Becoming a nation of innovation

Now that the furore over the closure of Holden, Ford and Toyota seems to have subsided a little and now that we have stopped crying into our beer, gnashing our teeth and swearing into the sunset, we might pause for a moment and consider.

Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, although I doubt that those people facing a grim future would quite see it that way, especially if they are over 50, still well short of retirement and have been with the firm man and boy for more than 40 years.  It’s hard to retrain at that age, assuming there is something to retrain for.

But perhaps we could re-employ some of these displaced workers to making an all-electric car, which many people would buy if the price was right - and the price could be right if they were made here. Many of the car subsidiary industries could perhaps make a sideways shift rather than a shutdown.

If we do nothing we are facing further erosion in our manufacturing skills that would appear to be largely wasted on producing cars that nobody wanted or could afford. We need to stop paying ourselves outrageous salaries and become more competitive before we forget how to make anything other than a wailing noise.

So, if we don't like the idea of electric cars, maybe we could become a country of innovation making niche products with high value and a worldwide demand. After all, we already have a track record of providing unique products, for example, the Victa mower, the Hills Hoist and the aircraft black box.

While these industries do not employ the thousands in the car industry, they are at least making things that people want. But there are other directions in which we could travel. The bionic ear is an example of technology that is now known and sought after globally. The bionic eye is in its early development stages but will no doubt eventually be perfected, and that could happen here. The Scramjet could in the future whiz us to London in two hours and loaf-size satellites used for environmental monitoring could have widespread uses in other fields.

This might well be the tip of the iceberg, and with suitable government encouragement what else might come out from behind doors that are now closed because help is needed to open them? Most of these developments employ electronics, fine machining, precision assembly and reliable construction, and many of our redundant car workers could be redeployed into such industries. Not for a moment would such industries absorb all the car workers who will be looking for new jobs in a few years’ time. Some will retire, others may start their own businesses, others may leave the states and seek the sunshine of Queensland.

Now is the time for governments to forget the weasel words and actually do something. We need to plan projects, decide if new factories need to be built, decide where the money is coming from, set up training schemes and forget the election-type rhetoric. We have here a golden opportunity to raise even higher Australia’s already high stake in the technology field. The question is, do governments have the ears to listen and the wisdom to act? For once, let’s look to our own shores when it comes to handing out money and forget those heavy donations to countries that largely fritter away the cash we give them before they raise the single digit to us when we ask for cooperation.

To the man in the street it is simple. Stop the blame game, engage the imagination and let governments give money to develop new products that could bring value and prestige to Australia