# Australia's Future Summit



## mike (Jun 13, 2007)

Reading Duncan Riley's summary of the Future Summit currently being held in Melbourne, Australia's technological future doesn't sound too promising.



> Broadbandhttp://www.inquisitr.com/24179/the-future-summit-australias-future-as-a-technological-backwater/# is a buzz word that they believe will deliver improved opportunities for existing businesses, eduction, and health. But that's it. No innovation. no web industries, no increase in tech jobs. Nothing. Not a thing. One panelist asked what Australia's competitive advantages will be in 20 years time, and his response was Minerals. No mention of striving to deliver a "clever country" that thrives on new tech and web related jobs. No mention that two of the United State's largest companies by market cap are tech/ web companies (Microsoft and Google). Nothing. Zip. Zilch.


IT and the internet should be where Australia should be looking. We have a pool of experienced engineers, sales and marketing people and getting 1000s of skilled people coming to Australia on the skilled migration scheme.

Sure we can dig stuff up out of the ground, but at least some of those profits should be re-invested in high tech industries. Google was started with just two engineers, so there is no reason why they couldn't have been from Australia.

It's time to forget about manufacturing and low end businesses which we have no chance of competing with India and China and look to what we can successfully achieve.


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## Wanderer (Jun 16, 2007)

Just having a later read Mike and the old thoughts resurface - distances and the marketplace!



> Sure we can dig stuff up out of the ground, but at least some of those profits should be re-invested in high tech industries. Google was started with just two engineers, so there is no reason why they couldn't have been from Australia.


I'm not up with Google company structure/infrastructure/product sufficiently well to know whether it could have been started and run from anywhere or not but if so, international web capacity would have had to been in place I'd suspect.

With Microsoft, there's more a case of all the associated products and that's certainly where d & m come into play.
With minerals we may be a distance from China and India but luckily enough, closer to there than other sources.

It's the very reason Australia will never be a strong manufacturing nation, and why in fact so many manufacturing jobs go off shore, wage costs being the other key issue and many many IT jobs have gone overseas for that very reason.

In fact, creating the superhighway within Australia, connecting to the global motorway could in fact see more and more services that can be done online go overseas.

For sure, with a global super highway success will come from people can identify market niches in competitive managing of the information that can be accessed - establishing the service and maintaining the advantage! - a big ask.


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