Centre for Policy Development's Blog, page 27
January 17, 2019
Public Forum: Rethinking Innovation Policy: Trends, Opportunities & Risks | 10 December 2018
Innovation is about structural change – what are the missions, the rate and direction of growth?
Professor Mariana Mazzucato speaking at UTS I Photo: Shivani Nadan
In the evening of 10 December 2018, Professor Mariana Mazzucato was hosted by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Professor Attila Brungs, in partnership with CPD, to deliver a public lecture on future directions for innovation policy and lessons for Australia.
Attended by over 200 people, the lecture navigated Professor Mazzucato’s three big pieces of work – the entrepreneurial state, the reinvention of capitalism and the rediscovery of the economics of value, and the rising significance of public value. This event was supported by The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and the Cooperative Research Centres Association.
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UTS Forum: Rethinking Innovation Policy: Trends, Opportunities & Risks | 10 December 2018
Innovation is about structural change – what are the missions, the rate and direction of growth?
Professor Mariana Mazzucato speaking at UTS I Photo: Shivani Nadan
In the evening of 10 December 2018, Professor Mariana Mazzucato was hosted by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Professor Attila Brungs, in partnership with CPD, to deliver a public lecture on future directions for innovation policy and lessons for Australia.
Attended by over 200 people, the lecture navigated Professor Mazzucato’s three big pieces of work – the entrepreneurial state, the reinvention of capitalism and the rediscovery of the economics of value, and the rising significance of public value. This event was supported by The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and the Cooperative Research Centres Association.
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Policy roundtables and briefings | 10-14 December 2018
Mariana Mazzucato and Chris Bowen at CPD office in Sydney
Monday 10 December
Professor Mazzucato met with the Hon. Chris Bowen MP, the Opposition Shadow Treasurer in the Federal Parliament and other members of the Opposition economic policy team, including Shadow Finance Minister, Jim Chalmers, and Shadow Minister for Justice and Financial Services, Clare O’Neil. The focus of the conversation was how to translate the mission-led innovation model into policy and strategy.
Tuesday 11 December
In the morning, a policy breakfast was hosted by Martin Hoffman, Secretary of the New South Wales Department of Finance, Services and Innovation. Participants included some of the leading figures in innovation policy and strategy at the national and state level and the conversation explored the role, capabilities and culture of the public sector and its leadership. Mariana explored why that formed such a central theme in her framing of mission-led innovation, what specific capabilities were now at a premium in a confident and creative public service, and how some of those capabilities can be nurtured and deployed.
Public sector roundtable, Sydney
Later that morning, Mariana met with Ian Learmonth, CEO of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), one of the world’s largest “green banks” and an increasingly influential provider of long-term, “patient” capital and investment to support a major transition to green economy, particularly in energy. The conversation explored ways in which the CEFC could engage Mariana’s thinking and experience to help to frame more effectively both the work of CEFC and the power and impact of new forms of bold investment strategies for different aspects of Australia’s green transition.
Wednesday 12 December
The visit shifted to Melbourne and started with an invitation-only roundtable that brought together a formidable group of senior policy makers, investors, businesses people and innovation leaders to tackle tough questions about how Australia could reconfigure public policy and delivery systems to tackle its big challenges. What would that look like in Australia? What would be some of the practical considerations of reform and new practice for the public service, for policy and political leadership, for the interaction between business and government and, crucially, for the quality and value of engagement with citizens and communities?
Senior Policy Roundtable discussion hosted by MSDI and CPD in Melbourne
Prior to the round table, Mariana met with Ken Smith, Dean of the Australia New Zealand School of Government to discuss ways in which the IIPP’s teaching and research work, including its new MPA in Management and Public Value, could be integrated into teaching and learning platforms for Australian leaders in government, business and civil society.
The day concluded with a dinner, hosted by the Vice Chancellor and President of Monash University, Professor Margaret Gardner. Around the table, the themes of the roundtable were explored in more depth and detail — what will it take to shape big, bold public missions for public value with a new language about, and confidence in, the capacity of the public sector.
Thursday 13 December
In the morning, Mariana met with a group of senior officials from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). The conversation surfaced some important observations about the role and value of unions, both as part of a larger movement in the wider civil society as well their role as organisations in the industrial relations and employment system.
The ACTU’s emerging “Just Transitions” initiative in the energy and resources sector was seen firmly as an example of a more positive approach to co-shaping markets and sectors as they make important structural changes. Participants agreed this approach should be as important for the big challenges in other domains, for example, the need to design new systems of health and social care.
Friday 14 December
Following the FYA breakfast gathering, Mariana Mazzucato met with the CEO of the CSIRO, Dr Larry Marshall, and exchanged ideas and insights about the fundamental importance of well-funded public research in fuelling a strong, innovative and competitive economy. CSIRO’s work in support of several major “missions” focused on big Australian social and environmental challenges was discussed, along with opportunities for concrete links between CSIRO and IIPP such as through MOIN.
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January 10, 2019
In a Class of Their Own | SERIES | 2018/19
In a Class of Their Own is a series of discussion papers to extend CPD’s research on a more equitable school system, exploring different facets of how Australia’s contemporary school system segregates and divides students, families and communities, and concentrates disadvantage.
While the papers include a brief discussion of policy implications, the series is not designed to offer specific policy recommendations, but to explore different factors that increase segregation.
The first paper, A Creeping Indigenous Separation (Feb 2018) by Chris Bonnor, Christina Ho and Garry Richards, focused on disadvantage related to Indigenous students.
The second paper, Institutionalised Separation (Jul 2018) by Christina Ho with Chris Bonnor, looked at inequity within selective schools and their impact on other schools.
The next paper in this series will be Paying for Class: How Australia abandons its struggling schools, by Chris Bonnor.
The overall finding for this series is that inequality is increasing in Australia’s schools and is setting up a system of winners and losers – disadvantage is becoming concentrated while advantage is being segregated out through choice.
Discussion Papers
A Creeping Indigenous Separation, Feb 2018
Institutionalised Separation, July 2018
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December 21, 2018
Latest eNews
Dear CPD follower
We hope this finds you well and, if not already relaxing, then looking forward to a cheerful holiday season with family and friends.
CPD has finished off a big year with a terrific series of events with Mariana Mazzucato, the “rock star” economist renown for her work on the entrepreneurial state and public value. Professor Mazzucato’s visit focussed attention on the nature and direction of growth in Australia. What are our bold missions? What’s our moonshot? And what’s the role of government, business and the community in delivering these missions? It’s those questions that were at the heart of last week and will keep driving CPD’s work in 2019.
Our team has continued to work hard on some of the toughest policy challenges and opportunities facing Australia and our region over the back end of the year. For example:
We’ve spent much of the past two months embedded in one of the fastest growing areas in Victoria to find a new way to help vulnerable new arrivals to find jobs and start businesses;
We spent 10 days in Bangladesh in October, including several in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, conducting a human trafficking and exploitation risk assessment; and
We’ve continued to focus attention on how business, investors, regulators and public entities can take a more proactive approach to climate change and sustainable finance.
We’re looking forward to the exciting agenda we have in store for 2019. On behalf of the CPD team, best wishes for a safe, happy and relaxing summer break. Merry Christmas!
Travers McLeod (CEO, CPD)
What a week! Mariana Mazzucato’s visit draws big crowds and ideas
Thanks to all of you who attended CPD’s John Menadue Oration at Carriageworks or one of the many other events with Mariana Mazzucato in Sydney and Melbourne. It’s been terrific to see Professor Mazzucato kick-start a conversation in Australia on rethinking the role of the state and business in innovation-led growth.
Mariana’s ideas attracted and inspired representatives from business, government, universities and the media alike. We’ll be uploading video and photos of the Oration to our website soon, but in the meantime, you can see more of Mariana through her interview with Laura Tingle on ABC’s 7.30 or with Geraldine Doogue on Saturday Extra. She also published this piece in The Guardian last Friday at the end of her visit.
The 7th meeting of the Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration (ADFM) was held from 18-20 November 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand, following the 33rd ASEAN Summit in Singapore. The ADFM meeting focussed on the risks of human trafficking, migrant smuggling and related exploitation arising from the displacement of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh; coordinated regional responses to migrants at risk; and good practice alternatives to child detention.
You can read more about the ADFM meeting and find the agenda and participant list here. Travers McLeod responded to the news that Australia would not be signing the Global Compact on Migration (announced just after the meeting) with this opinion piece in The Australian.
Update: Cities and Settlement Initiative
In September, CPD hosted the second meeting ofour Council on Economic Participation for Refugees, which was held in Fairfield and brought together representatives from the community sector, refugee advocacy groups, employers and policy-makers, as well as the Chair of the Employment Services Review, Sandra McPhee AM, to develop a roadmap for developing better employment and settlement services for refugees. You can find more details about this meeting here.
Other Highlights
* In November, we hosted an ANU-CPD Policy Dialogue on energy transitions. The Dialogue featured Clare Savage (Deputy Chair, Energy Security Board); Professor Frank Jotzo (ANU Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy; Co-director of the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub); and Dr Tim Nelson (Associate Professor, Griffith University). Thanks to Dr Don Russell from CPD’s Board for moderating a very enlightening discussion.
* In October, CPD co-hosted a special roundtable on Climate Change Risk and Public Sector Directors’ Duties. The roundtable highlighted CPD’s legal opinion on public sector directors’ duties and considered the broader implications of the legal research for statutory board members and policymakers. The full discussion paper prepared for the meeting will be available in January.
CPD Media Snapshot
* In a follow up to our democracy research from 2017, Inside Story published On a Mission to Save Democracy by Travers McLeod, Sam Hurley and Allison Orr.
* CPD Senior Adviser Arjuna Dibley discussed in Qrius Why the rise of populist nationalist leaders rewrites global climate talks.
* CPD fellow Peter Whiteford discussed inequality in the Sydney Morning Herald and wrote aboutWhy Social Policy Counts for Inside Story.
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December 20, 2018
On a mission to save democracy | CPD Op-Ed
Published in Inside Story on 7 December 2018 – Travers McLeod, Sam Hurley and Allison Orr
Last week, former prime minister John Howard played down the Liberal Party’s hammering in the Victorian election by describing the state as “the Massachusetts of Australia.”
In the American parlance, Massachusetts is a deep Democrat blue. It was the only state not to vote for Richard Nixon in his landslide re-election victory in 1972 (a fact that, with the benefit of hindsight, might reflect uniquely good judgement). When American think tank Data for Progress modelled state-by-state support for progressive policy ideas using a combination of polling and demographic data, Massachusetts unsurprisingly polled well. Support for policies like a federal jobs guarantee for all Americans, extending public healthcare to cover all citizens rather than just over sixty-fives, and paid family leave to cover childbirth and medical emergencies runs between 60 and 70 per cent.
The interesting thing isn’t that Massachusetts supports these ideas — it’s that Massachusetts is far from alone. “Medicare for all” registers majority support in a total of forty-two states, including Texas, Florida, Ohio and Indiana. Expanded family leave is supported in all but one — Wyoming (where support runs to 48 per cent). And the biggest idea, a federal jobs guarantee, is stunningly popular, with majority support in every state, from “ruby red” West Virginia (62 per cent) to California and New York (71 per cent).
Victorians do support big-picture policies but, like their counterparts in Massachusetts, this doesn’t make them outliers — they are both in good company.
WHAT DO AUSTRALIANS WANT?
It’s hard to find a common thread through the political wreckage of the post-Howard years. If there is one, it might be this: Australians expect their governments to take responsibility and deliver results. And over the past decade they have been disappointed. No Australian wants the farcical bickering over other people’s lives that ended the federal parliamentary year yesterday.
Our research reveals a staggering and growing gap between what Australians want and what their government is delivering. More than two-thirds of Australians don’t think their elected representatives act in their interests. An even larger proportion perceive fundamental problems with how our system of government works in practice: three-quarters say that ordinary citizens should have a greater say in policy, that politics is fixated on short-term issues instead of long-term challenges, and that parliaments should better reflect community diversity on ethnicity, culture, age, profession and education.
Source: CPD attitudes research conducted by Essential in September 2017 and September 2018 of 1025 and 1030 respondents respectively.
Similar views have been reflected in other Australian studies, including the latest Scanlon Foundation Mapping Social Cohesion Survey released this week. Since 2009, respondents have consistently identified “the quality of government and political leadership” as the second or third “most important problem facing Australia today.” This year only 29 per cent of respondents believed they could trust the government “almost always” or “most” of the time.
This phenomenon isn’t unique to Australia. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index shows a decade of “democratic recession” worldwide. But while this trust deficit is something we share with the rest of the world, there is a strong ray of hope at home. Our research suggests something distinctive about how Australians view their democracy. It’s a matter of what they think the primary purpose of democracy is.
Surveys in the United States and Britain show that their citizens tend to see the processes that underpin their political systems (free elections, representative political institutions) as the most important aspects of their democracy. Australians, on the other hand, or at least a sizeable chunk of us, are more focused on the quality of the outcomes. When we asked Australians what they thought was the main purpose of democracy, the response twice as popular as any other was “ensuring that all people are treated fairly and equally, including the most vulnerable in our community.”
Source: CPD attitudes research conducted by Essential in October 2017 and October 2018 of 1025 respondents each.
This result is significant: it means many Australians want their democracy to be purposeful — about ends, not just means. They want their democracy to be bold, with government as an active and effective partner. And they want a fairer society where all Australians can live flourishing lives.
Victoria’s election was carried by a government that took an unapologetically forthright role in providing infrastructure, enhancing key public services, and tackling important social and environmental issues. This sort of agenda is popular, and open to parties and political leaders of all ideological stripes, but not everyone has got the memo. (In Massachusetts, five of the last six governors have been Republican. The Victorian Liberal Party, out of government for all but four of the last twenty years, should be so lucky.)
This is not to say that Australians don’t also want substantial reforms to the way our democracy works. Surveys show significant majorities favouring big changes to institutions and processes, including fixing federal–state relations, establishing a national anti-corruption commission, moving to four-year parliamentary terms at the national level, embedding the public sector in more parts of Australia, and putting citizens on parliamentary committees.
THE BUSINESS OF BUSINESS
Government is only part of the story: trust in business is also on the decline. The banking royal commission has shed light on serious misconduct in our financial system, where the customer was often all but forgotten as institutions chased short-term profits for their shareholders. As NAB chair Ken Henry said in his testimony last week, “the public tolerance of that model of accountability has been pretty well eroded to zero.” For Henry, that is the “principal reason” for “a loss of trust in business.” In his view, boards should be accountable “to the country, and for the country’s future,” not just to shareholders.
This is a debate that started after the global financial crisis but has not gained much traction in Australia. Should corporations only act in the interests of shareholders, or should they have a broader purpose? Should we be satisfied with rent-seeking from some major corporates, as opposed to genuine value creation and the appetite for risk it requires? Our research suggests Australians expect businesses to uphold their end of the social bargain, with a clear majority favouring a model that places long-term social impacts on par with profits and productivity. Far more people believe it is “very important” for corporations to make a positive contribution to society than believe they exist simply to create value for shareholders.
There are some encouraging green shoots here. Some leading Australian companies are taking climate change and sustainability more seriously, driven by mounting pressure from regulators, institutional investors and shareholder activists — as well as a more enlightened view of their social licence and self-interest. But, like government, business has a long way to go to get back in step with community attitudes. The recent revelations from the royal commission, and the spectacle of revolving door politics in Canberra, can hardly be helping to overcome the sense that our leaders in both fields lack a sense of wider moral purpose.
REBUILDING CONFIDENCE
There’s no easy way to restore people’s faith in government, but a good place to start is to restore government’s faith in itself.
As complex policy challenges have been piling up, governments have been stepping back. We are all familiar with the narrative that has guided public administration over the last several decades: the best thing the public sector can do is to clear the field. Government services have been outsourced, creating immense new markets, and profits, for private providers. Major assets and utilities have been sold off, often in a way that has allowed private operators to corner lucrative, uncompetitive markets. Responsibility and accountability have been dissipated.
Headcounts don’t tell the whole story, but the public service workforce Scott Morrison inherited when he became prime minister was 5 per cent smaller than it was in the last year of John Howard’s administration, and 10 per cent smaller than at its 2011 peak. Recent staffing and funding cutbacks have been indiscriminate. Agency staffing and budgets have been squeezed, and expertise contracted in at great expense. Over the five years to 2017, government work generated $1.7 billion in revenue for the Big Fouraccounting and consultancy firms. Along the way, the creeping politicisation of public service appointments has served to undermine independent advice.
Belief in government capability isn’t merely an academic issue. How can we expect people to trust that the CSIRO is ready to produce Australia’s next scientific breakthrough, or that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission is properly policing corporate misconduct, or that the Tax Office can crack down on tax avoidance, when governments won’t provide agencies with the resources they need to do their jobs? Even the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s submission to the inquiry into the use of consultants and contractors said that “with the implementation of staffing caps in the Australian Public Service, agencies have more frequently needed to engage external contractor and consultancy services to fill key roles.”
If this model were delivering the goods, all this might be fine. But the poor results — not least in Jobactive, vocational education and training, and aged care — have undermined public trust in government. Procurement-based policy has become a poor substitute for experience-based service design and delivery. According to our research, three-quarters of Australians think it’s important for government to maintain the capability and skills to deliver social services directly rather than pay private companies and charities to deliver them. Fewer than one in ten think this is not important. What’s more, Australians rate services delivered by government as more accessible, more affordable, of higher quality and easily more accountable than those delivered by private companies and even by charities.
This shows there is a real opportunity to turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous one. The big policy opportunities of our time — the issues where the public is crying out for better outcomes — are precisely those that require a more creative, constructive role from governments. Governments shouldn’t be afraid of thinking big. In fact, it is only in doing this that we can effectively turn the complex challenges of twenty-first-century life into benefits for Australia. These could include harnessing a technological revolution in energy and transport to drive clean jobs and economic development; rebuilding government systems and services for a data-driven but human-centred age; reshaping business and finance to be genuine drivers of long-term value; managing the impact of an ageing society; and reinvesting the fruits of our material prosperity into the things we value most, including health, learning, meaningful employment and protection of our environment.
Given all these potential benefits, you could be forgiven for asking: why aren’t governments already working on this? The short answer is that in many countries, including Australia, they are. But in most cases, they’re doing so within a paradigm that undermines policy ambition and undercuts governments’ ability to deliver. This makes the downward spiral of trust and capability even harder to arrest.
Governments promise agility and opportunity but struggle to deliver. Innovative programs and funding commitments are only one budget measure or ministerial reshuffle away from the scrapheap or the pork barrel. We prosecute an Australian ideas boom while those on the losing end of the disruption “bargain” spend hours trying to get through to Serco-staffedCentrelink call centres. We announce trials but fail to consolidate the evidence of what works. Is it any wonder people have lost faith?
MISSIONS NOT HALF-MEASURES
To rebuild the faith in government that people are craving, and to give government the confidence to take on the big challenges, we first need to change our mindset about what governments can do. Policy-makers could do well to listen to economist Mariana Mazzucato when she visits Australia next week. In a trio of books, Mazzucato powerfully and provocatively articulates things we forgot we knew: that government research and investment have historically been key drivers of wealth creation and innovation, including in Silicon Valley; that growth has not just a rate but a direction; and that the contours of long-term development have always been shaped by policy and strategy, or their absence.
For Mazzucato, a big part of the problem is that governments have internalised the prevailing narrative about their own limitations, and as a result have become “hesitant, cautious, careful not to overstep in case [they] should be accused of crowding out innovation, or accused of favouritism, picking winners.” The story matters: “we need a new vocabulary for policymaking,” she says, that can reduce the timidity which has for decades kept politicians from funding big-picture investment.
Mazzucato wants to push our current thinking about the role of government beyond the usual one of fixing market failures: “It is about shaping a different future: co-creating markets and value, not just ‘fixing’ markets or redistributing value. It’s about taking risks, not only ‘de-risking.’ And it must not be about levelling the playing field but about tilting it towards the kind of economy we want.” As shadow finance minister Jim Chalmers said last year, citing Mazzucato, this isn’t about dismissing “the power of markets” but about “directing economic growth towards an intelligent, sustainable and inclusive model.” Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation, or CEFC, is a standout example of this strategy in action, where the private and public sectors “nourish and reinforce each other in pursuit of the common goal of economic value creation.”
But the scale of our ambition can go well beyond that. Mazzucato urges governments and industry to identify core “missions” where catalytic, value-creating roles are most readily within our grasp — and go for them. What might this look like? Well, the CEFC could be seen as a down payment on a “Green New Deal” that puts zero carbon and renewable energy right at the centre of Australia’s strategy for employment and economic development. We could have missions for Australia to be a net exporter of renewable energy; build cohesion and multiculturalism through the world’s best settlement services; provide universal access to early childhood education; be a custodian of the rules-based international order; preserve our greatest natural assets like the Great Barrier Reef and the Ningaloo Reef; and drive extinction rates of native plants and animals to zero. All of these are worthy goals. All would be popular. All would have wide spillover benefits. And all are examples of where our current approach is failing to deliver and, in so doing, is eroding our collective faith in our system.
Such a shift in thinking would face a familiar critique: that more government intervention means more corruption and more inefficiency; that picking winners in the marketplace really means picking losers; that well-meaning attempts will crowd investment out rather than crowd it in. These are real risks that we’ve been hyper-attuned to over decades while policy capacity and purpose has atrophied. Mitigating these risks requires an excellent public service. Without this expert, engaged public sector, we run the even greater risk that events will set a direction of their own, and lead to disaster. Again we can take our cue from Mazzucato, who says, “The economy can indeed be made and shaped — but it can be done either in fear or in hope.” Hope isn’t enough on its own, but it is a far better starting point.
OUR VISION SPLENDID
The late Indigenous activist Tracker Tilmouth was fond of Banjo Paterson’s reference to a “vision splendid” in his famous poem “Clancy of the Overflow,” and frequently asked people what their vision splendid was. Which vision splendid can we use to guide us in rethinking government?
Of course, a new Australian vista won’t be delivered overnight — the thunderstorms of the past decade are still clearing — but David Thodey’s current review of the Australian public service, running alongside the banking royal commission, provides a perfect launching pad for some big ideas on rewiring government and finance.
There are several opportunities that government could grasp right now to get things moving in the right direction.
The first is to invest in the ability of the public sector to fulfil a more dynamic and demanding role. This is in Thodey’s domain: he has signalled his panel’s desire to think big, and over 700 submissions have risen to that challenge. It will take time for the next government to review the findings and plan implementation of the most important reforms, but what it should prioritise are the investments and capabilities that will support a more innovative, mission-led approach to the public sector’s work. These might include new approaches to project evaluation and a move beyond static cost–benefit metrics that discount long-term benefits and underplay the dynamic role the state can play in shaping new markets, services and technologies. It might feature new forms of public–private partnerships, with government playing a more active role as a lead investor and risk-taker, and taking a correspondingly larger stake in any upsides from successful investments. It might also include investment in experience-based policy design and service delivery at the local level.
Above all, however, Thodey must reinforce the need for the public service to be funded and empowered to think for itself in a way that extends our horizons and brings policy development closer to the people. Without that independent heft, Australia and its governments suffer. It isn’t enough, as Mazzucato has written, “to talk about the ‘entrepreneurial state’; one must build it — paying attention to concrete institutions and organisations that are able to create long-run growth strategies and ‘welcome’ the inevitable failure this will entail.”
The second opportunity is to appoint an Australian Sustainable Finance Taskforce. Over the past two years, government-appointed panels in the European Union, Britain, Canada and elsewhere have produced far-reaching policy road maps for receptive governments that are looking for ways to support more sustainable, socially aligned financial systems. Australia has an immense amount to gain by replicating a similar approach here, given the size and sophistication of our financial sector and its endemic issues with governance, culture and trust laid bare by the royal commission. Joining the global conversation on new taxonomies and standards for sustainable financial products and projects is the bare minimum for ensuring the next generation of trade and investment opportunities do not pass Australia by.
Ultimately, the ambition should be to reorient finance to better serve the long-term objectives (as well as manage the short-term needs) of societies that the sector serves. A government-backed Sustainable Finance Taskforce that crystallises the early efforts of industry and regulators to lead this conversation won’t provide the last word, but it would be a practical, principled first step towards a system that is more aligned with the real drivers of long-term value.
The third opportunity is to engage fully and respectfully with the enormous chance for democratic innovation provided by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, produced as it was by those who had come from across our sunlit plains “from all points of the southern sky.” This is where the vision splendid for Australia can start in a way that empowers all Australians, from first to last.
The bigger task — piecing together the capabilities and coalitions needed to bridge the trust deficit and set out on missions to tackle those areas where our country falls short — is not for the faint-hearted. The pace of change and the magnitude of the challenges ahead are daunting for the public and policy-makers alike. There is always the risk of failure, but we can’t let that stop us. We need to rebuild confidence that we can take on even the biggest of challenges. As the most famous Massachusetts politician of all time put it when he was laying out NASA’s mission to land a man on the moon: “It is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.” But Australia, like the United States that president John Kennedy was referring to, “was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them.”
In our increasingly complex world, we need to broaden our view of what government can achieve, and build a vision splendid that is uniquely Australian. It is precisely this new mindset that could spark a fresh era of development for a confident, smart nation of compassionate and sustainable communities engaged with each other, their region and their world. •
Mariana Mazzucato is visiting Australia as a guest of the Centre for Policy Development.
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