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The Forum > Article Comments > Ideas and engagement: the Western Australian economic story > Comments

Ideas and engagement: the Western Australian economic story : Comments

By Andrew Leigh, published 28/2/2014

Innovation is at the core of Australia's future prosperity, and Western Australia is as well placed as any part of Australia to capture its benefits.

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< Congestion isn't just maddening, it's bad economics. And any government that thinks it can get away with skimping on infrastructure needs to get serious about productivity. >

Andrew, this statement stands out like dogs balls as being in urgent need of response…

Yes of course congestion is bad economics. It’s just downright stuuupid! And it is rank and rapidly getting ranker around Perth.

But skimping on infrastructure is not the issue. New infrastructure is being built at a great pace…. and at enormous expense to the WA (and other Australian) taxpayer. This is money that is quite desperately needed elsewhere.

The problem of course is rapid population growth and the madness of the pursuance of never-ending expansionism.

And this is the great problem with your analysis – the lack of any comment or awareness of the fundamental need for us to live within our means. This is particularly pertinent in WA, where there are critical water-supply problems, which have led to the West becoming dependent of huge desalination plants.

Ok, so WA has great potential to do great things. Just like anywhere else in the country or the western world really.

Andrew, if there is one thing about WA, with its critical water problems, congestion, inadequate infrastructure and services, etc, it should be the imperative to STOP growing the population and to develop a sustainable society.

WA surely has as much motivation to do this as anywhere in the world!

It has had for a long time. And yet it has charged forth in a manically unsustainable manner.

continued
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 28 February 2014 9:33:21 AM
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So going by your reasoning; that WA has particular issues that should spur innovation more so than in other places; their record is not good!

They have been extremely poor at dealing with the glaring obvious – the enormous discrepancy between the rapidly increasing demand for water and the secure supply capability…. and various other aspects related to sustainability versus the ongoing and ever-worsening discrepancy between demand and the supply capability of basic resources, infrastructure and services.

The day that the people of the West elect a sustainability-based government will be the day that they really do something significant towards achieving a healthy future.

Sorry, but in the absence of this, all the other things that you mention that they might achieve are not likely to amount to a hill of beans!
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 28 February 2014 9:34:39 AM
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Greater use of land value taxation, as advocated by the Henry Tax Review, would see higher ad valorem levies in the coastal capitals to which the poet AD Hope said Australians clot like mud to a wheel. With lower land value levies in the regions, this would encourage a drift to the regions. More significant land value taxation, and the concomitant abolition of payroll taxes and stamp duty on conveyances would kickstart the decentralisation Australia sorely needs, but I ain't holding my breath.
Posted by freddington, Friday, 28 February 2014 1:15:49 PM
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Dr. Andrew Leigh is absolutely correct to conclude that innovation is the future for WA and the rest of Australia. Our biggest problem is that we do not have robust systems, policies and programs to support innovation, commercialisation and value adding. Our economy is increasingly like an African economy. We export raw materials and import finished goods. We need to look to Singapore as a model of managing human resources in the most effective way. We need to change strategies, business practices and policies in order to improve our performance. Our luck is running out so we need strategy to deal with the future.
Posted by Macedonian advocacy, Friday, 28 February 2014 2:08:38 PM
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It is indeed sad that the Labor Government of whom Andrew Leigh was a member, was so lacking in ideas and vision. It implemented policy that stifled not only WA, but also the national economy.

Who could forget the mining tax, whereby mining companies were ambushed by being made liable in respect of existing projects, and whereby potential new investors were scared away.

Rather than implement policies to improve productivity, the Labor Govt did the opposite, by unnecessarily forcing up the cost of factors of production, viz. by implementing IR policies that significantly raised the cost of employing labour; and by implementing climate change policies including the carbon tax, that destroyed Australia's natural cheap energy advantage -- sadly, Andrew and his Labor colleagues ignored the fact that there is no empirical scientific evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming
Posted by Raycom, Friday, 28 February 2014 4:12:53 PM
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Investment is good, except if it comes from overseas? What? Like say those who invested in our car manufacturing industries, or fruit processing, or iron ore mining or aluminium smelting?
I'm old enough to remember when Lance Hancock, went cap in hand to virtually every govt, for a mere pittance in start up capital, compared to the money earned by this industry to date.
I remember when we were still the third richest nation on the planet, and a creditor one at that.
Now every boy and his dog is all but foaming at the mouth to sell it and or our long lost economic sovereignty?
Perhaps if we were to simply remove the ideological blinkers, and compare ourselves with much smaller less populated Norway, with far fewer resources! We might just begin to get an inkling of just how much better we could do!
Sadly, that will never happen as long as the professional spin doctors are out there saying sell your childrens' inheritance for just a tiny fraction of their true value, just so a few ideologues can avoid taking ultimate responsibility for our real economic performance.
What do we do when all the oil wells run dry and the mines are just played out holes in the ground, with most of the wealth they created exported to people and nations far more intelligent, than our current crop of so-called leaders? The service industries perhaps?
Problem there is, you actually need a viable manufacturing base to actually support said industries!
Innovation? Like say the atomic absorption spectrometer; or the ceramic fuel cell; or pulsed light uranium enrichment, which reduces the cost of enrichment to a point, where no nation on earth could compete; or, direct reduction steel making?
All of which, like so much of our innovation, is now in the hands of much more astute, more competently lead foreigners.
The much touted fact that WA might have a few innovators is purely the product of blind serendipity, not self congratulating pollies, or indeed, their speech writers or spin doctors!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Saturday, 1 March 2014 4:29:20 PM
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