Whatever happened to Australia’s mojo?
Not Mojo, the advertising agency I ran for decades. I mean the real meaning of the word: the spirit, confidence and willingness to have a crack before somebody forms a committee to explain why we shouldn’t. Australia is one of the most fortunate countries on earth. We have extraordinary natural resources, stable institutions, educated people, land, energy, food and sunshine. Yet somewhere along the way it feels as though we lost a bit of our swagger — not the loud kind, the useful kind: deciding where we want to go, backing ourselves, taking a sensible risk and getting on with it.
Years ago my great mate Bob Hawke tried more than once to talk me into running for Parliament. Bob believed that if you wanted to get anything done, you had to choose a side. He had slightly more evidence for his position than I did for mine — he had run the country; I had run advertising agencies. Still, I said no. I didn’t want the best Labor ideas for Australia. I didn’t want the best Liberal ideas for Australia. I wanted the best ideas for Australia. In forty years, nobody has managed to explain to me why those should be different sentences.
Then, earlier this year, cancer gave me something I had rarely possessed and certainly never requested: time. I started checking all those dinner-table opinions I’d accumulated over seventy years about what Australia should do. Artificial intelligence gave me the ability to test them against the evidence rather than merely admire them. Quite a few of my favourite ideas died in the process. Others became much bigger. And slowly the exercise stopped being about what Australia should do next year and became a much more important question: what sort of Australia are we deliberately trying to leave our children and grandchildren?
That is where Australia42 came from. Forty-two years is roughly a generation. It is long enough to stop asking “What can we announce before the next election?” and start asking better questions. Instead of “Is immigration too high or too low?”, ask what population Australia wants and what housing and infrastructure must exist before people arrive. Instead of arguing which energy technology wins, ask what energy system gives Australia abundant, reliable and globally competitive power. Instead of asking what artificial intelligence will do to jobs next year, ask how Australia becomes an owner and shaper of AI rather than simply having somebody else’s AI happen to us. Change the horizon and you change the question.
What surprised me most was not how many problems I found. It was the hand Australia is holding. We are a roughly US$2 trillion economy with 28 million people, sitting on resources the world desperately needs. We have enormous pools of superannuation capital, extraordinary food-producing capacity, some of the world’s most valuable minerals, stable institutions, valuable data, space, energy and a geography that suddenly looks rather useful. We are not a little country waiting to see what the big countries decide. We are a very strong country that has somehow got into the habit of playing a rather weak game.
So I built a plan. More than fifty policy subjects. Education, housing, health, immigration, AI, productivity, tax, energy, manufacturing, food, water, defence, justice, government performance and plenty more. Every important number has a source behind it. Every substantial proposal has a cost, a measure and somewhere it should be killed if it doesn’t work. There is a Data Room so you can check me, and an Almanac designed to keep score after launch. A scoreboard that only ever goes up is advertising. I know the difference.
And yes, I even tried to add the bloody thing up. The careful case deliberately assumes Canberra carries the load without help and shows the shortfall rather than hiding it. But the numbers also demonstrate the central argument of the book. If the states participate through the Jewellery Box and the existing superannuation reform contributes its return — Team Australia — the model reaches harvest at roughly $159 billion coming in against $145 billion going out: about $14 billion a year ahead. Four other possible revenue sources are still counted as zero because I can’t yet defend a number for them. The difference isn’t another tax. It’s cooperation.
That, really, is the whole point of Australia42. I am not suggesting every idea in it is right. I’d be suspicious if it were. I am suggesting Australia should agree on where it wants to end up, then let Labor, Liberal, Greens, independents and anybody else argue like hell about the best road there. Governments should change. Policies should change. Evidence should change our minds. The destination shouldn’t need reinventing every three years.
There is nothing to join and nothing to buy. I’m not building a mailing list, selling anything or running for anything. Have a look. Pick the subject you actually care about. Argue with it. Check the numbers. Find the hole. Better still, tell me what you would do instead.