I don't know if anyone agrees, but I think both parties have also missed the importance of R&D. Australia is too biased towards sports. I love my sports, but I think at the some point we really need to look at the balance here. All other first world countries have solid industry(ies) with high tech/know-how component which they specialise on, so why not us? E.g. Aussies are extremely good with biotech, so why not expand on it? A company like CSL should be given more resources ans supports to mass produce plasma and blood products WITHIN Australia and create a landmark industry, and likewise Biota shouldn't have to rely on GSK to manufacture our Relenza, which was almost dead due to the self interest of GSK. Come on.. Politicians should think further ahead than what we've got now.. mining boom doesn't last forever and I'll go even further to say 1929 style stuff cannot be ruled out.. When China and India loses steam we'll be heading towards an interesting time. Time for Aussies to think ahead!
Something that both political parties missed..
- Thread starter feihong
- Start date
Why would a politician be thinking any further forward than the next time they have to try and get re-elected?
The system of government we have doesn't give them an incentive to look at long term strategies.
Some Gov departments are thinking this way but they appear to be few and far between. My old man used to work in state government and they did a good job because they didn't have to make a profit, all they had to do was provide infrastructure and keep it running. An outsource company doesn't care about running the infrastructure past the current contract date. Same with Gov now.
The only way to change is get a lobby group going, get some media air time and make the politicians see your group as a true reflection of the community sentiment which could influence votes.
cheers
quoll
The system of government we have doesn't give them an incentive to look at long term strategies.
Some Gov departments are thinking this way but they appear to be few and far between. My old man used to work in state government and they did a good job because they didn't have to make a profit, all they had to do was provide infrastructure and keep it running. An outsource company doesn't care about running the infrastructure past the current contract date. Same with Gov now.
The only way to change is get a lobby group going, get some media air time and make the politicians see your group as a true reflection of the community sentiment which could influence votes.
cheers
quoll
R&D is very hard thing support profitably. Think about it carefully, what does R&D actually mean, Research & Development. This means spending money on research and developing a product that has never been developed before. Quite often, the amount of money going into research far exceeds budget, the production cost of these new products are larger than first anticipated or market demand for them is not quite as large as anticipated.
R&D projects fail quite often and the only reason why these R&D companies manage to survive is by government grants. So really R&D can be rather costly for the government.
R&D projects fail quite often and the only reason why these R&D companies manage to survive is by government grants. So really R&D can be rather costly for the government.
