The Australian Miracle: An Innovative Nation Revisited

  • Thomas Barlow
Picador Pan Macmillan: 2006. 288 pp. A$25

Thomas Barlow is a congenital optimist. A scientist turned journalist, he served as an adviser to Brendan Nelson, Australia's former science minister. Barlow is now chief executive of a materials company based in Sydney. He explains that his book, The Australian Miracle, has been written to “provide an antidote to the doom and gloom perspectives that are perpetuated about Australia's capacity to innovate and to compete in the global knowledge economy”. He sees Australia as mired in “systematic complaining”, a “belligerently pessimistic attitude”, with “endless hand-wringing”, and says it is “misguided and needlessly gloom-ridden”. He has a rare gift for understatement.

I find his diagnosis puzzling. The current mindset among Canberra's ruling élite is an overwhelming, even overweening, optimism, not all of it justified. Australia's growth rates are among the highest of any developed country, and while mineral prices remain high and China's demand for raw materials remains insatiable, the country's prospects are glowing. Public discourse rarely hints at the possibility of a downturn. The mood of “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” is not confined to sport.

The huge salaries currently paid to Australian executives (not mentioned in the book) are not signs of depression. However, of the 2006 'Rich 200' list, published by the Business Review Weekly this May, only six are involved in technological services and franchising, one in developing new products. Property remains the greatest source of wealth in Australia, followed by services, retail and investment, with manufacturing well down.

I have asked scores of magnates in recent years whether they were interested in investing in biotechnology, computing, pharmaceuticals, medical technologies or new materials. The answer is invariably: “Why would I bother?” The Rich 200 are role models for the next generation of investors and entrepreneurs.

“Australia remains a lucky country in a number of ways,” Barlow writes, “but luck has never been the main determinant of its success.” He returns to the Lucky Country concept several times but does not mention Donald Horne's book of the same name.

Easy money: has Australia's ability to mine resources such as iron ore hindered its development? Credit: AUSTRALIAN PICTURE LIBRARY

Horne argued presciently in The Lucky Country (Penguin, 1964) that the abundance of Australia's mineral base and 'lucky' elements in its history retarded some aspects of its social, economic and technological development. People in other nations had to live by their wits or starve, but Australia always had stuff to dig up and sell, and that determined its concept of value. When Australia faced a crisis, as it did in the 1850s, 1890s, 1940s and 1950s, the luck changed — thanks to discoveries of gold, coal, oil, iron ore and natural gas, and the arrival of General MacArthur. It did not have to reinvent itself or work out new strategies.

Barlow argues that “Australia has its own extraordinary story of technological growth.” Up to a point, Lord Copper. Oddly, although Australia is a heavy user of communications, computing, satellite, remote sensing, mining and military technology, it produces very little of its own, and its trade imbalance in knowledge-based products is alarming.

Barlow fails to address what I refer to as Australia's inventory problem, the conspicuous lack of internationally successful high-value-added brand-name goods and services. The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland, which all have smaller populations than Australia, make products that sell internationally on reputation, rather than price. Where are the Australian equivalents of Philips, Volvo, Scania, Hasselblad, Nestlé, Roche or Nokia?

In 1986, comparing Australia and Taiwan, it would have been reasonable to assume that by now Australia would have been well ahead in information technology, given its strong education system, research history, inventiveness and position as part of the English-speaking world. In fact, Taiwan streaked ahead. Australia suffered from a failure of nerve, short-sighted thinking by institutional investors, and a lack of dynamic and compelling leadership in the computing business.

The chapter entitled “The Australian Miracle” is deeply puzzling. It is a lively and skilful précis of Technology in Australia 1788–1988, published by the Academy of Technological Science and Engineering. Barlow is very strong on the stump-jump plough but mentions no technological innovation later than 1900. The word miracle, suggesting divine intervention, or beyond reason, is an odd choice not justified in the text.

Barlow could have put far more emphasis on Australia's outstanding record in medical research. He rightly praises Barry Marshall and Robin Warren for their work on Helicobacter pylori, which won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But Macfarlane Burnet, Peter Doherty and Suzanne Cory are barely mentioned, and Jack Eccles, Frank Fenner, Don Metcalf, Gus Nossal and Jacques Miller are ignored.

The most thoughtful element in Barlow's book is a brief examination of the comparative value of individual versus collaborative research; he should have expanded this argument. He expresses concern that Commonwealth and state funding of research may involve too much fanfare about multidisciplinarity at the expense of research by individuals. Darwin's research and Einstein's celebrated 1905 papers would have been too small to qualify for Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, and I suspect that Burnet, a notorious loner, might have looked in vain for funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

The proof-reading is careless. We are treated to a quotation from Arthur Koestler twice. And Barlow dismisses Australia as a “relatively small economy”, even though The Economist ranks Australia as number 15 in the world. The book also suffers from the lack of an index.

Barlow is right to point out the Australian public's high level of interest in science, but is dismissive, even contemptuous, about complaining academics. He fails to examine the reasons for this paradox. He should have commented on the striking fall in enrolments in the enabling sciences, physics, chemistry and mathematics, parallel to the relentless march of the business students. Research disciplines are down proportionally (but not in absolute numbers) while the packaging and marketing subjects are well up. Was this worth a sentence or two?

Barlow is unduly modest and says little of his time advising Nelson. He mentions the case of Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet geneticist who suppressed darwinism, and asserts that nothing similar could happen in Australia. I am not so sure. Australia practises its own form of soft lysenkoism, with climate scientists in CSIRO silenced if they do not produce 'agreed science', supporting the Howard government's ideological rejection of global warming. 'Public good' Cooperative Research Centres were closed down unless they worked on commercial products. The ARC's recommendations were subject to ministerial veto, and a chair and chief executive appointed for expertise in research were replaced by people experienced in working with government and interpreting, or even second-guessing, shifts in policy.