On an episode of QandA on the ABC, back in May of 2020, the topic of conversation was Australia Re-Imagined. Host Hamish MacDonald framed the conversation around whether COVID-19 is forcing us to innovate and change the way we work and live. He asked “Is this the big reset Australia needs? What changes will outlive the pandemic, and what reforms might come from it? Can Australia use this moment to reimagine the way we live, work, commute and learn?”.
An audience member then made the following statement whilst putting a question to the panel, “We need courageous leadership to take this once in a lifetime opportunity, yet our national leaders seem ill prepared and lacking that courage to lead us into a different future.”
So, do we need courageous leadership from our elected members and has anything different actually happened? Well yes, of course we do and nor has anything different actually happened, but quite frankly they do not have all of the answers and nor should they. Surely the future success of our tiny island state will be dependent on the collective leadership of its inhabitants and all that we can really hope for from the leadership of our elected members and public administration, is that they provide the right mechanisms for us to take advantage of that lead to future prosperity.
QandA panel member Professor Genevieve Bell provided the following observation “ I was lucky enough to spend the last 20 years in Silicon Valley and the company that I worked for firmly believed that the place you put your money into during a global downturn was R&D and to have ideas when the economy turned...and so, for me, I’ve always thought that in moments like this, there are a lot of choices...but one of them is you actually need to be investing in research and development.”
Australia desperately needs strong corporate leadership like that highlighted by Professor Bell, leadership that understands the value of R&D and particularly the value of R&D right now. During a period of uncertainty, but also a period of opportunity.
Our Chief Scientist Alan Finkel added, “... ultimately, research and development can contribute to taking Australia not back to where we were before the crises began, but to a better place.”
It was from this point that I had issue with the narrative on QandA, as from here the conversation began to move away from the future minded thinking renowned in Silicon Valley, to the complacency that tends to shroud Australia’s narrative around the effectiveness and value of R&D. A mindset that tends to look toward Government for the answers, through funding the University sector to find the solutions. Sure, they are part of the solution, but an over reliance on government and the university sector is not going to take Australia to “... a better place”. The corporate sector needs to shrug off its indifference to R&D and embrace the results that can be achieved through investing in the future.
Leadership has already been provided by Government through the provision of FREE MONEY in support of R&D to those companies who have taken advantage of the generous rebates and incentives that are available through the Research and Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) program. But the big question is whether the broader corporate sector, through both its executive and board leadership, can finally understand the importance and effectiveness of innovation through R&D and take advantage of the opportunity that the government is creating for the benefit of its shareholders, employees and its fellow citizens throughout Australia
What we need right now, is innovative, creative and “courageous” leadership from the corporate sector, to not only invest in their own companies future, but in the future prosperity of this country. The RDTI is a proven and underutilised resource to assist them in achieving precisely those outcomes. It was back in May of 2020 and unfortunatekly it still is.
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