Peppercorn: Our nation is squandering its natural advantages

This means whatever problems we have – whether about resource sharing, government structures, economic or social policies – are within our own province to solve, free of obligations to adjoining nation-states.

Contrast this fortunate position with that of countries in the European Union, now trying to reach a united position on how to deal with the human flood of refugees from the Middle East.

But despite this natural advantage, we seem to be squandering the opportunity to manage the governance and the effective working of our nation for the common good.

Our democratic system, which now concentrates voting power overwhelmingly in the coastal cities, no longer delivers the balanced and inclusive representation in the nation’s parliaments.

Nor is democracy serving us well at local level, where in NSW many councils now face forced amalgamations against the prevailing wishes of their ratepayers, who fear a loss of identity, civic status and access to services if the mergers go ahead.

The planned rationalisation of local councils is being championed by the State Government in the name of greater efficiency, but somewhere along the line we have allowed the relentless quest for greater efficiency to cloud our judgment.

It has become the accepted wisdom across government, industry and economic discussion that any change that results in more output being achieved by fewer people is by definition more “efficient”, but is it?

I would prefer to think the term “efficiency” should be applied more widely as a measure of the healthy functioning of a nation, across social as well as economic grounds.

What do we gain as a society if we continue to find ways of producing things, or getting things done, using fewer people? Where do the people thus displaced finish up? What further sense of self-worth do they have? Who pays to keep them?

Welfare already accounts for more than 37pc of total federal government spending and is projected to rise further as more people come to our shores and more jobs disappear.

In recent times we’ve witnessed the winding-down of heavy industry, the virtual demise of local textile, clothing and footwear manufacture, the exit announcements by our three car makers and moves offshore by major food processors.

If Australia were functioning truly efficiently, I believe, we would still be producing a lot of the stuff locally that is now coming instead from overseas, and industry sectors that have traditionally been “labour-intensive” would remain so – unashamedly.

Instead, we read about how radar-controlled cranes are now replacing stevedores on the wharves, high-tech mechanisation is replacing much former manual labour on farms, and even meat processing is in the throes of automation.

A briefing paper released by the NSW government in December predicted emerging technologies would see more than half the existing jobs in NSW lost to automation over the next 10 to 15 years.

We’ve seen it happen within our own newspaper industry, and the same computer-driven upheaval is expected to reshape many other industries to the detriment of employment. 

Malcolm Turnbull sees the uptake of “innovation” by industry as the key to Australia’s recovery from the mining downturn, and his Government has committed $1.1 billion in public funds to foster the so-called Ideas Boom.

But while the boost to research funding is to be welcomed, it’s unlikely the innovation package will solve the underlying problem of how to provide gainful employment for our growing pool of semi-skilled and unskilled workers.

Part of the answer lies with industry assistance, and a large part with workplace reform – something the unions and the Labor Party would vigorously oppose, and ramp up to be a major election issue.

It’s hard to see how the reforms this country needs – to our tax system and industrial regime – will ever be achievable within our self-interested democracy. We might need to go through an Argentina experience first.