Speaking of New Industries

I have long been critical of our state governments and their inability to foster and encourage new industries and to intelligently "fill the gaps" as the old industries wind down and disappear. From my observation and despite all their rhetoric they don't even try.

Just about every state Premier regularly gets on their bandwagon and speaks passionately about what he or she is doing to encourage investment and create jobs - particularly around election time. But it's mostly just spin and BS because their success has been limited - actually it's pretty much nonexistent.

And yet there are actually plenty of opportunities to create new industries. And I don't mean by spending money to lure some event or another from some other state - doesn't that behaviour show the creative, innovative and intelligent mindset of these state Premiers?

No what I mean is that there are lots of opportunities to create new industries by looking seriously at the last 200 years of state legislation and identifying those pieces that hinder progress and creativity and innovation in the 21st century. And there is heaps of it.

How do I know there are opportunities to be exploited here? Simply by looking at what other jurisdictions are doing in this area. There are lots of examples from the US to the UK and Europe but you wouldn't know about it because our state governments seem not to have noticed. They certainly don't talk about it.

Take France as an example. The French have managed to encourage and foster an incredibly innovative and creative recreational marine industry that has become the envy of the world. And it employs thousands of highly skilled people. They have almost singlehandedly captured the market for multi-hull sail and power craft. Their design, technology and manufacturing capability is so far ahead of competing nations that "daylight" is in second place.

Now I don't mean to suggest that this has happened just by getting politicians to "encourage" it but political support was an important component included in the many faceted French industry development mix.

And that they have managed to do this from a relatively "high cost" European country says volumes about the need to compete on price. The French have outsmarted the rest of the world in this industry and they have done it by building and then using hi-tech design and technology skills.

Now you would have thought that if the Australian Premiers were serious about creativity and innovation and looking out for their jurisdictions - that they would investigate and study these examples from around the world and then identify the new industries that have a good fit locally.

Instead what we focus on here is a competition to see who can dig the most stuff up - while engaging in a race to the bottom on people costs. I for one reckon it's a seriously dumb approach.