From 2007-08, we have had almost full employment in this country, if you can believe the statistics.  Whether they are truly representative of what is actually happening in the community is to be addressed in another area of this project, but it is certainly easier now to find work than it was a decade ago.  It hasn’t always been full employment, and only a few years ago, finding work was a huge issue for many people.  Unemployment was very high, and this cycle will continue for a long time.

However, menial tasks will always find people to do them.  The brightest students and minds have, for a very long time, been lured away overseas.  We have to ask, “Why”?

Then we think of the entrepreneurial ideas, innovations and inventions that end up overseas because they cant find funding here in Australia, and it all starts to make sense!

The brains of the country, the brightest minds, they are following the inventions and entrepreneurs to wherever they can be paid their true value.

The question is, “How can we get them to come back”?

The answer is relatively simple, although a fundamental shift in thinking from where we are now on the subject.  Innovation, entrepreneurship, brilliance and enterprise needs to be respected and admired in Australia, and it needs to be funded.

For decades, the “Tall Poppy” syndrome has brought our best and brightest to their knees, from school aged students through to the greatest inventors, these people have been victims of our own particular style of bullying and forced to lie low, or deny their brilliance.  The ones who were strong enough mostly left to go international where, once they attained public recognition, they were claimed as our own.  What hypocrisy!

The fundamental change of attitude needs to start with the opportunity for brilliance in research and development, inventions, innovation and entrepreneurship to be funded, and even taught as a subject in schools and universities. 

The sooner it begins in schools, the better for the country.  Whilst it may make for rowdy classrooms, it will make for brilliant years in university and the research departments will yield returns greater than anyone could have imagined.  I have suggested elsewhere in this website that we actually and actively fund R&D and inventors on a profit share basis, to keep the inventions and inventors, the brains, in Australia.

A couple of times, intelligent cities/sites have been proposed – for example, the “Multi-Function Polis” which was such an inglorious failure.  However, perhaps it was only ahead of its time.  Silicon Valley in the USA is known globally as a centre of excellence in attracting the brightest minds in the IT industry.