although we are getting better at it (most recent example being Ian Frazer's vaccine against cervical cancer being successfully commercialised worldwide with the help of CSL) I worry that innovation is not embedded and embraced in our culture ... yet.

Second, market-driven capitalism has served us well. Nevertheless we may achieve great economic success but never build a truly great society. The free market is not a panacea. Certainly our not-for-profit organisations will need far deeper philanthropic support from the private sector. If you hope to hang on to a fair-go, egalitarian ethic in a future Aussie society, if you want to avoid razor wire and gated communities, the "haves" will need to dig deeper and do more.

Bill Ferris, executive chairman of private equity firm CHAMP, is widely regarded as the doyen of the Australian private equity sector; he is also chairman of the Garvin Institute for Medical Research.