Australia’s project for the Asian century released last night has a couple of good things in it. The move to connect high school students with greater access to Asian language is great, but beyond that it looks like an simple endorsement of current Labor policies in education investment, the NBN and carbon reform.
This is one of those documents when the big wigs of Australian public discussion flex their muscles while the rest of go to sleep. As Paul Kelly says, it will give the Gillard government a vision to sell but judge for yourself if the policy grunt is there to change anything.
My hope is that it could become a new economic narrative to help push Australia to an exports focus beyond “sell ’em dirt” and the people to people initiatives of the paper are welcome. But again, on hard policy there is nothing. The paper assumes high productivity growth but does explain where it will come from. It assumes dirt will remain in high demand without explaining why. It assumes advances in our education system when in reality it is creeping backwards. It does not outline any new Asia-focused industry policy – like that described recently by Andrew Liveras – but assumes high innovation will drive us forward. It is an export-focused document, which is terrific. But it does not address Australia’s competitiveness issue, neither its over-valued currency, nor its perpetually rising labour and land costs, not to mention the broader costs of doing business.
It’s a welcome reorientation and symbolic gesture and on that front hopeful but I see no reason to expect any of its bold predictions will come true because of anything in the paper. See what you think.
